The robot portrait of the entrepreneur has changed little in recent years. He is a man (80%), 33 years old, usually an engineer or a graduate in social sciences, who previously worked as an employee in a company. What has changed is his probability of success. Currently, six out of ten founders of a start-up have previously set up a business, are serial entrepreneurs (62% vs. 37% in 2014). And as your experience increases, your company’s chances of selling grow substantially: if for new creators this happens less than 20% of the time, the percentage exceeds 70% in the case of entrepreneurs who have constituted more of four start-ups.
These are some of the conclusions of the Entrepreneurship Map 2022, prepared by South Summit in collaboration with IE University, and presented this morning in Madrid. For María Benjumea, president of South Summit, the study highlights the maturation of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. “After 10 years of evolution, the innovation ecosystem has been consolidated, it is an unstoppable phenomenon that can no longer be reversed. The entrepreneur is a key economic actor both in Spain and in the rest of the world”, she assures. Proof of this is that serial entrepreneurs have grown by 2% in the last year and only 38% of the projects correspond to first businesses.
Also that the start-ups Spanish companies have reached an average life of 3 years, compared to 2.7 in 2021 or 2.2 in 2019. Nearly 70% have between 2 and 10 employees and 26% between 10 and 50 people (which means 9 percentage points above the previous year). Seven out of ten companies have already launched their product, 10% more than the previous year. fintech, education and health are the three areas where the entrepreneurial ecosystem is focusing the most when developing. Followed by development of software Y e-commerce.
six out of ten start-ups is currently obtaining income, with an increase of 11% over 2021. 11% of the companies have more than 500,000 euros of annual income, although 25% do not exceed 50,000 euros, and 18% of them claim to have achieved an ebitda positive (which represents six points more than the previous year and places Spain 5% above Europe), especially in the sectors of energy, art, culture and design and digital and professional services.
Likewise, six out of ten companies have been established by two or three founders. Although the solo entrepreneur bursts in force. According to Benjumea, the solopreneur or self-employed 3.0, which has emerged in the United States, already accounts for 6% of start-ups in Spain and is one of the most outstanding novelties of 2022. Its weight is the same as that of women entrepreneurs. “The incorporation of women in the ecosystem continues to be a pending issue, but it is not a Spanish phenomenon but a worldwide one. We have to work to convince them that it is worth undertaking”, says the president of South Summit.
Less financing
Regarding the financing of the start-ups, the main objective sought by entrepreneurs along with visibility, Benjumea highlights that there has been a significant change in trend, since private funds have gone from accounting for 11% in 2018 to 32% this year. While own funds have evolved in reverse: from 60% to 46%. This speaks of the professionalization of the system, he says. However, funding sources are shrinking as a result of the current geopolitical and economic turmoil.
“From the first quarter in which the investment in start-ups it has been spectacular, the funds have been greatly reduced, although the number of funding rounds continues to rise. This year the private capital allocated to the entrepreneurial ecosystem can be cut, go towards normalization, because we must not forget that in 2021 the volumes multiplied by four: from 1,100 to 4,300 million”, indicates the founder of South Summit, who highlights the recent addition of a new Unicorn to the Spanish market, Factorial, after the round of 123 million euros carried out just a few days ago.
