Barcelona has consolidated itself as a key point for the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The city has more than 2,100 startups and 280 scaleups: those emerging companies that have moved up a level, have already proven their business model, and are growing rapidly. "10 years ago, Barcelona was not on the map, and now Barcelona is on the scaleup map," claimed the general director of Barcelona Global, Mercè Conesa.
In this last decade, the entrepreneurial ecosystem has evolved to consolidate itself as an asset in the city, which has seen startups emerge and become scaleups that prioritize growth and launching into the international market. Specifically, these are startups that grow at an accelerated and sustained pace, with turnover of around one million euros and annual increases of 20% for three years.
Just as startups find the necessary factors for their emergence in Barcelona, scaleups see the city as a scenario in which to boost their expansion, but not without pending challenges to resolve. Among them, two stand out: access to financing, and bureaucracy, according to the Barcelona Global Scaleup Monitor report, prepared by Barcelona Global in collaboration with CaixaBank through DayOne.
The report, which is published biennially and with IESE methodology, places Barcelona's scaleups at a good moment: 94% of them plan to hire new workers in the next year and a half, and 22% of them believe they will hire more than 30 people in this period.
These hirings are linked to another of the challenges facing the city, and which it is gradually resolving: access to talent. While in 2021, 34% of scaleups indicated that finding qualified professionals was a problem, now the figure has been reduced to 25%. Furthermore, 41% of companies stated that in 2024 they were able to find the digital professionals they required, compared to 22% in 2021. However, scaleups point to talent retention as a challenge, due to competition from global hubs and more competitive salaries in other European cities, as detailed in the report, prepared with surveys and interviews with 66 companies from the Barcelona entrepreneurial ecosystem.
"Talent, more than a problem, is a challenge," and the city is already responding to it, as defended by Conesa, who presented the report alongside the director of CaixaBank DayOne, Gemma Beltrán, and the managing partner and co-founder of Asabys Partners, Josep Lluís Sanfeliu. In fact, while access to talent was identified as an obstacle two years ago, it is now the second most valued element by entrepreneurs in the Catalan capital, in 31% of cases, behind the quality of personal life offered by the city (41%). They also particularly appreciate the dynamism of the entrepreneurial ecosystem (25%) and the costs of launching a company in the city (22%). "Costs are an advantage at this moment, although not for workers," Conesa highlighted, as it implies lower salaries: "If we consolidate this ecosystem more and better, the opportunity to raise these salaries will also open up," which in turn will allow for better talent retention in the city.
The reasons why this access to talent has improved also lead professionals to choose Barcelona to start a business. The city's quality of life is the main reason for doing so in 22% of cases, while the ability to attract international talent is for 12%, and the possibility of finding precisely the right talent is for 10%. However, the main reason is outside the ecosystem and its capabilities: 53% of those who start a business in Barcelona do so for family or personal reasons. Globally, entrepreneurs are on average between 38 and 40 years old, and only 10% are women.
Another challenge for the sector is the need to "promote the transfer of knowledge from the university world to business," according to Conesa, since only 12% of emerging companies are born linked to universities, while 76% are independent. In addition, another 4% come from hospital research institutes, and 2% are born from project incubators, as well as another 2% that emerge from science parks.
As these challenges are progressively addressed, entrepreneurs identify two major stoppers for scaling their projects from Barcelona: financing and bureaucracy. In fact, 41% of scaleup managers identify difficulties in accessing financing as an obstacle, and 33% point to the complexities of regulations, while issues related to taxation have dropped positions compared to previous reports.
Given these obstacles that hinder and slow down the growth of startups, Conesa has opted to promote public-private programs or a joint investment fund to facilitate financing, especially in early stages. In fact, he has highlighted as one of the challenges of the Institut Català de Finances (ICF) and the Acció agency the need to "structure public-private financing vehicles that can assume more risk." This is a possibility that Barcelona Global has already conveyed to the Government, as well as its commitment to structuring a financial cluster that facilitates this access to financing, "but it must be accompanied by public administration."
"Financing should have a more direct push from the public sector," defended the Asabys partner. "Europe will fall behind if we only go with private capital; we have private capital buried in real estate and classic financing products, and resources will not reach entrepreneurs if private capital does not wake up and if public capital is not able to reach companies," warned Sanfeliu. And Barcelona is not alone in this situation, but it is happening in Europe and beyond, as recalled Montse Puig, the head of Barcelona Global's program to attract international investments, Barcelona and Partners. "The lack of venture capital investment is a global issue; it's not that Barcelona startups cannot raise capital, but rather it's a matter of international context."
Despite these difficulties, 20% of the scaleups operating from Barcelona estimate the total investment obtained for their project at more than 20 million. In addition, 63% of them plan to open new investment rounds in the next 18 months, a fact that reflects the companies' confidence in their projects and their profitability," as highlighted by Conesa.
This investment can come from multiple actors, such as business angels and local and international venture capital funds, but also from banking entities, the public sector, and even the entrepreneur's environment. In this context, Beltrán has focused on the need for all of them to converge and understand each other: "We have to talk to each other. The different financing actors have to talk and structure a financing system with answers for the different business models, which have very diverse maturation times and needs."