A computer in her room in Calella was all the equipment Carla Lurqui needed to launch the marketing agency B3hind in 2021. That computer, and especially her talent-scouting instinct to recruit influencers, led her to bill one million euros in nine months, and to expand the company to now have offices in Barcelona and Madrid, with a team of ten people.
Carla Lurqui's intuition is not only effective in detecting potential social media stars, but it has also been key to her company's expansion. "It's not that I had everything planned out: I went with the flow and did the best I could," Lurqui explains to The New Barcelona Post. Thus, without a detailed plan, without initial investment, and without even a website, the entrepreneur born in 1995 has built the agency by following her instinct, billing three million euros in 2023, and with the forecast of reaching five million in 2024.
It all started when Lurqui decided to leave the cosmetics company where she was marketing director with the purpose of launching her own project. Based on her previous experience in communication campaigns and with influencers, in March 2021, and still in a context marked by the pandemic, she began to provide community manager and talent representation services, starting with five influencers she met through social media.
"I intended to set up a traditional agency, but a few months later I saw that talent representation worked better and motivated me much more," explains Lurqui. Thus, six months after starting to work from her home in Calella, she chose to leave community manager tasks and focus on representation.
From then on, Carla Lurqui began to expand her team, reaching the eleven employees who currently make up B3hind's staff. "And we will continue to expand, although I don't know how much: I don't want to create a macro-company of influencers, because if you manage too many, you lose quality and the charm," says Lurqui, who plans to add diverse profiles to the staff, without exceeding 20 employees and without having anything set in stone: "Something the company has taught me is that you learn as you go, you can't have everything calculated."
Precisely that quality and that grace is what Lurqui believes differentiates B3hind from other companies, and what has allowed it to grow and rapidly increase the influencers it represents. From the initial five, it has grown to 60, with the intention of not exceeding a hundred to avoid losing that grace that characterizes her agency. "What differentiates us is our human touch, and that we have known how to recruit talent well and help them grow very quickly."
"Something I've been very good at is scouting, recruiting then-small talents who have become big," like Ariane Hoyos, Alba Moreno from FísicaMR, and Betsa Bermúdez. This talent-scouting vision, which has fueled B3hind's growth, is "a feeling" and an intuition that allows detecting future social media idols, avoiding lists of requirements and characteristics that potential talents must meet. "If you detect that a person has talent, you shouldn't force anything. Often, they are like a good puzzle, but with the pieces disordered, and you have to assemble it," illustrates the entrepreneur.
And B3hind does it following three verticals: beauty, entertainment, and fashion, in which numerous social media users who long to be successful influencers want to integrate and knock on the agency's door. Without a website, on the fly, through social media and especially word-of-mouth, multiple profiles turn to B3hind. "But we have to filter: Spain is a country of tambourines, and here everyone wants to be an influencer," Lurqui laughs. And it is that, despite the work that an agency like hers can facilitate, "an influencer is born or made, but not everyone has the grace to be one."