
Investment in Spanish startups to surpass $500M in 2015 for the first time - lleims
http://novobrief.com/spanish-startups-funding-q1q3-2015/
======
joeyspn
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-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2013/08/19/out-
of-ideas-and-in-debt-spain-sets-sights-on-taxing-the-sun/)

~~~
scalesolved
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.

------
jusben1369
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.

~~~
narag
_...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.

------
lleims
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
I might need to change my title from Software Engineer to Back End Developer.

------
scalesolved
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!

~~~
hibikir
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.

~~~
6t6t6
I am in the same situation as you but what keeps me from going back to
Barcelona are not the salaries, but the kind of uninteresting jobs that are
offered.

I would go back home for the quality of life, not for the salary. But only if
I could join a company that is actually creating something, instead of just
using products created by others.

~~~
soci
Have you taken a look at www.jobsbcn.com ? More than 250 startups are
"creating something" right now in Barcelona.

~~~
6t6t6
I didn't know about this site. Thanks! Definitively, is a really good place to
research about interesting startups.

King are hiring like crazy! I am curious to know how good must be working with
them.

------
shostack
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
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-
challeng...](http://tech.eu/features/6139/9-spanish-entrepreneur-challenges/)

4: [http://novobrief.com/scytl-pere-valles-
interview/](http://novobrief.com/scytl-pere-valles-interview/)

~~~
shostack
Thanks for the thoughtful response and citations.

When you mention moving "marketing and sales to the US" is that simply so they
can better target the US market? I imagine there is simply a larger
opportunity in targeting the US, and in this day and age, there's no reason
you need to start a locally-targeted business if your economy is in the
crapper when there are other nations with much healthier economies.

Also, can you elaborate a bit further on the "not-entrepreneur-friendly
mindset" you referenced?

~~~
lleims
Yup, mostly so they can target a bigger market and be closer to large clients.
This does not apply to every company, but for SaaS and software companies, I
think it is often the case.

I think running a business in Spain, what we call here being an 'empresario',
can have some small-but-negative connotations for part of the population, who
see the rich as a mere consequence of corruption forces instead of the
financial result of providing value to customers. It's not like we haven't had
our fair share of large cases of corruption over the last few yours, though.

I think this is also the case in other European countries.

