As VCs, we often say that we invest in ten year cycles (usually more than that). That’s the minimum amount of time that we believe is needed for startups to become scalable, stable and profitable enterprises.
If we look back 10 years, a lot has changed in the Spanish ecosystem. And all of it has been for the better.
In our 2022 Spain ecosystem report, built in collaboration with Dealroom, BBVA, GoHub Ventures and Endeavor, we look into the evolution of the Spanish startup ecosystem since 2010.
According to Dealroom data, between 2010 and 2015, €2.7b were invested in Spanish startups. In 2021 alone, total investment volume raised by local companies was twice as much. Even in 2022, a tumultuous year for the venture ecosystem and technology in general, €4b was raised in Spain alone.
This is a consequence of a number of things, but most notably the result of an increasing number of founders that have decided to build tech companies and that see entrepreneurship as a career path, and also the fact that a significant amount of investors (business angels, VCs, corporate VCs) launched investment firms to provide the necessary capital for companies to compete globally.
The prominence of early stage VC helps explain the impressive and steady increase in pre-seed and seed funding that we’ve seen in the past few years, with at least $300m raised per year since 2018. In 2021 and 2022 alone, pre-seed and seed activity has reached almost $500m per year.
But a mature market is often defined by companies that reach scaleup status and escape velocity. It’s those companies that attract funding from US and European investors, that create the vast majority of jobs in the ecosystem, that create wealth when exits happen and that help nurture the next generation of ecosystems.
The data shows the maturation of the Spanish tech ecosystem. Here’s the amount of Series A+ funding raised by Spanish startups since 2010 and the clear exponential growth in the 2019-2022 period.
The expansion of the local ecosystem, at both company and VC-level, has also meant the diversification of funding. Almost two thirds of all capital invested in Spanish startups comes from European and US VCs, and even some local VCs -including ourselves with Leadwind- have decided to expand overseas to seek investment opportunities in Latin America, the US or the UK.
Despite this growth, challenges remain. Spain ranks 6th in Europe and 16th globally for total investment raised in 2022, behind smaller countries such as Sweden or Switzerland, and there is still a funding gap at the later stage. Having said that, the data also shows that Spain showed stronger resilience than many of its global counterparts, with just a -15% drop in VC investment in 2022 compared to 2021, and initiatives like ETC, Next Tech and the growth of the startup and venture ecosystem in general, makes us believe that this resilience is not a one-off but one more sign of the maturation of the Spanish technology sector.
The time to invest in the future of GDP is now.
You can read the full report here.
As VCs, we often say that we invest in ten year cycles (usually more than that). That’s the minimum amount of time that we believe is needed for startups to become scalable, stable and profitable enterprises.
If we look back 10 years, a lot has changed in the Spanish ecosystem. And all of it has been for the better.
In our 2022 Spain ecosystem report, built in collaboration with Dealroom, BBVA, GoHub Ventures and Endeavor, we look into the evolution of the Spanish startup ecosystem since 2010.
According to Dealroom data, between 2010 and 2015, €2.7b were invested in Spanish startups. In 2021 alone, total investment volume raised by local companies was twice as much. Even in 2022, a tumultuous year for the venture ecosystem and technology in general, €4b was raised in Spain alone.
This is a consequence of a number of things, but most notably the result of an increasing number of founders that have decided to build tech companies and that see entrepreneurship as a career path, and also the fact that a significant amount of investors (business angels, VCs, corporate VCs) launched investment firms to provide the necessary capital for companies to compete globally.
The prominence of early stage VC helps explain the impressive and steady increase in pre-seed and seed funding that we’ve seen in the past few years, with at least $300m raised per year since 2018. In 2021 and 2022 alone, pre-seed and seed activity has reached almost $500m per year.
But a mature market is often defined by companies that reach scaleup status and escape velocity. It’s those companies that attract funding from US and European investors, that create the vast majority of jobs in the ecosystem, that create wealth when exits happen and that help nurture the next generation of ecosystems.
The data shows the maturation of the Spanish tech ecosystem. Here’s the amount of Series A+ funding raised by Spanish startups since 2010 and the clear exponential growth in the 2019-2022 period.
The expansion of the local ecosystem, at both company and VC-level, has also meant the diversification of funding. Almost two thirds of all capital invested in Spanish startups comes from European and US VCs, and even some local VCs -including ourselves with Leadwind- have decided to expand overseas to seek investment opportunities in Latin America, the US or the UK.
Despite this growth, challenges remain. Spain ranks 6th in Europe and 16th globally for total investment raised in 2022, behind smaller countries such as Sweden or Switzerland, and there is still a funding gap at the later stage. Having said that, the data also shows that Spain showed stronger resilience than many of its global counterparts, with just a -15% drop in VC investment in 2022 compared to 2021, and initiatives like ETC, Next Tech and the growth of the startup and venture ecosystem in general, makes us believe that this resilience is not a one-off but one more sign of the maturation of the Spanish technology sector.
The time to invest in the future of GDP is now.
You can read the full report here.
