Hi Steemers!
I recently realised that I was not thorough enough regarding the entrepreneurial possibilities in Madrid, so here are some additional information! My colleague was kind enough to let me use his research findings.
Policy - regarding the laws, administration and similar: A new law that was introduced in 2013 (the Ley de Emprendedores) was supposed to improve the situation for the startups by providing better tax relief for seed investors, improve treatment of stock options and to improve employment law. This is often criticized that they didn't go far enough and they even created bigger bumps such as "exit tax" on unrealized capital gains when entrepreneurs move overseas. Also World Bank ranks Spain 82nd out of 189 countries when it comes to making it easier to start a business.
On the other hand, Corporate Finance Director of KPMG in Spain says that Spain's government has also made effort to provide support to startups with initiative called FOND-ICO Global which is a 1,5€ billion fund that supports the recovery of Spain's private equity sector. Also, he says there are range of direct support through soft loans, tax incentives and subsidies for new businesses. KPMG's director also made a statement that it has never been easier and quicker to create a new business in Spain.
Finance - in past three years, Spain has had increase in, not only founders, but also the investors. They measured more angel activity then before where they are doing around 26% of all founding rounds which is increase of 9% in 2015). At the institutional level, the number of early stage venture capital funds has more then doubled in last 5 years with new players joining the funding. Most of the money is still focused on seed and early stages, but also there is increase in funding the later stages by the international venture capital funds. Also, as mentioned in previous section, Spain's government set up a fund to help financing the private sector. The problems that they are facing is that founders tend to take too much capital before they have their long term plans so it is up to Spanish investors to make sure founders did that before giving the money.
Culture - when it comes to culture, there are numerous ways to find out about entrepreneurial climate in Spain. There are summits where you can meet a lot of investors (South Summit), get all the information about startups in Spain and few more countries, investors, advisers etc on Foundum.com.
Human Capital - KPMG's Corporate Finance Director said that in Europe there is often shortage of talent and that startups are having hard time to fill key roles. When it comes to Spain, he says they have very competitive skilled talent, especially for critical technical roles such as developers and engineers. The talented people are less paid in Spain then in Silicon Valley which provides Spanish entrepreneurs with a competitive advantage.
Support - in 2014, there was an estimate that there was an incubator for every 20 startup and an accelerator for every 25 startups. With all the positive predictions, I suppose that there is now even more incubators and accelerator due to change in entrepreneurship ecosystem and more startups emerging with great new ideas.
Market - since the digitization is growing stronger and stronger everyday in the world, Spanish startups recognized the need to create various products in technical industry, especially in cyber security, e-commerce, gaming and fintech. There are numerous startups such as LetGo, Wallapop, Job&Talent, AlienVault, CartoDB, Packlink, Flywire that on their way to become important players in the world.
Thank you for reading, and big thanks to all of the sources!
Marija
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