Barcelona, your next creative headquarter?

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Creativity plus innovation, perfect match

Barcelona with a rich cultural history linked to the Mediterranean creativity and design as a lifestyle, with a multicultural and cosmopolitan environment, full of best human capital is the perfect match for startups and innovation. It jumps positions year after year at the list of most desired cities for investors, who intend to start, buy or scale companies. At this articles I will resume some of the facts and figures to help you take advantage of the existing resources at the city.

International design center

Barcelona and Catalonia have an excellent reputation in Europe in design education and are home to some of the most important schools all welcoming thousands of international students each year. Among them,?BAU Design College of Barcelona,?Eina Art and Design School,?Elisava School of Design?or?Massana School?have a consolidated track record in the field.

In recent years, Barcelona has also become one of the favorite locations for architects, designers, photographers, illustrators and creative professionals from all over the world. Professional associations have emerged to watch out for their growth and best interests, such as?FAD?(Fostering Arts and Design) or?ADP?(Association of Professional Designers).

Furthermore, due to its creative ecosystem Barcelona is recognized as being an international hub for design and development centers in the sector. Some examples include companies like?Reebok,?XAL,?Stradivarius,?Bershka,?Massimo Dutti,?Philips,?Desigual,?Mango,?Revlon, M.C.B?and?Asics.

Southern Europe’s leading hub

Barcelona?and?Catalonia?are southern Europe’s leading hub for startups, at the end of 2021 were registered +1,900 startups

• +?11%?compared to 2020
• +?26.4%?compared to 2019
• + 75% compared to 2016

Their total turnover in 2021 amounted?to €1,710 M. And at the 2021 analysis, Barcelona?is the?2nd most popular city among startup founders in Europe, and ranks?5th as an EU hub.

In love with international talent

Startups in?Barcelona?employ?19,307 highly-qualified professionals, 10% more than in 2019. Whit and average number of 10 employees /startup with a high percentage of international workers.

Barcelona?is the 2nd EU hub highest percentage of international founders (17%). This makes?Barcelona?one of the most cosmopolitan hubs, just behind Berlin and ahead of cities such as Amsterdam or Stockholm. The latest data also shows that?26%?of startup employees are from abroad.

Future Vision

Barcelona’s startup ecosystem is at the forefront of creativity and technologies of the future. The health, business services, ICT, and Mobile andleisure sectors account for?42%?of the startups.

• 86.8%?of the startups work with technologies linked to industry 4.0.
• 36%?of startups use Artificial Intelligence and Big Data as their primary technology.
• 47% of startups work with technologies related to Deeptech, based on a scientific discovery or engineering innovation.

4th leading EU hub in funding

4th EU hub?in terms of investment rounds?for startups. The total number from 2021 added up to 154 rounds, only behind Paris, Berlin, and Amsterdam. In 2021,?Catalonia?raised €1,479M in investment. Some noteworthy investments in 2021 are the ones from companies?Glovo,?Wallbox,?Wallapop,?TravelPerk, or?UserZoom.

• +65% comparison to 2018.
• +246% comparison to 2020

Unicorns playground

Barcelona?is a highly relevant European hub for creativity and tech innovation, and the perfect spot for growing, acquiring and scaling companies to become unicorns; i.e., companies valued at more than $1B.

Over the last five years (2017-2021), companies in?Barcelona-Catalonia?raised €4,178 million.

According to Natalia Mas, CEO of?ACCIO-Catalonia Tarde & Investment,

“these figures show that Barcelona is an ideal place not only to create startups but also to make them grow because it has become a hub that attracts foreign investors and talent, especially in the digital field”

The very last one to reach this milestone has been?TravelPerk, a startup that operates in the travel business sector. A few days ago, the company announced a new investment of $115M that increased the company’s valuation to over $1B

?Among them, we can find?Wallbox, a Barcelona-based startup in the mobility sector which has shown great growth since its foundation in 2015.?Wallbox?entered the New York Stock Exchange in October 2021 and now is about to advertise its electric car chargers during the Super Bowl commercials in February.

Eduard Casta?eda, CPO and co-founder at?Wallbox, had said then:?

"We may be an exception now, but we believe we will not be in the future given Catalonia's startup and scale-up scene."?

Other unicorns in the Catalan ecosystem are?Letgo, Glovo, Edreams, and?Adevinta, with company valuations ranging from €1,062 to €11,768 million.

New Kids on the block

Over the month of January, other European unicorns that have established their headquarters in?Barcelona?for Southern Europe have raised significant investment amounts.

This is the case of French neobank?Qonto, which closed a round of €486 million a few days ago.?Qonto?opened its Spanish headquarters in Barcelona in 2021 and now plans to invest over 100 million in the local market.

Carles Marcos, Country Manager Spain for?Qonto.

“Barcelona is a privileged geographical point from which to keep growing in Spain for its connectivity, the availability of talent, and a quality of life that it will also allow us to ‘import’ top-level professionals from other markets”,

Another example of a successful startup established in Barcelona is?Payfit, also from France. The company just raised €250 million in a financing round.

Yoann Artus, Country Manager Spain at?Payfit, says:?

“There is a great ecosystem of tech profiles in Barcelona, and?having access to them was essential for us to locate here”.

Checkout.com?and?Backmarket?are still more examples of foreign companies that have chosen to locate in?Barcelona?and are growing from here. The UK unicorn?Checkout.com?just raised the huge sum of €870 million.

?And?Backmarket, a French company specializing in refurbished electronics, closed this month a funding round of €450 million. The firm has just opened offices in?Barcelona, where it plans to hire 50 people.

My personal experience

I was born in Barcelona in the 70's when Barcelona was a very different city from the one we know now, in my case I ended up moving to the UK studying and working for several years, it was not until after the 2000's that I decided to return to the city and to startup in the business of creativity. Currently I already think that I could not have made a better decision at that time, and I'm still in love with the talent and the cultures that this city attracts, will Barcelona be your next creative headquarter or not, the answer is in your hands!

?What other founders say from BCN

Startups directory

The directory includes over 1,700 startups and allows for searches by sector, technology, region, business model, or company size.

https://startupshub.catalonia.com/list-of-startups

Sources:

https://catalonia.com/startups-in-catalonia/know-them-all-the-barcelona-catalonia-startup-directory/barcelona-catalonia-startup-hub.jsp

https://catalonia.com/newsletter_news/news/2022/Barcelona-unicorn-territory.jsp?utm_source=BC&utm_medium=issue70-noticiaReadMore

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