On 14 December, the Rafael del Pino Foundation organised the meeting "Young people with a future" with the aim of promoting entrepreneurship and developing the talent of our young people.
Young people with a future is also an internship programme that offers Spanish engineers and programmers the opportunity each year to develop their entrepreneurial and technical skills by doing an internship in a startup in Spain or in the USA. The Jóvenes con Futuro programme was devised by Bernardo Hernández and co-founded by StepOne and the Rafael del Pino Foundation in 2010 to offer professional opportunities to young Spaniards. In 2015, the Banco Sabadell Foundation joined this effort.
Summary: Young people with a future: Talent and technology
14 December 2015
The core of Silicon Valley's success is its philosophy of solving problems and solving them well. This is one of the main values acquired by the young Spanish engineers who participate in the successive editions of the "Young people with a future" programme, which they then bring to Spain and apply here to the development of technology companies.
The presentation ceremony of the sixth edition of the "Jóvenes con talento" programme, in which the Banco Sabadell Foundation and StepOne also participate, took place on 14 December at the Rafael del Pino Foundation.
The presentation was given by Bernardo Hernández, entrepreneur and business angel, who explained that the aim of the "Young people with a future" programme is to take smart young engineers to the "eye of the hurricane", i.e. to Silicon Valley, to learn how to set up companies.
According to Hernández, it is no coincidence that all the major technology companies are located there. Silicon Valley, he explained, has been able to create tremendous value in just a few years. The value of its companies is "three and a bit times" the value of Spanish GDP, thanks to the digital revolution.
Bernardo Hernández indicated that in Silicon Valley, five values are acquired, which are a common denominator for all those who pass through it. The first of these is the culture of the companies there, whose vocation is to solve a problem that affects hundreds of millions of people and to solve it well. Even, if possible, with the potential to generate billions in turnover.
The second value is having a competitive advantage, in the sense that the proximity to other people working in technology creates an environment of idea generation and exchange that makes Silicon Valley unique.
The third value is that of focus, of concentrating on doing one thing and doing it well and not moving on to another until everything is well done.
The next is related to financing. This consists of making sure to get enough money to be able to develop the ideas, an aspect that Spanish engineers, in general, do not tend to do or do not tend to take too much into account.
Finally, there is the spirit of hard work, as competition is "just a click away". This value creates a strong work ethic, where people do not spare working hours, even on weekends, until they get what they want to do done.
The event concluded with speeches by several participants in the "Young people with a future" programme, two current participants - Belén Cruz Zapata, IT mobility engineer at Groupon, and César de la Vega, IT engineer at Turo - and two former participants - Alberto Díaz, head of mobility at El Corte Inglés, and Cristian González, engineering director at Onewest - who stressed that their stay in Silicon Valley has made them change their work philosophy to start thinking about products, ideas and never stop trying new things.
