Menorca Millennials Offers Startups a Pricey Summer Camp

Menorca, a 270-square-mile Spanish island about an hour’s flight from Barcelona, is known for its undeveloped beaches, aromatic gin, and rich lobster stew. In June the island will play host to 20 teams of startup founders, plus tech industry veterans and venture capitalists, for a retreat aimed at supplying funding to promising companies.

Menorca Millennials—an all-ages program, despite the name—is the brainchild of Marcos Martín, a lobbyist for the European bioenergy industry, and Ricard Garriga, director of strategy at YouNoodle, a San Francisco startup that runs business contests. Garriga says they’re pitching the 20-day retreat as a “distraction-free paradise” where participants can refine their products and business models and raise money faster than they could with a conventional startup accelerator. “This is not an executive program with whiteboards,” he says. “It is a personal experience that gives you time to work on your company in front of the sea with no mental noise.”