Javier Santiso (ESADE) in the Mobile World Congress: "Spain is emerging as a hotbed of tech entrepreneurs"

"Spanish professionals are not competitive." This is one of the first myths about Spanish entrepreneurship that Javier Santiso, a professor in ESADE’s Department of Economics and the founder of Start Up Spain, debunked today in the session Start Up Spain: Breaking Myths, held within the context of the Mobile World Congress. It was followed by other myths that have dogged the Spanish market, such as the idea that Spain is not attractive to foreign investors or that it is not a destination for R&D centres.

In reality, other countries do invest in Spain, as has occurred with Softonic, which received a financial injection from a Swiss group. According to Santiso, today Spain is one of the top 15 countries in the world with regard to corporate venture capital funds, ahead, for example, of Norway and Denmark. Moreover, it has outpaced major players like France and England in terms of the number of accelerators and incubators, for which it ranks second in Europe.

"In Spain, we don’t create start-ups in a garage, we do it in shops, as is the case with Inditex, the only company founded after 1970 to enter the global top 500, or Mercadona", Santiso noted. "We have to have entrepreneurs, but they also need to become businesspeople with companies able to expand internationally", he added.

The appeal of cities like Barcelona

In the roundtable moderated by John Biggs, East Coast Editor of the worldwide renowned digital media, TechCrunch; Mauricio Prieto, co-founder and marketing director of eDreams Odigeo, explained that his company chose Barcelona due to the city’s appeal. This appeal was confirmed by Manuel Villanueva, ESADE Alumni, co-founder and CEO of Privalia, and Tomás Diago, founder and CEO of Softonic. Although both companies, which were founded in the Catalan capital, have offices in cities around the world, they have chosen to keep their business centres in Barcelona, as it is, in Diego’s words, "a great place to live and to find good talent". Villanueva noted that "although Spain’s fiscal situation could be better, it’s not that bad". He then added that "the possibility of attracting talent is what really draws us, not the possibility of having more tax breaks than in other countries".

Promoting degree programmes in technology

Asked by Biggs, Santiso answered, "We have to design more attractive engineering programmes. Compared to other countries, technology students are quite scarce in Spain." The sentiment was echoed by Diago, who compared Spain with the US, where, "for example, the president himself, Barack Obama, promotes engineering".

"Spain is attractive. For instance, many Germans and British people come for the good quality of life", Santiso explained. He added, "About 95% of MBA students are foreign, so we should have tools to attract and retain talent in these fields".

The importance of a positive attitude

According to Villanueva, his company seeks people with "a positive attitude". "We have to teach people to improve, to be different, to own their lives." For the Privalia CEO, "It’s not all about executive education."

The editor of TechCrunch also asked about the comparison between Spain, and specifically Barcelona, adn Silicon Valley. In Prieto’s view, for Spain, "It’s not a question of competing with Silicon Valley", but rather that "you can enrich yourself with life experiences that you’re not going to find anywhere else". In other words, it’s about being different. Villanueva concurred, concluding, "The world is much more than the US and Silicon Valley. In Spain and Barcelona, in particular, we can manage global systems."

View the Start Up Spain: Breaking myths at the Mobile World Congress album in Flickr