Every start-up begins its journey with the firm intention that its project will not only have a good launch, but will continue to fly higher and higher and at cruising speed in the years to come. But only a part of them succeed, and therefore knowing what worked for them and what did not is very useful for those entrepreneurs who embark on a new adventure.
On the occasion of the tenth edition of South Summit –the great connection platform for the entrepreneurial ecosystem, which took place in Madrid between June 8 and 10–, Banco Sabadell’s BStartup, global sponsor of the event since its inception, proposed to share their experiences to the founders of two successful companies that emerged with force around a decade ago: Laura Urquizu, CEO and president of RedPoints –one of the main Spanish SaaS, which is dedicated to fraud in online distribution– and Felipe Navío, co-founder and co-CEO of Job
Looking back, both entrepreneurs pointed to the turning points that marked the most decisive growth for their companies. Thus, Urquizu highlighted two key moments: “in 2015, when we detected that although there were competitors targeting large companies, none were serving small and medium-sized companies and that they needed our solution. And the second big push to scale was in 2018, when we entered the US market.”
For his part, Navío explained that “during the first 7-8 years Job
The importance of attracting and keeping talent in teams from the beginning is a fundamental aspect of the success of a start-up. In this sense, the director of BStartup, Yolanda Pérez, who moderated the session, considers it very important “to design a good strategy from the beginning to get the right people and know how to manage them, because they are the ones that make a project go ahead”.
When it comes to recruiting talent, the CEO of RedPoint advised entrepreneurs not to be dazzled by the resume of a candidate, no matter how technically brilliant, if they don’t embrace the culture of the start-up: “it’s a big mistake to hire a profile that you’ve done amazingly well at a Silicon Valley company, no matter how much investors push you, if you don’t really care about your company or culturally fit in with it. You will have paid him a fortune and you will have wasted a lot of time.”
Navío agreed that “it is not always easy to understand the type of culture of a company. That is why you have to take the time to define it in writing and be aware that each contract you make must fit 100% with it and connect with the team. Because in the end, everyone likes to hire, but nobody likes having to fire”.
As Yolanda Pérez endorses, “from my experience I see that in the first years of companies, it is difficult for entrepreneurs to spend enough time to have a very well defined company culture and to ensure that the people they hire share those values. . In the end, that’s what can make a big difference.”
Laura Urquizu also stressed that “taking momentum into account is relevant, because the profile of a person who joins the company at the beginning, who is usually quite enterprising, is not the same as eight years later, when he will surely be more process oriented.
Regarding his next challenges, he assured that “at Red Point we have a vision that is to become the absolute leaders of the sector. That when someone has a problem with online fraud, immediately think of contacting us to solve it”. In any case, according to Urquizu, “after the pandemic, the war, the macroeconomic situation… if new challenges come, we are going to go for them.”
According to the CEO of Job
The companies invested by BStartup found excellent opportunities to project themselves at South Summit. On the one hand, Napptive, Time Is Brain, Aplanet and Wegaw participated in the competition among a hundred future unicorns, after having been selected from more than 3,000 companies from more than 114 countries.
In addition, some of the latest additions to its portfolio, such as Amphora, offUgo, Trustiu and Napptive, and the three start-ups selected in the first call for BStartup Green (oriented towards ecological transition) had their space at the BStartup stand: Bia Power, MOA Foodtech and Wegaw, as well as Incapto Coffee. The latter, together with We are Knitters, PayComet and Google participated in a panel on e-commerce.
All these actions are one more example of BStartup’s support for emerging companies, to which it has provided banking services that are highly specialized in their needs and investment capital since 2013. In the words of Carlos Ventura, CEO of Banco Sabadell, “our objective is to be the reference financial partner for start-ups and scaleups in Spain”.
Currently, BStartup has more than 4,200 clients of these types of companies and is one of the main investors in Spain in early-stage technology companies, with a total of 66 in its portfolio today.
40% of the 78 investments it has made since 2014 have materialized in companies with a social impact. Likewise, 30% of the investee companies have a woman on their founding team, a percentage well above the industry average.
