6 ms·

Investment in Spanish startups to surpass $500M in 2015 for the first time

60 points by lleims 11y ago

jusben1369 11y ago
It's very anecdotal but at Spreedly (my company) we are integrated to around 90 different payment gateways globally and are payments infrastructure. So we have a lot of startup interest. In Europe Spain is second only to the UK in terms of prospects and customers. Sadly I've been told this is may partially because youth unemployment is so high that you might as well start something vs wait around. But either way a headline like this doesn't surprise me as we've clearly seen a large amount of entrepreneurial activity out of Spain.
- Ftuuky 11y ago
  >> Sadly I've been told this is may partially because youth unemployment is so high that you might as well start something vs wait around. Same thing in Portugal. You either emigrate or start your own company.
- narag 11y ago
  ...youth unemployment is so high that you might as well start something vs wait around Not only youth. And there's the figure of the fake autónomo: companies force their employees to act as a provider to save taxes and regulations, threatening with firing them. The worst cases are those in which the company first do this, then "fire" them anyway, avoiding the severance pay and letting the fired without unemployment rights.
scalesolved 11y ago
I think the startup scene is growing quite rapidly here (Barcelona) however from my perspective it seems that a lot of founders are from abroad and it saddens me a little as there is a great wealth of talented people here that could be founders or technical founders they just don't seem to realise it!
- lleims 11y ago
  Culture mix is not bad at all, and I think that's one of the key factors that differentiates Barcelona from other Spanish cities like Madrid or Valencia. There're are many reasons why a large number of founders and developers end up in Barcelona, and the city in itself is a big one.
  - scalesolved 11y ago
    Absolutely agree! Diversity is key for most aspects of a business but I'd still expect to see a higher % of founders from Barcelona and the region. I'm British so I'm not being nationalistic here or anything :)
- narag 11y ago
  they just don't seem to realise it Learned powerlessness.
  - scalesolved 11y ago
    I think so and it is an incredible pity because I've met developers who are incredibly talented not have enough belief in their skills or to go it on their own. (Granted it's not for everyone).
- hibikir 11y ago
  Many of us just left, when we saw the difference in salaries between Spain and the alternatives, and the difficulty of marketing products for Spaniards: For instance, I'd not touch the B2B business in Spain, given the way people choose vendors. In my case, I realized that US salaries were on a different level, for a very similar cost of living when outside of NY and the Bay area, and left. Every time I go back home, people try to recruit me, and then quickly give up when I mention what I make, salary, in the American Midwest. But still, when I was still back in Spain, it seemed to me that the labor market was set up in such a way as to reward founders, and not so much their engineers. It's just that many of the successes I know started by having B2B customers before a single line of code was written. Very different from the idea of companies with venture capital that try to take off before running out of runway that you see in the US.
shostack 11y ago
Can anybody comment on the impact the abysmal economy over there has had on the startup scene? My hypothesis is that the absolute lack of jobs for young people would lead to more startups as necessity is the mother of invention, but it could be that the more immediate day-to-day of putting food on the table might distract from that.
- lleims 11y ago
  It's an interesting question, and one that has not been quantified yet. However, here are a couple of thougts: - I think there's no doubt that the financial crisis and lack of jobs has led many to start their own companies (tech or not). - Simply starting a business in Spain is not as hard as many portray it to be (it's definitely harder than in the UK, for example), but taxes, lack of stock option plans (most companies here use what's often referred to as phantom options) and, in general a not-entrepreneur-friendly mindset from many in society, can make it hard to grow and scale. That said, many relatively successful startups like CartoDB, Typeform or even peerTransfer and Alienvault follow the m.o. of building engineering teams here and move marketing and sales to the US. - Spain's current government has passed several pro-entrepreneur laws that, in essence, are just PR moves. Except, maybe, the launch of a new and simple entrepreneur visa. [0] - This significant increase in VC financing has yet to reflect the more than €1.5 billion of public money that's being poured into VCs and private equity firms to invest locally, trying to mimic Israel Yozma's. [1] - Barcelona has many interesting public and private initiatives going, and the city's good image all around the world benefits it when it comes to recruiting foreign talent. [2] - It's not all fine and dandy, and there're definitely some hard challenges for the country and startups to tackle over the next few years. - Hopefully (what looks like) success stories such as Scytl, will spark the next generation of tech companies in Spain. [4] 0: http://tech.eu/news/spain-fondico-fond-ico-spanish-vc/ http://tech.eu/news/spain-fondico-fond-ico-spanish-vc/ 1: http://tech.eu/features/5155/rules-entrepreneur-visa-spain/ http://tech.eu/features/5155/rules-entrepreneur-visa-spain/ 2: http://novobrief.com/barcelona-madrid-startup-ecosystem/ http://novobrief.com/barcelona-madrid-startup-ecosystem/ 3: http://tech.eu/features/6139/9-spanish-entrepreneur-challenges/ http://tech.eu/features/6139/9-spanish-entrepreneur-challeng... 4: http://novobrief.com/scytl-pere-valles-interview/ http://novobrief.com/scytl-pere-valles-interview/
joeyspn 11y ago
This just scratches the surface of what could really be. Spain still is in general a hostile country for entrepreneurs with an anti-innovation government famous for awful decisions like: - Regulating heavily crowdfunding rendering it unusable - Eliminating stock options' fiscal incentives [0] - Taxing the sun in order to protect energy lobbies from solar energy. [1] - Trying to get a cut from Google News because they're worth it, pass a law for it, and then trying to retract in only few weeks once they saw the page views metrics go south... etc.. Hopefully things will get better once the current ruling party leaves the government in the upcoming December elections. Hopefully... [0] http://novobrief.com/stock-options-in-spain-startups/ http://novobrief.com/stock-options-in-spain-startups/ [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2013/08/19/out-of-ideas-and-in-debt-spain-sets-sights-on-taxing-the-sun/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2013/08/19/out-...
- scalesolved 11y ago
  Also I think the autonomo fee is pretty crippling to entrepreneurs starting out, essentially you have to pay around 250 euros every month regardless of your income if you want to be freelance. It is so short sighted and means many people from different fields choose to conduct their business on the black market.
- josu 11y ago
  And let's not forget that one of the biggest (post dot com bubble) Spanish statups, Gowex, which was valued at 1.9B at some point, turned out to be a big fraud, a la Enron. [1] [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-07-17/spains-lets-gowex-implodes-after-short-seller-exposes-fraud http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-07-17/spains-lets-...
lleims 11y ago
For those interested, here's another article with average salary for engineering jobs in Barcelona: http://novobrief.com/tech-developer-jobs-salaries-barcelona/ http://novobrief.com/tech-developer-jobs-salaries-barcelona/
- collyw 11y ago
  I might need to change my title from Software Engineer to Back End Developer.
tellthetruth1 11y ago
When the last place on earth started to have startup boom... You know the startup apocalypse bubble is bursting soon[0]. [0] "The time has come, The kingdom of God has come near. Repent..." http://biblehub.com/mark/1-15.htm http://biblehub.com/mark/1-15.htm
- manugarri 11y ago
  fuck you

60 points by lleims 11y ago

It's very anecdotal but at Spreedly (my company) we are integrated to around 90 different payment gateways globally and are payments infrastructure. So we have a lot of startup interest. In Europe Spain is second only to the UK in terms of prospects and customers. Sadly I've been told this is may partially because youth unemployment is so high that you might as well start something vs wait around. But either way a headline like this doesn't surprise me as we've clearly seen a large amount of entrepreneurial activity out of Spain.

Ftuuky 11y ago
>> Sadly I've been told this is may partially because youth unemployment is so high that you might as well start something vs wait around. Same thing in Portugal. You either emigrate or start your own company.
narag 11y ago
...youth unemployment is so high that you might as well start something vs wait around Not only youth. And there's the figure of the fake autónomo: companies force their employees to act as a provider to save taxes and regulations, threatening with firing them. The worst cases are those in which the company first do this, then "fire" them anyway, avoiding the severance pay and letting the fired without unemployment rights.

scalesolved 11y ago

I think the startup scene is growing quite rapidly here (Barcelona) however from my perspective it seems that a lot of founders are from abroad and it saddens me a little as there is a great wealth of talented people here that could be founders or technical founders they just don't seem to realise it!

lleims 11y ago
Culture mix is not bad at all, and I think that's one of the key factors that differentiates Barcelona from other Spanish cities like Madrid or Valencia. There're are many reasons why a large number of founders and developers end up in Barcelona, and the city in itself is a big one.
- scalesolved 11y ago
  Absolutely agree! Diversity is key for most aspects of a business but I'd still expect to see a higher % of founders from Barcelona and the region. I'm British so I'm not being nationalistic here or anything :)
narag 11y ago
they just don't seem to realise it Learned powerlessness.
- scalesolved 11y ago
  I think so and it is an incredible pity because I've met developers who are incredibly talented not have enough belief in their skills or to go it on their own. (Granted it's not for everyone).
hibikir 11y ago
Many of us just left, when we saw the difference in salaries between Spain and the alternatives, and the difficulty of marketing products for Spaniards: For instance, I'd not touch the B2B business in Spain, given the way people choose vendors. In my case, I realized that US salaries were on a different level, for a very similar cost of living when outside of NY and the Bay area, and left. Every time I go back home, people try to recruit me, and then quickly give up when I mention what I make, salary, in the American Midwest. But still, when I was still back in Spain, it seemed to me that the labor market was set up in such a way as to reward founders, and not so much their engineers. It's just that many of the successes I know started by having B2B customers before a single line of code was written. Very different from the idea of companies with venture capital that try to take off before running out of runway that you see in the US.

shostack 11y ago

Can anybody comment on the impact the abysmal economy over there has had on the startup scene? My hypothesis is that the absolute lack of jobs for young people would lead to more startups as necessity is the mother of invention, but it could be that the more immediate day-to-day of putting food on the table might distract from that.

lleims 11y ago
It's an interesting question, and one that has not been quantified yet. However, here are a couple of thougts: - I think there's no doubt that the financial crisis and lack of jobs has led many to start their own companies (tech or not). - Simply starting a business in Spain is not as hard as many portray it to be (it's definitely harder than in the UK, for example), but taxes, lack of stock option plans (most companies here use what's often referred to as phantom options) and, in general a not-entrepreneur-friendly mindset from many in society, can make it hard to grow and scale. That said, many relatively successful startups like CartoDB, Typeform or even peerTransfer and Alienvault follow the m.o. of building engineering teams here and move marketing and sales to the US. - Spain's current government has passed several pro-entrepreneur laws that, in essence, are just PR moves. Except, maybe, the launch of a new and simple entrepreneur visa. [0] - This significant increase in VC financing has yet to reflect the more than €1.5 billion of public money that's being poured into VCs and private equity firms to invest locally, trying to mimic Israel Yozma's. [1] - Barcelona has many interesting public and private initiatives going, and the city's good image all around the world benefits it when it comes to recruiting foreign talent. [2] - It's not all fine and dandy, and there're definitely some hard challenges for the country and startups to tackle over the next few years. - Hopefully (what looks like) success stories such as Scytl, will spark the next generation of tech companies in Spain. [4] 0: http://tech.eu/news/spain-fondico-fond-ico-spanish-vc/ http://tech.eu/news/spain-fondico-fond-ico-spanish-vc/ 1: http://tech.eu/features/5155/rules-entrepreneur-visa-spain/ http://tech.eu/features/5155/rules-entrepreneur-visa-spain/ 2: http://novobrief.com/barcelona-madrid-startup-ecosystem/ http://novobrief.com/barcelona-madrid-startup-ecosystem/ 3: http://tech.eu/features/6139/9-spanish-entrepreneur-challenges/ http://tech.eu/features/6139/9-spanish-entrepreneur-challeng... 4: http://novobrief.com/scytl-pere-valles-interview/ http://novobrief.com/scytl-pere-valles-interview/

joeyspn 11y ago

This just scratches the surface of what could really be. Spain still is in general a hostile country for entrepreneurs with an anti-innovation government famous for awful decisions like: - Regulating heavily crowdfunding rendering it unusable - Eliminating stock options' fiscal incentives [0] - Taxing the sun in order to protect energy lobbies from solar energy. [1] - Trying to get a cut from Google News because they're worth it, pass a law for it, and then trying to retract in only few weeks once they saw the page views metrics go south... etc.. Hopefully things will get better once the current ruling party leaves the government in the upcoming December elections. Hopefully... [0] http://novobrief.com/stock-options-in-spain-startups/ http://novobrief.com/stock-options-in-spain-startups/ [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2013/08/19/out-of-ideas-and-in-debt-spain-sets-sights-on-taxing-the-sun/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2013/08/19/out-...

scalesolved 11y ago
Also I think the autonomo fee is pretty crippling to entrepreneurs starting out, essentially you have to pay around 250 euros every month regardless of your income if you want to be freelance. It is so short sighted and means many people from different fields choose to conduct their business on the black market.
josu 11y ago
And let's not forget that one of the biggest (post dot com bubble) Spanish statups, Gowex, which was valued at 1.9B at some point, turned out to be a big fraud, a la Enron. [1] [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-07-17/spains-lets-gowex-implodes-after-short-seller-exposes-fraud http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-07-17/spains-lets-...

lleims 11y ago

For those interested, here's another article with average salary for engineering jobs in Barcelona: http://novobrief.com/tech-developer-jobs-salaries-barcelona/ http://novobrief.com/tech-developer-jobs-salaries-barcelona/

collyw 11y ago
I might need to change my title from Software Engineer to Back End Developer.

tellthetruth1 11y ago

When the last place on earth started to have startup boom... You know the startup apocalypse bubble is bursting soon[0]. [0] "The time has come, The kingdom of God has come near. Repent..." http://biblehub.com/mark/1-15.htm http://biblehub.com/mark/1-15.htm

manugarri 11y ago
fuck you