New Spanish Startup Report: Entrepreneurs Are More Optimistic About The Future
Startups Made in Spain published their annual survey this week with some interesting metrics concerning the Spanish startup ecosystem.
Believe in the ecosystem
Around 80 percent of all the people answering the survey answered that they felt the startup ecosystem had improved since 2015.
People was especially excited about an increasing amount of events, networking opportunities and more support. People in Madrid saw the opening of Campus Madrid as a turning point for the startup community in the city.
The respondents also noticed an increase in funding, more accelerators, incubators and venture builders.
The people who answered that they didn’t feel the startup ecosystem has been evolving the right way, pointed to the Spanish tax system as the major issue holding the development back.
Market fit
Very few of the 183 respondents asked, answered that they had found a product market fit. Only 11 percent believed they had a product market fit for their startup, according to the survey.
The research underlines that the low numbers are due to a substantial increase in new companies created the last year, but 11 percent is still a very low number.
There are also big differences in what kind of markets the startups are aiming at serving.
A total of 38 percent of the respondents estimated that their market had a size of between €10–25 million. It’s unclear why such a percentage is going after such small markets, but let’s hope it’s niche markets, and not a lack of ambition, which is the reason for the results.
Around 26 percent of the asked startups was aiming at a market size above €100 million.
More female founders
It's been a good year for female founders in Spain. Gloria Mollins sold her startup Trip4real to Airbnb, Karen Prats, co-founder of Pop Places raised €2 million this year, and co-founder Carlota Pi in HolaLuz also raised their first round, €4 million from Axon Partners.
There's however still few female founders in Spanish startups (and the rest of the world), but this year 5 percent fewer respondents answered that they were male founders. If the numbers are representative for the country, it means that one out of every forth founder is female.
Even though the Spanish Government doesn't collect data on ethnicity, there's been a 80/20 divide between “white Europeans” and“others” in the ecosystem. This fits well with this year’s report, as 80 percent of the respondents saw themselves as “white Europeans”.
Other key findings in the report was:
- Fewer founders with MBA's than earlier.
- 38 percent of the respondents was self-funded or bootstrapped.
- In average there were 2.68 founders per startup.
Read the whole report here.
(Disclaimer: After Startups Made In Spain analyzed the data it became evident that the survey structure contained errors such as range overlap or duplication of choice. That makes some of the data scientifically inaccurate and invalid, but because the amount of respondents is high, we still find the data interesting, pointing to trends and insights of the ecosystem.)
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This post was written by Sindre Hopland, media manager at itnig.
