Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

ValerIA, the Barcelona startup that hires in minutes

Els fundadors de Valeria

In less than two years, the company, which applies artificial intelligence to labor management, has multiplied the size of its team tenfold and now works with more than 100 companies and 25,000 professionals. Now, ValerIA is already aiming for international expansion.

26 may of 2026 at 14:07h
Some companies could scale faster, but they encounter an unexpected problem: they cannot hire at the pace they need. Often, the problem is not demand, but how quickly teams can be brought in to respond to it. Between need and hiring, there is everythinga set of legal and administrative processes that advance more slowly than the business: bureaucratic procedures, agencies with limited hours or obsolete systems. This disconnect becomes especially evident in sectors such as hospitality, logistics, or thedelivery, where staff turnover is constant and decisions must be made in hours, not days. Throughout his professional career,Pau Laportehas been encountering this reality firsthand. Last-minute hirings, continuous contract changes, payroll incidents, or registrations that didn't arrive on time were part of the daily routine in companies where he has worked, such as Uber, Haddock, or BLOK (Getir). But it was during his time atInstamaki—startupof Japanese home delivery cuisine—later acquired by Glovo—when he more clearly identified the problem. "Our peak demand was on the weekend, butthe agencies did not work Saturdays or Sundays to be able to hire new people on time. We had workers ready to join, but we couldn't do it because the system wasn't designed for this pace," Laporte recalls. After years of living with this friction, Laporte decided to turn that challenge into a business opportunity. Thus, in 2025, together withCarlos Saiz—with whom he had worked previously— andSergio Morales, founded ValerIA, astartupthat automates and streamlines the management of contracts, payrolls, and other labor processes thanks to artificial intelligence. In less than two years, ValerIA has grown from three founders to more than twenty professionals on the team,works with more than a hundred companies and serves more than 25,000 professionals. A growth so rapid that it has already led the company to prepare its international leap.

An intelligent and real-time management agency

ValerIA functions as an automated labor management platform based on artificial intelligence, which allows companies to manage contracts, payrolls, and registrations in real time. Its objective is to convert processes that traditionally require days into operations that are resolved in minutes, even with the possibility of managing communication with Social Security with a few messages.

The solution focuses on companies with high labor turnover, those where between 10% and 15% of the workforce changes each month or even in a matter of days. These are sectors such as hospitality, delivery, or logistics, where technology is already being implemented, but also areas such as construction or facilities, where the company plans to land soon. "Our focus is not rigid corporate structures, but rather those companies that need flexibility and immediate reaction capacity," explains Laporte.

The ValerIA team works at Barcelona Activa's facilities. © ValerIA

Companies for which the usual models of management and consultancy —based on calls, emails, Excel documents, and restricted hours— are no longer sufficient. "ValerIA's system is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week," points out its founder. "The company can operate when it really needs to, without having to wait for manual processes or depend on intermediaries."

The difference with traditional systems is not only the speed of hiring, but also the form of interaction. ValerIA's goal is to avoid complex portals and dependence on intermediaries, opting for a model that combines an artificial intelligence conversational agent on WhatsApp as the main channel, along with its own API that connects with each company's internal systems.

From a simple WhatsApp chat, a company manager can register a worker or resolve labor incidents with a few messages, without leaving the conversation. "You tell the assistant: 'I want to hire a person this weekend,' and the system generates the contract, checks the agreement, calculates salary conditions, and manages all the legal aspects in a matter of minutes," summarizes Laporte.

The ValerIA team already has more than twenty employees. © ValerIA

According to its founder, this system allows not only to save up to 80% of the time dedicated to repetitive administrative tasks and reduce human errors in payroll processes and procedures with Social Security by up to 90%, but also to increase operational efficiency to the point of being able to manage three times more workers with the same administrative structure.

But this simplicity also applies to the relationship with the worker: ValerIA incorporates an employee portal that works through WhatsApp, so that employees can resolve doubts related to their contract, their payroll, IRPF withholdings or other labor incidents. "The goal is to democratize access to labor information," insists Laporte. "There are many people who, for example, don't understand a payslip and now that doubt is as easy to resolve as sending a message to the WhatsApp agent, without having to depend on intermediaries." According to the company, the system already automatically resolves 94% of queries related to contracts and payslips.

Accelerated growth and international outlook

With this business model, the company already works with more than a hundred companies, including companies such as Fliits, Honest Greens or La Pita Bonita. But growth has intensified especially since the end of last year, coinciding with the closing of a 1.7 million euro financing round led by VentureFriends, with the participation of Fortino Capital and 10k Ventures. Since then, the company —based in and supported by Barcelona Activa— has multiplied the size of its team tenfold, going from three founders to more than twenty workers. The goal now is to reach at least 40 workers during the next year.

Pau Laporte: "Our model makes more sense the more complex the work environment is"

A growth that is also reflected in the results: the startup closed 2025 with nearly half a million euros in annual turnover and, for this year, forecasts are to multiply that figure by four and exceed two million euros at the close of the fiscal year.

With these results, the company is already starting to look beyond Spain, after an initial stage focused on local clients. Although ValerIA sets 2027 as the horizon for its international deployment, the team has already begun to explore different markets, with special interest in countries such as France, Italy or Germany, where labor regulations are more complex and administrative processes more rigid. "Our model makes more sense the more complex the labor environment is," says Laporte. "It is precisely in these markets where we can add more value," adds the founder.

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