Spanish entrepreneurship is stronger and “is less afraid of going abroad”

“The industry of entrepreneurship Spanish is becoming more powerful and, therefore, is less and less afraid of going abroad”said this Thursday to EFE Elisa Carbonell, general director of the Internationalization of the Company in ICEXregarding the participation of Spain in the forum eMerge Americas.

Forty-eight emerging companies and other agents of the Spanish ecosystem are participating in the two-day forum that will be inaugurated this Thursday at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

The organization hopes to surpass the figures of the 2022 edition, when it received more than 20,000 visitors and more than 4,000 startups participated, in addition to organizations linked to entrepreneurship.

The number of participants from Spain is more than double that of last year and the number of Spanish companies selected to participate in the contest has also increased, from six to eleven Startup Showcasewhich provides the winner with a prize of $420,000.

Carbonell together with José María Blasco, director of Health Infrastructures and ICT at ICEX, the public entity in charge of the internationalization of the Spanish economy, are in Miami for eMerge Americas, where Spain has a space for networking, events and presentations.

The promotion organizations of Valencia, Andalusia and Madrid have their own delegations of participating companies, but they are all under the umbrella of ICEX, which, according to Carbonell, made “an increasing commitment to the accompaniment of entrepreneurship in its internationalization process”.

Carbonell and Blasco point out that this year, in addition, the typology of participants was expanded to include investors and corporations that have their share of open innovation.

“That greatly enriches the delegation. We have understood that it is much better to go with the entire ecosystem together”emphasizes Carbonell.

Blasco points out that also in this edition of eMerge Americas “there is added value” which is an agenda of meetings and networking with “the local ecosystem and with other Spaniards who are not in the delegation but who are at the event”.

In his opinion, there “dynamism” in the Spanish entrepreneurship ecosystem and that will be seen in this forum.

According to a report published last month, the digitization of the Spanish economy reached the 22.6% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2022, 0.6 points more than in 2020 and almost 4 points more than in 2019.

The Spanish Association of the Digital Economy (Adigital) and Boston Consulting Group. point out in that report that the digitization of the economy experienced cumulative growth of 19% between 2020 and 2022, going from 117,000 million euros to 140,000 million.

“The ecosystem is growing: 2021 and 2022 have been the most extraordinary years in the historical series. Investment in entrepreneurship in Spain has multiplied by four”Blasco says.

This means that startups are getting bigger, that they are already what is called scaleupsthe “Scale that is more prepared to internationalize than the startup we have been knowing”.

However, they highlight “Not all entrepreneurship is prepared to internationalize. You have to choose the right time and the right markets to go to.”

As an example of what is happening with the start-upsCarbonell says that entrepreneurship is currently for ICEX a sector like tiles, trains or fashion.

Asked what are the areas in which Spanish start-ups stand out the most, Blasco answers that they are the same ones in which Spain is well positioned in the world: tourism, agri-food, banking, renewable energy, health and education.

“If a sector is important in a country, it needs to be competitive to continue being so, which requires technological developments. This need generates startups and new technologies”add.

Source: EFE