Since I can remember, I have loved computers. At eight years old, I already wanted to go to Silicon Valley. It was the place. That is why I knew I would study Computer Engineering: I thought I would find people like me and we would end up building things.
In university, I faced a huge disappointment. I expected to find people obsessed with technology and eager to create. Instead, the main aspiration was getting a job at a consulting firm working for the Andalusian regional government and, with luck, progressing until they stopped programming and became analysts or project managers.
Talent existed, but almost no one saw starting a startup as a reasonable option. There were no role models, shared ambition, or places where those who wanted to build could meet.
In 2009, an event changed my pessimistic perspective. Eduardo Manchón came to the university to tell the story of Panoramio. He and Joaquín Cuenca had built a product between just two people, and Google had just bought it. Until then, startups were something that happened in California. Suddenly, I had someone in front of me who had created a global product from Spain.
And almost no one was listening.
There were very few of us in that room. Another person there was Laura Valverde, who years later founded Beetailer, one of the first Spanish companies to enter Y Combinator.
Some time later, Eduardo told me he always doubted if those talks served any purpose. I answered him that if you get even one person to discover that another path exists, it has already been worth it. He taught me that.
When I finished my degree, the few options I found were different versions of the same consulting firm. I preferred to start a business and go bankrupt rather than accept a shitty job where I probably wouldn't end up well anyway. So I left: first to the United Kingdom and later to San Francisco thanks to the "Jóvenes con Futuro" program.
The problem is cultural
Fifteen years have passed and the Spanish ecosystem has changed a lot. There are more interesting companies, more experienced founders, and much more capital. Spain will not be the new Silicon Valley, nor does it need to be. London, Berlin, or Paris have produced great companies without being it. Spain can do the same.
When discussing why more startups aren't created here, taxes, bureaucracy, regulation, lack of capital, or lack of talent usually come up. Everything influences this. But the real problem is cultural.
Incentives matter. The US QSBS, for example, can significantly reduce founder taxes if a company succeeds. But nobody dedicates ten years of their life to building a company solely for the tax treatment of a hypothetical sale. I didn't even know that existed when we started.
Capital was also a serious limitation. Today it is much less so: there are more Spanish funds and better access to foreign investors. And talent certainly isn't lacking. The technical level in Spain is extremely high, top-tier.
What is missing is density. For the right people to find each other, recognize each other, and raise each other's aspirations.
Culture determines who even considers the possibility of working in a startup or founding one. And we cannot wait for the Government to change that part. A law can improve incentives. It cannot manufacture ambition, role models, or confidence.
It is up to us.
I have seen this difference firsthand. In the United States, I convinced friends (many of them Spanish) to leave jobs paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to join a startup that wasn't making money, had little funding, and could disappear in six months.
In Spain, for most, that decision would be unthinkable. Here I have found more people willing to say: come on, let's do it. It might go wrong, but we will learn a lot and there is a chance it goes extraordinarily well.
It is not that Americans are genetically more entrepreneurial. They have simply seen that movie many times. They know someone who succeeded, someone who failed and found another job, and someone who joined early in a company and ended up making a lot of money.
Finding your people
That is why I am so excited about what Guli Moreno is doing with The Exponential Fellowship and initiatives like HackSpain. He is gathering some of the best young builders in Spain and turning scattered talent into a community.
The important thing is not just that projects, companies, or people jumping to San Francisco come out of it. It is that someone who used to build alone enters a room and discovers hundreds of people with the same energy and ambition. That changes what one believes is possible.
Startups are still a novelty in Spain and close role models are lacking. It is not enough to read stories about garages in California. You need to know someone who achieved it here. Success needs to stop seeming like an anomaly.
It is just as crazy to follow the crazy one
Role models don't have to be only founders. When you talk to someone who was one of the first employees of a very successful company and made money with their stock options, the conversation is different. They understand that salary is only part of the compensation and that options are a bet whose result can help build.
For that mindset to spread, more stories like this are needed: someone joins a startup early, the founders share the success, it changes their life, and then they invest or create their own company. That is how an ecosystem is built. One company produces the founders, investors, and first employees of the next.
In Spain, we carry a complicated relationship with the figure of the entrepreneur: the rich family member, the one with the right contacts, or the tyrant who benefited from others' work. The image of the empresaurio (business monster) did not appear out of nowhere.
We founders of this new generation have to change it. If we want great professionals to take the risk of joining us, we have to be generous. We cannot ask for owner mentality, exceptional commitment, and risk tolerance only to reserve all the reward for the founders.
The initial team is equal to or more important than those who founded the company. It is just as crazy to have the idea as it is to decide to follow someone when there is almost nothing yet. That risk deserves a real part of the success.
We also have a strange relationship with effort. We celebrate our elite athletes and understand the sacrifices required to compete at the highest level. However, working very hard to build an exceptional company is often interpreted as something toxic.
Startups are not for everyone. Nor should they be. But people who do want to assume that effort should be able to find each other and participate fairly in the reward. If employees make the sacrifice and the pie is divided among the usual three entrepreneurs, we are not creating an ecosystem. We are feeding the empresaurio narrative further.
We are closer than it seems
I have enormous respect for those who create a company in Spain. They play on hard mode: they need to quickly form a small and exceptional team within a culture (and also a regulatory framework) that is not designed for that way of working.
Regulation matters, but it is not the main cause. Talent is there. Capital is too. And there are increasingly communities capable of bringing the right people together.
Now, big success stories are missing. Not just companies with huge valuations, but companies that share that success, produce dozens of new founders, and demonstrate that joining a Spanish startup early can change your life. I believe we are very, very close to seeing some.
When that happens, thousands of people will be able to look at someone close to them and think that they can do it too. That is what Eduardo Manchón did for me in a nearly empty room in 2009. Now we need to do it at scale.
Many thanks to everyone who has fought, and continues to fight, for the Spanish ecosystem. Especially those I have dealt with personally and who helped me on this journey: Eduardo Manchón, Joaquín Cuenca, Guli Moreno, Daniel Lopez, Laura Valverde, Miguel Martinez, Sam Lown, Javi Santana, Alberto Asuero, Hector Garcia, Bernat Farrero, Jordi Romero, Kintxo Cortés, Samuel Gil, Omar Pera, Javi Lopez, Jose Florido, Emilio Nicolas, Jaime Novoa, Alejandro Artacho, Luis Paarup, Javier and Pablo Palafox, Celia Manzano, Javier Sanchez, Manuel Suarez, Elisenda Bou, Pablo Santos, and many more I surely forget.
