On September 14, at the Palau de la Música Catalana, within the framework of the 33rd edition of the AIJEC Young Entrepreneur Awards, I wanted to ask a seemingly simple question: what does young entrepreneurship need today?
Last year I tried to describe what it means to be young and to start a business, and I spoke of the fire that those of us who one day decided to undertake carry within. This year I wanted to go a step further. And the first thing young entrepreneurs need are role models. People to look up to and to want to emulate.
We must stop feeling uncomfortable talking about business success. If every time someone prospers, the first thing we do is belittle them, we will hardly get the next generation to want to follow this path. We cannot demonize the figure of someone who starts a business simply for doing so. We are people with concerns and dreams who dedicate a very important part of our lives to trying to make them a reality. Those who lead a company are required to be responsible every day. Before employees, clients, suppliers, partners, banks or administrations. When we make mistakes, we assume the consequences. And I believe we have the right, and also the moral obligation, to demand the same responsibility from those who lead us.
Let's not expect leaders who never make mistakes. That would be absurd. We expect that, when they make mistakes, they face up to them, explain them, rectify when appropriate and assume the consequences. The manner also matters. More responsibility, more demanding in the manner.
We don't need to turn those who think differently into our enemy. It's not a matter of business against workers or the private sector against the public. All this is about building. And building together. Business plus workers. Public sector plus private sector.
But young entrepreneurs also need to be heard. There is a lot of talk about young talent. About the need to attract it, retain it, ensure that our young people do not leave. And I think that's perfect. But it's not enough to want our talent. It would also be good to want our voice.
From AIJEC we have decided to raise our hand. Not to protest louder or to point fingers at anyone, but to say something much simpler: We are here. Count on us. We are nonconformists, but our nonconformism seeks to propose, improve and transform. We want to generate prosperity.
AIJEC has more than forty years of history. We represent a community of young entrepreneurs in Catalonia and, after 33 editions of awards that recognize companies that generate employment, take risks and create opportunities, we still have the will to go wherever necessary. No one can say that we have not wanted to participate. We are here. And we want to be part of it.
But to do so, we also need community. Last year, there were about 300 people at the gala. This year, more than 500. And this makes us immensely happy, not simply because there are more of us, but because our capacity to contribute increases. We want that when a young person who runs a business has a problem, they find someone on the other side. We want to be there because we can contribute. Because we have experience, we know the problems and we also have proposals. AIJEC wants to feel useful, not used. Young entrepreneurs cannot be a marketing tool. They must be a tool for transformation.
And I firmly believe it: individual talent can build a great company, but organized talent can transform a society. To achieve this, there is another quite elemental thing that young entrepreneurs need: to be able to prosper. To create, grow and consolidate. This has been one of AIJEC's great obsessions during these months. We cannot settle for being a country where good ideas are born. We must also become a country where these ideas can grow and want to stay.
We want to work, pay good salaries, have talent in our companies and contribute to our society. And yes, we also want to make money. We should not be ashamed to say it, just as we have no problem paying taxes. Precisely for this reason, we want to know that these taxes reach where society needs them. We demand transparency, ethics and responsibility. Because business and the welfare state are not enemies. They need each other.
The question we should ask ourselves is whether we are creating an ecosystem that allows prosperity. If we manage to make working and entrepreneurship worthwhile. Talent, simply by being talent, will go wherever it can develop to its fullest. And if it leaves, perhaps it is a good clue to ask ourselves if we are doing things well. When an entrepreneur leaves, we do not only lose a taxpayer. We lose talent, knowledge, jobs and investment. But we lose something even more important: role models.
Young entrepreneurs need reasons to stay. However, it would be too easy to stop there and place all responsibility on others. We also need to demand things of ourselves. Those of us who today have the responsibility of leading organizations like AIJEC are here temporarily. And it's good that it is so. It's our turn to do our part so that those who come after can take this community, full of good values, and take it further than us.
"It's not enough to be young to be right, to deserve a chair, or to be heard. Space must be earned with work, preparation, and commitment"
That's why I also want to be demanding with younger generations. Train yourselves. Participate. Get involved. Build community. Don't just close yourselves off in your company, your career, your success, or your problems. It's not enough to be young to be right, to deserve a chair, or to be heard. Space must be earned with work, preparation, and commitment. And I think it's better that way. Because when a person strives to earn things, everything makes more sense.
We will try to open doors. You will have to be prepared to walk through them. We cannot demand a better society in ten or twenty years if today we are not willing to dedicate a part of our time to building it.
And, above all, we must not fall into pessimism. I know it's easy to think that entrepreneurship is too complicated and uncertain, that accessing housing is impossible, or that decisions are always made by others. We must not accept this idea. We want to create successful companies, but we also want to create companies with values. And the projects that passed through the Palau stage demonstrate that both ambitions can perfectly go hand in hand.
Because generating life opportunities is also business and social success. A day will come when probably no one will remember how much our companies invoiced or how much they were worth. But there will be people who will remember how we treated them, what opportunity we gave them, what values we defended, and what we did when we had the possibility to help build something better.
And here I return to the fire that accompanied us last year. That fire is still burning. But for it not to be extinguished, it needs air. Air that comes from all of us and pushes us not to wait for someone else to build the future for us.
Marcus Aurelius wrote almost two thousand years ago: "Stop arguing about what a good person should be like. Be one." Perhaps we can bring this to our own ground in a very simple way: let's not talk so much about the country we want. Let's build it.
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