Reaching small wins: picked at the Coworking EOI Demoday

Quick one, while it's still warm.

Yesterday, 21 May 2026, was the Demoday that closed the Coworking EOI Valencia program, the gaming acceleration we joined back in February through Valencia Game City, València Innovation Capital and the EOI. Twenty three projects pitched. Three were picked. Padel Rivals was one of the three.

That's the news. The rest is just me processing it.

What this means

If you've been around the blog for a while, you know I'm allergic to overclaiming. Winning one round at a regional acceleration program doesn't change my life. It doesn't even change the next sprint at Krokanti Games. But it does something quieter, and probably more useful.

It's a checkpoint. A signal back from the industry saying: yes, the new direction you set after Mad Games Show is the right one. Yes, the way you're talking about Padel Rivals is starting to land. Yes, keep going.

This is the kind of recognition that doesn't make headlines but does the actual work: it tells you the time you spent at La Harinera, the publishers' meetings, the financing sessions, the rewrites of the pitch, the demos shown in front of strangers, none of that was wasted.

A small note on showing up

When I relaunched this site a few weeks ago, I wrote that I wanted to be more visible, more honest, more present. Less polished, more in motion. Yesterday's pick is partly a side effect of exactly that. You don't get picked at a Demoday if you don't show up at the Demoday. You don't show up at the Demoday if you didn't apply, didn't push through three months of mentoring, didn't rebuild the pitch deck five times, didn't take the feedback to heart.

Showing up sounds boring as advice because it is boring. It also keeps working.

What's next

Two events in the next six weeks, both worth flagging:

• Padel World Summit, Barcelona — 26 to 28 May 2026. We're on stand S20, in the startup innovation area, with a playable demo of Padel Rivals. If you're around Fira de Barcelona those days, come over.
• OWN Valencia — first week of July 2026. The prize from the Demoday is a full day with a stand at the city's Gaming and Esports festival. Same demo, hometown crowd.

In between those, the usual: client work at Krokanti Software, shipping features at CloneByMe, and as much time as I can carve out for the game.

Want to see the game?

Here's the 20 second clip we cut for the Demoday, with some of the latest gameplay:

If you want to actually help: wishlist Padel Rivals on Steam. It's still the single highest leverage thing anyone can do for the project right now.

Thanks for reading. Back to work.