Relaxed atmosphere and lots of networking yesterday Thursday at Marina de Empresas, where Investors’ Day was held, the annual event in which Juan Roig’s investment company, Angels, presents its projects with the greatest capacity for growth to investors.
Yesterday’s event brought together nearly 250 investors from all over Spain and, in front of them, up to 40 startups from Lanzadera and Angels: nine jumped onto the auditorium stage to make their pitch, while another 12 interested in attracting investment had closed individual meetings with investors and another 21 startups were unveiled at the stands that have been set up at the entrance to Marina de Empresas. Some even brought a battery to make more noise.
According to Pepe Peris, general director of Angels, investors are currently showing interest in projects linked to artificial intelligence and, in general, in technologies that “provide solutions to real customer problems.” In some of the startups presented yesterday, Angels has invested 1.5 million euros so far and will soon invest another 500,000 euros in Flipflow and Legit.Health. Since its creation, the company has invested more than 36 million euros in 51 companies and currently has 38 investee companies.
Linked to AI is Voicit, a tool that allows its users to generate automatic meeting summaries, taking their voice and converting it into text. Behind the project are Álvaro and Rafa, from Granada and Córdoba respectively, and who conceived their project at the University of Málaga, where they met. They define their business as “a mix of artificial intelligence and human interaction.”
Also among the startups yesterday was Imperia SCM, a project developed in Valencia by former Deloitte employees that helps companies in their supply chain with its software, optimizing their demand planning, production and purchasing processes.
Created by Álvaro Bernabé, it already has Noel, Chovi and Frit Ravich among its clients and on this day they opened a round of three million euros with the intention of closing it in January 2024. Their objective is to scale the business and hire up to 60 people more, of which only 45 will be commercial agents.
Another of the participating startups was Finergia, a financial planning Saas for startups, SMEs and advisors that facilitates making forecasts that helps control costs and improve profits.
Behind the project, the Catalan Agustín Serrano who, after a life dedicated to corporates, left his position as a risk analyst in a multinational to fulfill his dream because “he needed to change completely.” Halfway between Valencia and Barcelona, ??this morning he was looking for “visibility” to make himself known, mainly among SMEs, his potential audience.
Uelz is the only one of the projects that were presented on stage led by a woman. María Luke, its creator, explains that her business allows any company to manage and automate its users’ payments easily, safely and without the need for technical knowledge. This year it already managed to be the winning startup of South Summit 2023.
He also presented his entrepreneurial story Growpro, a platform led by the Valencian Goiko Llobet that creates unique study and work experiences in international destinations for adventurous souls. With a presence in 26 cities in 6 countries, the company wants to achieve a series A of five to seven million euros by 2024. After ten years of work, its project – which emerged after Llobet’s personal experience in Melbourne selling paellas, among other things -, will also be implemented in the capital of Turia, where they will help travelers from all over the world settle.
The other participants were Flipflow, a market analytics platform that gives an accurate picture of the situation of products, competitors and markets throughout the Internet; Dcycle, another platform but to measure, improve and communicate the environmental impact of companies in an easy and profitable way; Indya, which offers an “ultra-personalized” nutritional planning and solution based on the information transmitted by the wearables used by an athlete, and Hamelyn, the “easy and quick solution” to sell all those books that are no longer needed and that take up space in home.
Also participating in the event was Ander Michelena, co-founder of Ticketbis, acquired by eBay in 2016, and currently co-founder of the All Iron Ventures fund, who spoke about his professional journey and how he went from being an entrepreneur to an investor. “Entrepreneurship is addictive. Once you try it, it’s very difficult to look back. In the end you fall back again and again,” he said.
