After the sale of LetsBonus, he discovered that his passion is helping business projects to grow. "Entrepreneurship is what inspires me and keeps me going. I saw straight away that I wanted to continue doing new business. I like the adrenalin I get from seeing a company grow, even if it is exhausting."
Today, he is the president of the BCN Tech City cluster, which has a turnover of six billion euros and provides work to more than 10,000 people.
BCN Tech City is a non-profit association that we set up two and a half years ago with the support of Barcelona Activa, which aims to bring together the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Barcelona. We met to think about what is needed for Barcelona to win the Champions on a European scale and compete toe-to-toe with other centres for developing start-ups, such as in London or Berlin.
How has this project evolved?
We set 10 strategic objectives to reach in three years after studying the sector. Our first conclusion is that there is a need for a permanent headquarters to see them through, which is why we built the cluster with the most important entrepreneurs and venture capital, such as Carlos Blanco or Dídac Lee and companies like Trovit, Groupalia, etc. We even stuck our necks out and said that our long-term aim was to double the size of the sector, but later saw that we achieved this in just under two years. It is good news because it shows how healthy the sector is in Barcelona, the capacity for creating employment after a number of difficult years for profiles of a certain value related to technology and marketing. We have also seen that 50% of these companies have all be set up in the past three years and that, moreover, they already had an international perspective. There are increasingly more projects based in Barcelona with an international profile, such as SocialPoint, with 95% of its sales going abroad. We are seeing that international investors show increasing confidence in Barcelona.
The aim is also to take advantage of the synergies of other companies, as I understand it.
Yes, some of the strategic objectives involve creating a more efficient fiscal and legal framework for our ecosystem, in which improvements are needed in stock options, tax shields -which already exist in some countries but are a pending issue here- while some others are related to attracting venture capital to Barcelona, an objective for which we have worked with the Mobile World Congress (MWC) and the 4YFN. They put Barcelona on the technological map because for two months all the international investors come here and it seems to me that it is one of the best things to happen to Barcelona since the Olympics, for its capacity to generate wealth from attracting investors and clients, from which meetings arise that make the ecosystem work.
It has just been agreed that Bcn Tech City will be located in Palau de Mar. What will that mean?
Having a physical icon that represents this ecosystem and an obligatory meeting point for investors when they come to Barcelona was very interesting. Thus, with the support of the Generalitat and the Ajuntament, we began looking for a building that could be the physical base for the cluster and some of the 300 associated companies. We hope that his place becomes an obligatory meeting point and the technological icon of the city.
Why Palau de Mar?
We were looking for a place with the capacity to attract talent because there is a lot of global competition doing that, as sometimes you need to attract people from other cities and Barcelona has important bases, despite the improvements we have to carry out: it is a city that perfectly combines leisure, it is the ideal size, a pleasant climate, a strong gastronomic and cultural showing and it is attractive. And we like being in a part of the city with attractions, such as being beside the sea, and that is an additional advantage for attracting talent.
But it won't be up and running before the next Mobile World Congress is held.
That was the idea but it will not be ready. The cluster will cooperate with the MWC, especially with the 4YFN part, because in the end we have the same objective, which is to promote Barcelona; they are the loud speakers, while we are the people. I believe it will be one of the main buildings, among the top four or five in the world in terms of size and the concentration of start-ups. The building will combine different things: incubator companies, builder companies like Antai Venture Builder, the MWC itself will have a space, there will be a more open coworking space for small companies and then another for larger start-ups. Barcelona's entire technological agenda will be represented there.
Will it be the place for entrepreneurs who have a digital project in mind that they want to get off the ground?
It is important to have a powerful physical icon that becomes the image of this technological ecosystem and, moreover, we want it to become an attractive area for investors. So, we want it to bring all of these things together, to give a good impression. It will be almost like having a permanent congress. It will be a project that will consolidate the cluster's activity.
What is now your role as an entrepreneur?
With Gerard Olivé we decided to launch Antai Venture Capital, which is a builder company. We are a factory of companies while our fundamental difference from an incubator is that entrepreneurs with an idea do not come to us, but rather we have a team that identifies opportunities, we define the business model, we incorporate a business team, we fund with venture capital, and so on. And our aim is to launch two or three companies, as a maxim, every year. That was how companies like Wallapop, Deliberry, Shopery, and so on, came about; and we also have a fund to work with entrepreneurs.
What do they need in common to become involved in the project?
In general, all of the projects we launch are scalable, they may have perspectives for significant international growth, they are targeted at a large market and, therefore, can often be large projects. In general they are usually projects addressing a final consumer, even though it is true that in our portfolio we have three companies with a more B2B profile, more purely concerned with business, the product of technological developments we have been working on and, even though later each company follows its own rhythm of expansion, we like projects working in Spain, Italy, France, Portugal, Mexico and Columbia, where we already have a relationship.
In terms of the entrepreneurial world, where is the technology sector going?
The opportunities are huge. We are now experiencing a cycle of technological disruption characterised by the fact that cycles of innovation in technology are increasingly shorter. It is said that the Internet took 10 years less than television to reach users, but then Facebook took five times less than email, and WhatsApp five time less than Facebook to reach 100 million users. We are seeing a tremendous rise of pace in technology, such as for example with Wallapop, in which the web has surpassed paper and mobile has overcome the web. You are entering a sector with a disruptive potential where you can compete with a large multinational company and create a company in record time, it is incredible. It is a time of tremendous opportunity that combines talent and capital with business models that work, but it is going so quickly that it is difficult to know where to turn next. Even though all the companies that we have launched are mobile, because the future is mobile.
How sustainable over time are these mobile applications?
The innovation cycles are so short that you have to constantly be innovating as perhaps in just two years you will find that there is new technology and that users behave very differently. Not only the large multinationals have this problem, but also start-ups and internet companies see themselves subject to competition from new business models, as we have seen with Facebook, which bought Instagram and WhatsApp. The cycles are extremely short. When we look at projects, it is very difficult to visualise where they will be in four years' time, because four years… In our companies we go from week to week, and if the company is doing well, we do not wait even a year and a half, up to six months is enough. What before took five years now takes two, or even a year and a half.
Are you expecting a bubble in this sector?
I don't think that the situation is comparable with the dotcom bubble because if you now analyse the valuation multiples of the Nasdaq they are high compared with before and, moreover, they are established companies, with high ratios that fit within the reasoning of investors. Last year was a record for venture capital investment, a lot of money flooded into the ecosystem, which has led to a transfer of negotiating power from the investors to entrepreneurs. The good projects now have more alternatives and they can carry out more rounds to expand capital. While there may not be financial return, it is all part of the game.