Spain's Economic Recovery Helping Local Startups
- The South Summit has 3,000 startups attending this year.
- Spain Startup
MADRID— Spain's fledgling startup scene is hoping the country's recent economic recovery rubs off on them.
The Eurozone's fourth-largest economy is growing at one of the fastest clips of any in Western Europe, unemployment is dropping and investors are flocking to previously taboo sectors such as real estate and banking.
They're also starting to look into startups. Data compiled by Venture Watch, a Spanish research firm, shows that investment in the sector rose 6.5% in the January-September period from last year.
More available financing is helping some firms— like Scytl Secure Electronic Voting, S.A., a provider of e-voting systems, or Focus S.L., which transforms existing fiber networks into early warning sensors for industrial clients— take advantage of bigger rounds of investments that allow for expansion plans.
"We started with Spain Startup in 2012, when all the talk was about a European Union bailout for Spain's government," says Sofia Benjumea, a cofounder and Chief Executive of Spain Startup, a company that organizes the South Summit, a three-day conference for Southern European and Latin American startups.
This year's summit, which runs through Friday in Madrid, has 3,000 startups attending this year, twice as many as in 2012, she said. Most are young, small-team app developers, with a smattering or more sophisticated firms looking for funds to grow existing businesses.
"The challenge for everyone is how to secure more funding," said Jeff Clavier, founder and managing partner of Softech VC, a U.S.-based venture capital firm. "At the moment, 99% of the startups are coming to us now, rather than us coming to them."
There is also a rise of entrepreneurs in Spain, surveys show, with increasing numbers of undergraduates preferring not to become civil servants—for decades, the preferred career path in countries like Spain, Portugal and Greece. They'd rather start their own businesses.
Still, despite the economic recovery hype, Spain's tech sector is far behind Europe's other startup powers. According to Venture Watch, in the first half of 2014, the U.K. attracted 658 million euros in IT startup capital, and France 353 million euros. Luxembourg, Belgium and Netherlands combined for 172 million euros. Spain received 81 million euros in the same period.
Experts cite several key challenges to overcome: a legal and bureaucratic system with byzantine paperwork requirements, and a low social tolerance for failure.
______________________________________________________
For the latest news and analysis,
Get breaking news and personal-tech reviews delivered right to your inbox.
More from WSJ.D: And make sure to visit WSJ.D for all of our news, personal tech coverage, analysis and more, and add our XML feed to your favorite reader.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário