How is a business project funded? What are the best options for obtaining funding in order to grow a business? What are the financial risks involved in launching a start-up? These are just some of the questions answered by the investment experts who took part in the fourth session of the Entrepreneurship series of seminars 2021.

Borja Ballesta, investment director at Inveready, one of Spain's leading asset management firms, explained that an "ecosystem of exciting entrepreneurial projects" is flourishing throughout the country, and that regions such as the Basque Country, Valencia and Malaga are mirroring the growth of Barcelona and Madrid, which are currently ranked as two of the top European cities in which to start a business. Ballesta also claimed that, since 2018, “private funds have multiplied exponentially”, and described start-ups as an “engine of economic growth.”

Along the same lines, Ángel Rodríguez, director of Hondo SMART in Catalonia at Banco Santander, said that the pandemic has helped launch digital projects: “requests for funding have soared over the past eighteen months, and entrepreneurs are coming up with really innovative business models”. Rodriguez also emphasised how “markets have ceased to be local and are becoming global”, adding that there is also capital available from other world powers that can help support national projects.

By contrast, Sergi Cuadra, junior financial consultant at UpBizor, a financial consultancy firm specialising in start-ups and SMEs, pointed out that “when starting a business, it is important to identify a market that is not heavily saturated and where you can avoid barriers to entry”. In this sense, Cuadra emphasised that “entrepreneurs should not focus too heavily” on sectors that are currently experiencing rapid growth, but that they should do the legwork to find “their own place in the market”.

As part of the debate moderated by Juan José Marín, director of the Master's Degree in Entrepreneurial Financing: Venture Capital and Private Equity at UIC Barcelona, the experts also spoke about the key considerations of investing in a project and agreed on many of the challenges entrepreneurs must now overcome in order to raise capital.

The Entrepreneurship series of seminars 2021 is an initiative supported by the FEDER-OTRI Fund, and organised by Alumni & Careers, the Corporate Development Department and the UIC Barcelona Vice-Rectorate for Research, Innovation and Knowledge Transfer. This is an entirely online event and is free for anyone who wishes to participate.

Co-funded by: