Frequently Asked Questions
I’m an entrepreneur in search of advice or investment.
A sweet moment, but full of doubts. If you believe I can help you, I’ll answer some frequently asked questions so that you can get to know me better.
The sector is the least important factor if there is a good idea with a great team to back it up, but it is true that I don’t invest in medicine, biotechnology, or when there is an important physical component (hardware, etc.) because it is less scalable.
Without a doubt, the team of people that make up that startup. I really appreciate the multidisciplinary nature and the full-time commitment of the team. My experience has demonstrated that there is nothing that beats a team that works together towards a common goal.
Here I am quite firm: I normally invest in the initial stage, or at most the second round.
Having metrics is something that helps, but for me it’s not the most important thing. If the team and the strategy are well defined, and if I share the vision, then it’s a match.
Always be generous and humble. Lower your defenses, make yourself understood in any situation, express your opinions in an open and respectful way to others, maintain an attitude of open dialogue to reach agreements. And enjoy the journey, of course!
Of course. I value failure as a necessary lever to grow. If that experience served as a learning experience for you, then you will be much more prepared for the next one.
Up till now, no. I am more for startups in which the entrepreneurial team controls and leads the company.
Normally, yes. 2022 was the first year that I invested in two foreign companies: one in the USA and the other in the UK.
Yes, of course.
What I am today is the sum of all the setbacks that helped me to improve. The only failure is falling and not getting back up again.
Having a committed team is everything! I will never get tired of repeating that.
I’m a traditional business that wants to invest in startups.
If you are a traditional business, but you would like to explore the business opportunities in the startup world, I will answer some frequently asked questions.
Having worked in consumer goods companies for 12 years and having been immersed in the entrepreneurial ecosystem since 2007 (with 5 of my own projects and more than 30 investments in startups), the experience gives me a broad view to understand the synergies, time, fears, and opportunities of the corporate world.
For the innovation and profitability. A startup is a window into information and market data that would be much more costly to obtain through other means.
It’s an organization inside of a large company, set up explicitly for launching projects based on technology, with a life of their own, without the ties and “vices” of the parent company.
It’s a fund created for a company to invest in startups that can have synergies with the parent company or that can add value to improve processes, discover new markets, new uses, etc…
Yes, you can, but I don’t recommend it. Paradoxically, one of the keys of having a successful idea as an entrepreneur is the scarcity of resources (something that the security of a fixed salary completely blows up). Fewer resources sharpen the ingenuity and are the best incentive for pursuing a return on all your effort and sacrifice.
A few ways come to mind: allowing them to develop their own projects, supporting them in their ideas, organizing talks with relevant people from the entrepreneurial ecosystem that can inspire them, and involving them in your company’s decisions.
I’m a venture capital and I would like to get business angels to acquire more deal flow
If you are a venture capital, and you want to collaborate with a business angel to help you succeed with your investment decisions, I’ll answer some frequently asked questions.
Exhaustive knowledge of how a startup works, access to good projects in the initial phases, and a great intuition for evaluating developed projects since 2007 through my own experience.
Yes, it’s very common for foreign venture capitals looking for local partners, who are usually well connected, and with access to good projects to contact me in the early phases.
Yes, the speed at which the ecosystem is advancing is forcing venture capitals to try to get into startups at the early stage where they feel more comfortable investing.
Yes. Until relatively recently, Spanish venture capitals were controlled by many former investment bankers with a much more financial vision than a product/business vision. This trend is changing as there are many successful entrepreneurs and business angels who put up their own funds and start to invest in the early stages, where it’s so important to be able to sniff out which project is good according to the team, the market, the product, etc., and where figures, on many occasions, do not even exist.
I’m a trainer/teacher and I want to inspire my students with entrepreneurial topics.
If you work as a professor in an university or in some type of business school, transferring the real experience of someone who has been in the ecosystem for many years to your students can be very enriching.
I love training, so I’ve done a bit of everything: attend classes as a guest and share my experience in the ecosystem with the students, give conferences about entrepreneurships and investing, take part as a judge in startup competitions, mentor students in training programs and project launches…
Organizing workshops, chats with entrepreneurs, visits to startups, incorporating specific classes taught by people from the ecosystem…
Both. There are entrepreneurs that are born with the innate ability, and others that are made by having seen and lived great experiences surrounded by great references who were able to transmit “the entrepreneurial poison”.
Universities like IESE, Esade, Elisava, EAE, OBS Business School, incubators like The Founder Institute, Itnig, Peninsula, etc…