2015 was overall a good year for Barcelona: we had several exits, investment reached an all-time high and we saw an IPO by Agile Content.
But most of all, everyone agrees that the startup ecosystem is already blossoming, offering quality startups the likes of Typeform, Mailtrack, Kantox or Kompyte. Some of them became our guests at Startup Grind Barcelona, joining our family of 24 past speakers - and you can see them all here.
We were grateful to learn from them all, and want to share their best piece of their advice from a year's worth of lessons.
Partner with other Underdogs Before Taking on Giants
Kantox is one of the hottest fintech startups in Europe right now, providing comprehensive foreign exchange platform for businesses. They are constantly appearing in the press, like when they sponsored a Formula 1 team. Who wouldn't do it?
Philippe learnt a lot from that experience. Hence, he recommends partnering with other like-minded underdogs in your industry - or another - instead of trying to catch the attention of giants. Big companies will most likely ignore you or force you to sign abusive deals.
Get some more advice from Philippe Gelis, CEO at Kantox here.
Sales Keep You Moving Forward
Ana is not only one of the most recognized female entrepreneurs in Europe, winning awards such as EU Prize for Women Innovators, but she's a true visionary. Her companies Starlab and Neuroelectrics have been doing Big Data, and Space & Brain science for many years - even before these sectors were trending.
Ana's advice to our attendees was to focus on sales, because companies with no sales are hard to manage. As she put it "a company with no sales is like riding a stationary bicycle: it takes you nowhere, yet you end up really tired!"
Read more from Ana Maiques, CEO at Neuroelectrics, who has a lot more to teach.
Codify Your Company Culture - Now
Cyberclick is a successful group of marketing-oriented companies, largely known for being appointed as Best Place to Work for the last years. David rocked the stage in our March event to talk about growth hacking and company culture.
In all truth, Spanish companies do not really create compelling company cultures, so the very few who do, really stand out. David's words on the subject: "Company culture should be defined with the rest of your co-founders and written on paper" during the first weeks of the company. According to David, this will keep the co-founders and the first employees aligned from the get go.
Read the 9 vital things we learned from David Tomàs, CEO at Cyberclick.
Have Lots of Ideas, but Work on One Thing at a Time
Wallapop was hotly tipped by TechCrunch to be the first Barcelona-based company to reach the $1B valuation. Whether Wallapop will become a Unicorn or not, one thing is clear: they operate like no one else.
Miguel is a founding member and investor at Wallapop, which is just one of his many ventures (along with Antai, Barcelona Tech City, and many others). He's one of the most awarded Spanish entrepreneurs ever. Proof to that is that we hosted the largest Startup Grind event in Barcelona when we hosted him for our first anniversary event.
While most entrepreneurs and experts agree that focus is essential to entrepreneurs, Miguel successfully runs more than five businesses at a time. His secret? He commits every morning to just one important task and does not do anything else until he finishes it. Simple as it may sound, that's his secret to be everywhere!
See the turnout for Founder at Wallapop Miguel Vicente, with 180 founders and investors.
Hire for Attitude First, Then Aptitude
As every year, we celebrate female entrepreneurship in May. Over 80 chapters around the globe hosted a female speaker in May, thus revealing the true potential of Startup Grind's global reach - and this year, we will host over 100.
We spoke with Helena about how she helps to build companies and their teams, as successful as Abiquo or Ducksboard (sold to New Relic in 2014). For a team builder like Helena, titles are not important. She advised everyone in the room not to hire rockstars, just people who really want to be part of the project. Attitude over aptitude, they call it.
Watch our full fireside talk with Helena Torras, CEO of Pao Capital, here - in Spanish.
The World is Your Office and Marketplace
Pablo is really well-known because he founded Teambox (now Redbooth), which now operates all around the globe, doing millions of dollars in revenue. But back in 2014, Pablo decided to opt in for a healthier lifestyle to compensate his hard-working years building Teambox.
Thus, he created 8fit, a fitness app that is firmly gaining foothold within the novice in the fitness world. The reason? It's free and requires no equipment. 8fit is also a company that advocates the nomadic lifestyle. They've settled in Spain, Berlin, USA, Bali and Thailand, one at a time, to work from different countries and meet all sorts of people.
Pablo highlighted the benefits of digital nomadism throughout the fireside chat: "it helped us bonding as a team and keeping aligned with our values." If bringing your workmates along as a travelling band doesn't help, what will?
Watch the full video with Pablo Villalba, CEO at 8fit, in English!
Go After Giants When the Time is Right
Lluís Font became known in the industry when he rescued Zyncro, the social network meets intranet for businesses, from going bust. Years after, he sold it for over 30x its initial value. Now, Lluís is one of the sales gurus in Barcelona.
As such, Lluís alerted every entrepreneur that might be chasing big companies to land them as clients. Big companies can be overkill, according to Lluís, much like Mark Suster when he advises going deer hunting.
Catch the best sales strategies from Lluís Font of Kompyte and Captio in our full video chat.
Always Be Trying New Things
Dr. Oscar García-Pañella is the go-to man when it comes to gamification & video games in Spain. He taught us everything that was to know about serious games, adver-gaming and how gamification can help HR departments.
We pretty much covered his talk in the blog post "How Can Gamification Help HR". The main takeaway from his talk is that we need to try new stuff, constantly, for we have proved that the old ways do not work any longer.
Oscar García-Pañella, Partner at Cookiebox, has a lot to say about gamifying your business. Watch his full talk in Spanish.
Be the Dumbest Person in the Room
Ferran is a huge businessman, in all aspects. When he retired from professional basketball, after having won every competition possible, he transitioned to the business world. Now, he owns an ecosystem of companies that feed one another.
In a very intense fireside chat, we talked about how to create business by networking professionally. Ferran always strives for excellence, in everything he does, so his advice to the entrepreneurs in the room was "always be surrounded by people who are better than you."
Ferran Martínez, Chairman at Lánzame mentored the whole room in this video - don't miss it.
Choose Your Partners Carefully
In October, Startup Grind Barcelona brought on a new type of speaker: a lawyer. Ignasi Costas, Partner at Rousaud Costas Duranis, a founding member of one of the most prestigious law firms in Barcelona. That was a very special event, because Ignasi is always telling hard truths, and to avoid any conflict, we did not record the talk, so he could freely speak about everything. If you were not there, you missed out.
Except for this advice he shared with us all: "Think long term when choosing your partners. This is not a roadtrip. It's a marriage." Ignasi was asked what was the main cause for legal trouble in entrepreneurs, and he replied that is a common thing to see co-founders having childish discussions because they didn't set all commitments and guidelines on paper in the partners agreement.
Launch Quickly and Keep Improving
Simon is on a winning streak lately: Incubio was nominated one of the top big data incubators in Europe, while the other company he leads, GameBCN, has moved to a cool new offices in historical Barcelona.
In October, we chatted with Simon about product development, as he's a product designer himself, and he shared the number one mistake he sees in all the startups they incubate. "They always launch too late...", Simon says, "... don't delay your MVP. Cut the features and start testing it with real users."
Check out our event with Simon Lee of GameBCN & Incubio here.
Be Committed and Have a Plan
We wrapped up the year in a very good fashion: a full house with Manel Sort, the Head of Studio at King),talking about video games and revenue forecast - his speciality as an entrepreneur.
Manel has grown the King studio in Barcelona to above the levels of the ones in London or Stockholm, mainly because everyone wants to live in the Catalan capital: good food, awesome weather, cheap cost of living, multi-cultural environment - you name it.
What we learned from him is that whatever you want to do, you need to be 100% committed to it and have a plan. The rest does not matter if you've got a plan to sort all obstacles and you're driven enough to climb all ladders and overcome the difficulties.
You can watch the fireside chat with Manel Sort, Head of Studio at King, here.
We have an incredible year for Startup Grind Barcelona planned, so come see the next event for yourself!