The program is aligned with a governmental Strategy (“España Nación Emprendedora”). A long-term vision promoted by the government to make Spain a benchmark country in innovative entrepreneurship in the year 2030.

The program takes place in several editions. In a first edition in 2022, a total of 270 women entrepreneurs from all EU countries and 52 nationalities participated. In a second edition in 2023, the objective was to attract 720 entrepreneurs to launch their businesses, meet mirror companies and potential customers and suppliers.

All over Spain.

The Break is designed and developed by EOI and in collaboration with The Break Alliance, a consortium created by Impact Hub Madrid, Startups ST and Mentor Day.

EOI:

(Escuela de Organización Industrial) is the first business school founded in Spain (1955). As a public foundation attached to the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism and co-financed by European Funds, they have promoted +80,000 entrepreneurs and SMEs.

The Break Alliance:

Impact Hug Madrid is the largest global network of entrepreneurial communities with impact. +17,000 professionals present in +100 cities from 60 countries around the world. Together with other allied organizations, they create and execute programs to promote innovative proposals and social transformation.

Mentorday is a non-profit, private and independent association, made up of more than 850 professionals business leaders and entrepreneurs who volunteer to promote new companies that generate employment. It is an impact accelerator that has organized more than 71 vertical programs, successfully promoted more than 1,000 companies from 33 countries, and generated more than 6,000 jobs.

Startups Investments

(Startups. st) supports and promotes entrepreneurs, startups, and technological and digital SMEs through several actions and acceleration programs. The company is responsible for more than 25 startup acceleration programs in the last 7 years, with a presence in 3 countries, more than 7,500 hours of training and support developed, with a volume of capital raised by participating startups of more than 33.7M €.

The program is part of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan of the Spanish  Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, through the EOI Foundation and has a budget of 10 million euros for the first three years from the European Next Generation-EU funds.

The break aims to serve female entrepreneurs so that they can learn first-hand about the Spanish business ecosystem and can establish business relationships with Spanish entities and invest in the country, while contributing to the resolution of sectoral challenges in favor of of Spanish local development. The Program also aims to promote the return of Spanish female talent.

The Break 2023 fellows worked towards 3 common goals:

While in Spain, engage in open innovation activities to solve local challenges.

The most important stakeholder of the program are the host organizations. With a great background in facilitation and project incubation, have been selected to host the participants during three weeks and mentor them. They will be in charge of coordinating the whole journey for their group, facilitating workshops, designate mentors and make sure they usufruct the most from their time in Spain.

Some of the hosting organizations from 2022 project:

Some of the hosting organizations from 2023 project:

Open Orbi , Soria

In a first edition in 2022, a total of 270 women entrepreneurs from all EU countries and 52 nationalities participated. In a second edition in 2023, the goal is to attract 720 female entrepreneurs to set up their business in Spain, get to know mirror companies and potential customers and suppliers.

Requirements of the entrepreneurs candidates who want to apply for the program had the following profile:

.- Entrepreneurial project in early stage of development. In the event that the company is not yet established, the candidate should have at least one Minimum Viable Product (MVP) proposal and one market validation proposal.

.- Entrepreneurial project that has established the company no more than 5 years ago. They may be, among others, startups, scale-ups or high-growth companies, that is, companies with an annualized growth of more than 20% sustained for three years and with 10 or more employees.

In a first phase of the program, a series of Spanish communities with sectoral challenges were identified. After the selection of the participants, distance training and mentoring begun, which  consisted of webinars on different business areas and individual and group mentoring on internationalization and business culture in Spain. The assignment of the group of entrepreneurs to each local community was made based on the sector of activity of their project.

After several weeks of online itinerary, the entrepreneurs traveled to the Spanish Local Communities, where they continued with their training and visits to organizations and entities of the local ecosystem. In addition, part of their time was dedicated to working on solving local challenges in their sector (industry, tourism, energy transition...), previously identified by the community, thus contributing to local development.

Entrepreneurship partner organisations involved:

+30