The ICEX exhibition space is being a meeting and networking hub for Spanish and foreign startups.

The international technology event organised by Startup Valencia, Valencia Digital Summit (VDS), is holding its seventh edition on 23rd and 24th October in the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia and this year it is premiering the international recognition it was granted by the Secretary of State for Trade, and is part of the ICEX strategy in favour of the internationalisation of the Spanish technological and innovative ecosystem.

VDS has become one of the main international technology events in southern Europe and a platform for national and international scaling, not only for Valencian startups, but also for those from the rest of Spain and for foreign startups that choose our country as a hub for their international development.

The event brings together more than 2,500 startups, attracts more than 12,000 attendees from over 100 countries and facilitates connections between corporations and international investments.

It is within this framework that ICEX Spain Export and Investment has decided to redouble its efforts and propose that the event should also be a platform for three of its most powerful startup communities: the Rising Up Community; the DESAFIA Community, managed by ICEX together with Red.es and INCIBE, in several of the ecosystems in which DESAFIA is present, and the Spain Latam Scale Up Community, which recently visited Valencia with very good results and will be continued by VDS.

Taking advantage of the VDS slogan ‘Embracing evolution: investing in tomorrow's leaders’, ICEX proposes that its exhibition space be the meeting and networking centre for Spanish and foreign startups established in Spain in their international scaling, specifically the RISING Up and DESAFIA Communities.

To this end, ICEX has also organised the panel ‘The entrepreneurial ecosystem: catalyst for the international scaling of startups’ with the participation of Lanzadera and the RISING Up startup Terralabs, as well as the DESAFIA startup Findspo, which participates in the official panel ‘How to promote innovation ecosystems through institutional investment funds’, and there will be a private meeting with investors and several of the RISING UP startups that will pitch in the official VDS competition.