Hey, hey, hey, friends!

Did you ever feel like killing one of your customers? Or you’re overwhelmed with emails and calls and have a terrible need to set a better system to manage your users? How do you set priorities in your to enhance your users’ experience?

For entrepreneurs is a MUST to learn how to run the most efficient communications and projects a secure and solid image. David Bastida is serial (or a parallel) entrepreneur, with huuuuugeee experience in customer care and management. He’s gonna give an Okuri Talk this Wednesday and teach assistants all his best hacks for corporate communication.

Don’t miss it! It’s gonna be uber-enriching… and, David is a super-nice guy, so I’m sure we’re gonna have lots of fun too.

• Where: Okuri Spaces, 244th Bravo Murillo (entrance by 1st Alonso Castrillo) <M> Tetuan
• When: 22nd Wednesday 2012, 19:00
• How: Get your tickets now

Hope to see you around that day!

Best,

@StartupJedi

These series of guest posts are written based off of interviews done with entrepreneurs in Spain, as part of an initiative to bring awareness about the Startup Spain movement. Today we interview Rubén Vilar, Co-Founder at Shopsial

Company: Shopsial
Founded: 2011
URL: http://www.shopsial.com/
Twitter: @shopsial
City: Barcelona
Founders:

How many times have people left a store because they pay queue was too long?

With Shopsial you wouldn´t have had to leave because you could have used your phone to skip that queue. Yes! Through the application you could have used your phone to geolocalize your position, choose the shop where you are, see their product showcase, see recommendations from other users, buy what you want and share your purchase on Facebook or Twitter.

Who is behind this project? Who are the team members?

Joan Casadellà (@jcasadella)

Joan is 28 years old. He studied Computer Science at Polytechnic University of Catalonia because “it was a good way to create new things”. Had created a little business project in IT consulting with Xevi and after one year they failed. Now he is immersed in creating a startup that aims to solve a real day to day problem.

Xevi Gallego (@wozznik)

Xevi is a pro-active computer science engineer and 26 year old entrepreneur.  He has worked in a lot of projects in conjunction with Joan since University, and in the last year they created a little business project in IT consulting that didn’t succeed. Xevi is specialist on web and mobile phone technologies like javascript, HTML5 and iOS development.

Ruben Vilar (@rubenvilar)

Finally, Ruben. Ruben is a 26 year old who has worked in IT and Service Desks for years in a big corporation. He is a specialist in Point Of Sale and in ITILL projects. He is currently finishing his MBA at Barcelona’s University. A friend of Joan and Xevi´s, he was the last member to join in the team. He is in charge of the business-side of the project.

How did you came up with the idea? What is the story behind it?

At the beginning of 2011, Joan and Xevi were finishing a project when they started to think of ways to apply their know-how from corporate projects to create something of their own. One day, in a queue at a busy McDonald’s, waiting for their food, the cashier came over to take their orders with a pocket pc. Eureka! That was the moment when the friends realized that, if nowadays everyone has a smartphone, why not use that to order and purchase? After looping the loop, thinking a lot, and improving every side of the idea they made Shopsial.

How do you envision the future of your business and what are the key challenges and questions that your market niche is facing?

The future is Internet everywhere, with everybody, in everything. We are going to improve out-dated workflows and make them part of the past. Cash is part of the past. Our vision of the future include access to all information, knowledge of your possibilities and options, and the convenience of all this technology in your hand.

The future will show what the best way to implement it is, but we’re sure, whatever form it takes, Shopsial will be behind whatever it is!

What is your status as of today or, in other words, what are you guys up to these days?

We’re working to finish our first version of the system for the beginning of February. We want to validate it through testing in Barcelona. We´re also working to have a network of investors to help us after February’s validation.

What is the single most important barrier you have had to face in order to start this venture in Spain and how did you overcome it?

1 word, 5 letters, m-o-n-e-y. We don’t have a strong entrepreneurial culture in Spain and that means that public administration and private investors usually not are open to hearing new ideas outside of traditional businesses. We aren´t just just talking about money, but moreover, the educational foundation that in other countries children learn at school!

A word of advice to other entrepreneurs…

The world is full of people that say no. Fight for your ideas. Because saying “no” is so easy, but he who fights for a “yes” is worth the response.

Parting thoughts…

Entrepreneurs tend to sleep little but dream a lot

Howdy friends!

Nast Marrero, here! Last week we launched Startup Spain‘s first program: the Angel School. Our take is: it’s been a great beginning for Startup Spain. We had more than 60 attendees of which more than 2/3 were potential investors.

This is an unusually large display of interest in the Spanish investment arena, where most events see no more than 20 or some participants maximum. Mentoring Angel Investors to better navigate their deal analysis is a keystone in fostering ITC startups in Spain. The program was a real marathon: 10+ hours of training (don´t worry we let them stop for lunch . Thankfully, our first group of graduates proved to be up to the challenge, taking advantage of all the different elements of the day.

Missing from the program were the typical made-up miracle cures and formulas. We strived to keep the content practical, following the Tetuan Valley Way with hands-on exercises and significant mentors’ experiences

The event was hosted @ the awesome facilities of Madrid International Lab and kicked off by Iñaki Ortega, Director of Madrid Emprende, and one of the main forces behind Startup Spain. In his opening speech, Iñaki brought up the importance of joining private and public efforts to facilitate and develop entrepreneurial activity, and the key role those efforts will play in the long-run global competitiveness of Spain.

Two roundtables with rockstar speakers cherry-topped the program: one from Investors already Angel Investing and another from Entrepreneurs. Each of them gave invaluable insights on what it is they look for, value, and ask during an early stage investment.

The investors’ roundtable was moderated by our very own Alex Barrera (co-founder of Tetuan Valley & CEO of Press42), and formed by:

• Aurelio Lopez Baraja (investor in Netgamix, Feebo & Startupbootcamp)
• Nacho de Pinedo (cofounder of ISDI & former executive @ Canal+)
• Manuel Balsera (Founder of StartDMC, investor in Netgamix & former executive @ ONO)
• Luis Martin Cabiedes (Founder of Cabiedes & Partners, leading Spanish Business Angel, & investor in Privalia, Ole & Gigas)

On the other corner, moderated by Ricardo Fernandez (director of Step One Spain), the entrepreneurs’ roundtable formed by:

• Diego Mariño (CEO of Ducksboard & Abiquo)
• Justo Hidalgo (Co-founder of 24Symbols)
• Miguel Acosta (CEO of Beruby)
• Fernando Sainz (CEO of Referama)

Both roundtables aimed to give participants a overview of the ecosystem, showcasing startups from their seed stage through founders that have already made an exit, with similar ranges of experiences coming from the Angel investors, from managers that were just launching their first investment through those who have been in the game for a while.

Given the success and the of the program and the importance we place on such event to foster investment culture we’re already iterating on the feedback from the first event to run a LEGENDARY second edition of Startup Spain Angel School on March 22nd. Wanna get your tickets? Check here!

We had the pleasure of following all the twitter interactions of the event through Zoomry, now in it´s beta stage. The product is awesome and if you check #AngelSchool Social Media @ AngelSchool.Zoomry.com… You can see for yourself they’re up to something big!

You might want to check the slides of our presentations in our slideshare or check the pictures in our flickr group.

Thank you for reading… Bestest!

These series of guest posts are written based off of interviews done with entrepreneurs in Spain, as part of an initiative to bring awareness about the Startup Spain movement. Today we interview Ernesto Guimerans de Alfonso, co-founder of  echeckin services and Tetuan Valley Alumni from Spring 2011

Company: echeckin services
Founded: 2011
URL: http://www.echeckinservices.com
Twitter: @echeckin_svcs
City: Madrid

Founders: Ernesto Guimerans de Alfonso and Victoria Martin

We offer a cloud based platform to register user presence at specific locations and communicate tasks from those points. Users and companies configure their services online and through mobile devices they can interact with the platform at the points of interest.

Who is behind this project? Who are the team members?

The founding members are Ernesto Guimerans de Alfonso and Victoria Martin. We’ve known each other for 5 years from working at the same company. There we found we complement each other perfectly and although we have similar technical profiles, the fact is that we are really different in other respects. Recently, after turning our idea into a company, we hired Borja Pelegrín to strengthen the commercial side and the product design. Short-term, we plan to hire a teleoperator, a graphic designer and a programmer.

How did you came up with the idea? What is the story behind it?

During our last jobs working for a private company (2006-2010), we were lucky to share experiences with a great team. Without a doubt, working in the R&D department of a company that really supports innovation has helped to deepen our desire to innovate and be entrepreneurs. Since 2010, the mobile phone has become like a tiny personal computer – and its evolution goes on and on –  so we began to inquire about it´s possible uses in order to help companies to improve their daily operations. When working for a private company we found that change is hard and transitions are slow. So we decided to take the leap and try to make money with echeckin, our own project.

Towards the end of 2010, we went “all-in”, and left our jobs to dedicate ourselves full-time to the project. It wasn’t easy, but we felt that it was our time, and with the support of friends & family, we did it.

For months, we worked with our contacts to start searching for the best solution to help companies with mobile technologies.  Because the range of possibilities was so broad, we failed to define a particular market and a product to solve their needs.

After months of  hard work we unexpectedly discovered Tetuan Valley Startup School. At that moment we thought that maybe the program could help us. It turned out that it marked a turning point for us. We applied with “a service cloud-based platform with NFC technology”, and we participated in the Spring 2011 Edition graduating with new contacts, mentors, good feelings, encouragement, of course a lot of work, and having learned a few things that helped us to better define parts of our business plan.

After finishing the experience, we were deeply immersed in the tech start-up world, but we still had a lot of work ahead. We mainly lacked two things: commercial validation and funding. Then we thought that maybe it could be good for us to continue with our project under a start-up accelerator, and here we are. Now we’re nearly finished the 4-month Business Booster accelerator program in Valencia.

How do you envision the future of your business and what are the key challenges and questions that your market niche is facing?

Of course we see a promising future- otherwise we would be wasting our time. A current relevant opportunity could be that NFC technology becomes popular. However, any similar technology can be adapted to our platform; our real value proposition is the platform itself.

Although we integrate several technologies, NFC is really impressive with regards to it´s ability for human interaction with the environment through a simple approach. With the convenience of electronic wallet and customer loyalty so far, we are really convinced that this technology is here to stay: a few months ago there were just a couple of NFC mobile devices, now there are more than 10-  next year all mobile device manufactures have announced that they will have at least one NFC device.

Everybody- users as well as all kind of companies, no matter their size or sector, can use our platform daily.

What is your status as of today or, in other words, what are you guys up to these days?

We have raised 48k in public funding. But we’re still looking for seed funding; we’ve already presented our project at two business angel investor forums. Short-term we’ll present in two more in order to complete our first round of seed funding investment.

Regarding the echeckin product: we have installed a pilot for time & attendance at a private school in Barcelona and soon we’ll install another one for a cleaning company. We’re also working to develop our freemium service and we hope to launch that before the end of  2011 so that anyone can test the service absolutely  free.

What is the single most important barrier you have had to face in order to start this venture in Spain and how did you overcome it?

The main barrier we find here in Spain is talking to companies. On one hand we are technical guys, not sales. However, the underlying fact is that most business managers are reluctant to hear about new services. They are focused on selling their product through traditional means even though these new services can increase their productivity, reduce operational costs and add value to the services they offer, like transparency for example.

Sometimes we get lucky enough to find people that are our “early adopters.” They help us improve and validate our solution, and they are willing to test pilots because they are interested in becoming subscribers in the future. That´s where we are now…

I´d like to make a call to these people -security, time & attendance, domiciliary health & care, presence control, etc-  who want to know more about us to come meet us, if they want for lunch, and talk about their services and real needs!! It would help us a lot in defining our features

A word of advice to other entrepreneurs…

No doubt about it: being an entrepreneur is really hard, even harder than you have heard. The truth is that you must  be aware that the days of going out to parties, cinema, dinner with friends, and a lot of other social elements are over. To be an entrepreneur requires 75% of your day-to-day, and, of course 150% of your money. The rest of the time is for resting and exercise, if nothing else. If you put a lot of value on travelling, drinking with friends, being with your girlfriend, and so on, it would be better to continue working in your current company (if you have one, of course). I really mean it.

Parting thoughts…

Among the hundreds of quotes you can read and hear:

“I think ultimately, the technology that is appealing is really just mimicking life, right? In some way, shape or form, it’s either taking historical data, collecting and organizing it, and delivering it to us in a more efficient way, or in some, way, shape, or form, it’s advancing the speed at which that happens”.

- Ashton Kutcher,  2011 TechCrunch Disrupt

Regarding the effort it takes to be an entrepreneur:

“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”

- Thomas Edison

In case you missed the original announcement with all the details…you should panic because:

There are now only 7 days left to apply for the 6th Edition of the Tetuan Valley Startup School!

(Except not really ´cause you still have time!)

To Review:

What is the Tetuan Valley Startup School?

A 6 week program for young wanna-be-entrepreneurs who want to experience what is it like to build a startup.

What is exactly this program about?

The course is a 6 week period of training and working on the implementation of an idea. To release a prototype by the end of the program. It comes complete with pizza,  other entrepreneurs, courses, mentors, and more!

Who is this program for?

This program is oriented to first-time entrepreneurs.

Who is behind this program?

We already wrote about it here, so check it out if you’ve missed it.

Requirements

There are some basic requirements we expect everyone to fulfill.

1. Ideas for projects MUST be innovative.
2. Ideas WILL be executed, so pick something that can be done in 6 weeks of work.
3. Teams will range from 1 to 4 persons max.
4. Physical presence WILL be required
5. Teams WILL have homework, well…kinda

Dates

March 7th – April 11th, scheduled for every Wednesday afternoon at 7pm

Fees and weird contracts claiming your soul

NON, nada, FREE as in beer. So there is no excuse for not attending the program.

Enrollment

That can be done here

Any questions or inquires?

Feel free to ask us
• Contact form
• twitter.com/tetuanvalley

If all this sounds good so far, please check out the original announcement, as there are a few more details you should read

These series of guest posts are written based off of interviews done with entrepreneurs in Spain, as part of an initiative to bring awareness about the Startup Spain movement. Today we interview David Pedroche, co-founder of ControlAd and Tetuan Valley Alumni from Fall 2010

Company: Control Ad
Founded: 2009
URL: www.controlad.es
Twitter: @control_ad
City: Madrid
Founders:

David Pedroche

• David Pedroche Linkedin
• David Pedroche Twitter
• David Pedroche Company

 

Pablo Cosias

• Pablo Cosias Linkedin
• Pablo Cosias Twitter
• Pablo Cosias Company

Control Ad is a company that develops tools to audit and control advertising campaigns

Who is behind this project? Who are the team members?

Both Pablo and I have always had entrepreneurship in our hearts and were always talking about what it would be like to create a project, become rich and create more projects. So, we both left our respective companies, told our parents we were fired, and started working full-time in our ideas in January, 2010.

In January 2011 our friend Raul Luque helped us run the numbers to explore the project feasibility, in June he decided to help us with some money ( thus, becoming our first fool.. sorry, investor) and in September he joined us to be our CTO.

By October 2011 we found Manuel Tereisa, other foo.. sorry investor that put in some money and helped with sales.

And here we are, four foo.. sorry entrepreneurs ready to kick some ass!

Pablo and I were flat mates and one day Pablo showed me a demo he was working on. Initially, the demo allowed you to identify CD covers with a picture from your mobile phone, and he said he was thinking about selling it. I told him I had a better idea, to use this tool to create something of our own, and that day we started to work in Control Ad

We want to see all the important advertisers using our tools to know better when, where and how their advertisements are shown in the internet thus helping them extract more value out their marketing efforts and make better decisions.

We have made our first big sale to a big client:

Infoadex, a leading Spanish company in advertising that uses our technology to estimate their budget for the online advertising market.

This month we have launched our second product line “Control Ad Black List” which advertisers can use to keep their ads away from sites they might not want their brand associated with, such as those that promote violence, drugs or illegal file sharing.

Next steps after that… TV and radio!

Bureaucracy is crazy in Spain, but there is something that pisses me off even more:

In Spain there is no entrepreneurial culture, everybody wants to have a “safe” job (extra points, if that job is for the government) and nobody will respect your work as an entrepreneur until you make serious money in your startup.

If you want free advisory from high-profile people, don’t pay for meals, invite them to breakfast.

There’s one thing I learned in all my years. Sometimes you just gotta say, “What the fuck”

-Risky Business

Thats right, another edition of Tetuan Valley is almost here… It seems just yesterday we were just presenting the graduated the Fall 2011 Teams to the TV Community at Mentor Day…

So here we go again… the Spring 2012 Tetuan Valley Startup School (TVSS) is upon us and we are coming BACK for more in Madrid!

What is the Tetuan Valley Startup School?

It’s an experience that tries to bring to life many of the values of our manifesto. The Tetuan Valley Startup school is a 6 week program for young wanna-be-entrepreneurs who want to experience what is it like to build a startup.

What is exactly this program about?

The course is a 6 week period of training and working on the implementation of an idea. Teams will choose an idea the first day and their goal will be to release a prototype by the end of the program. During each week, we will meet with all teams at our offices in what we like to call… the pizza night. During the weekly meetings, our staff will give a small lecture about how to build startups. These lectures WON’T be technical in nature, but philosophical. Our goal is to communicate principles, not technical knowledge. After the lectures each team will present their achievements of the week, to us and the rest of the teams. They will also review their pitch, to prioritize developments, focus and improve communication skills.

Finally each pizza night we’ll invite a mentor to give advice for 30min. Both group and personal coaching will be available after that if desired. By the end of the 6 weeks we’ll do a big presentation day where everyone will show their final prototype. We will then choose the best teams and projects as winners and their project will be forwarded to international investors for analysis.

Who is this program for?

This program is oriented to first-time entrepreneurs.

Who is behind this program?

We already wrote about it here, so check it out if you’ve missed it.

Requirements

There are some basic requirements we expect everyone to fulfill.

1. Ideas for projects MUST be innovative. This means, we won’t accept already existing ideas. We don’t expect radically new ideas, but we do expect some degree of innovation. For example, Team A: We want to build a social network for my friends. FAIL! Team B: We want to build a system to exchange homework between fellow students. OK!
2. Ideas WILL be executed, so pick something that can be done in 6 weeks of work. This doesn’t means that you should choose something that takes 1 weekend to finish and spend the other 5 weeks playing Wii. We want you to be stressed, but know yourself and pick something you can handle without spending 6 weeks with next to no sleep.
3. Teams will range from 1 to 4 persons max. (See Recommendations below)
4. Physical presence WILL be required, so be sure you can attend the meetups during those 6 week before enrolling.
5. Teams WILL have homework, well… weekly assignments anyway aimed at helping to create buzz around the projects, and reaching milestones in the startup process. Don´t worry, the assignments aren´t hard but teams that don´t do them won´t graduate.

Recommendations

These are some tips we recommend you to follow. They aren’t required but we wouldn´t be writting ´em if they weren´t important

1. Enroll with a partner. We don’t require you to have a team to enroll in the program, but it’s highly advisable. If you want to participate try bringing a friend or a partner with you to help you with it. Best number is 2/3 persons per team.
2. Strong English knowledge, written and spoken. Our goal is to share our program, and your ideas internationally, so materials like slides, lectures, videos, etc. WILL be in English. There might be Spanish presentations from time to time, but if you don’t feel comfortable with it, think it twice before enrolling.
3. This program will require you to work. Any team that doesn’t shows progress will be immediately expelled from the program. So, if you really really don’t feel like working, avoid the pain and don’t enroll.
4. This program will require you to participate. Constructive criticism is expected from everybody, as well as motivation for other to develop and improve their pitch and demos. If you are reserved we recommend you to leave your shyness outside.
5. This program is aimed to first time entrepreneurs. People who are unfamiliar with the startup world. So beware that if you enroll and already know what a startup is, what a VC is, what is a valuation, IPO, etc. you might get really bored. Enroll at your own risk, you’ve been warned.
6. Teams aren’t expected to build their companies after the program. Some might, some won’t. It’s not the goal of the program to incubate new companies but to show a new path, a new way of thinking. Teams that want to keep going with their projects will be offered coaching and coworking space in Okuri Spaces. Teams that don’t want to keep going with their projects can quit after the program ends. So there is no permanence contract with the program after it ends, it’s open to the teams to choose.
7. I’m not a student anymore, may I participate? Yes, of course, we accept all age ranges, we love plural environments so don’t be shy.
8. If you only have an idea, start thinking it through. We are going to ask you some tough questions, and we expect you to have given a lot of thought, and maybe some time starting on your project. In the past it was OK if you didn´t know what you wanted to do, last edition all of the chosen teams did. Having more than one idea is OK, but come prepared to talk about both, and we can help you focus in on one or the other.
9. It’s MANDATORY that teams have at least one technical member on board. Due to previous editions we’ve learnt the hard way that it’s fundamental the technical skills on board if you’re going to make it to the end. So please, enroll with your friendly geek, you’ll need him!
10. I already have a working startup, may I apply? It depends, if you aren’t making any money, chances are that the Startup School is for you. It’s not only about the lectures, but about getting in touch with like-minded people that will help you refine your model, UI, pitch, etc. Our experience is that most teams that apply with a startup end up having a blast with the Startup School. Nevertheless, if you feel the Startup School is too small for you, you can always apply for one of our European accelerator partner programs such as Startup Bootcamp Europe, Seedcamp, Springboard, HackFwd, Gamma Rebels, Startup Highway or Wayra but be advised that the requirements regarding the development of your project for these programs are much higher. It’s advisable to go through the Startup School first.

If you really want to know how and why we pick the teams we do, please see this post.

Why SHOULD you enroll in the program?

After all the evil warnings and recommendation it’s fair to write WHY should you give it a try.

Attending this program you’ll get in touch with like minded people in the entrepreneurial world, not only locally, but globally. You’ll learn how to do a good Zen presentation, how to pitch investors and how to pitch to other entrepreneurs that can give you advice. You will share experiences with other teams and establish relations with other entrepreneurs from other countries. You will learn the basics any successful startup needs to know, both from an entrepreneur perspective and from an investor perspective. You’ll learn how to take an idea from the abstract world of ideas and execute it, how to plan for it and all the surprises that you’ll find along the way.

If Kendo is the way of the sword… we will teach you the way of the startup. After that, it’s up to you to succeed. You’ll have what you need, the world will be waiting for you to come and take what you fight for!

And always remember:

“If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.” – Buddhist Saying

Dates

The program is expected to start March 7th and will end by April 11th, 6 weeks later. Meetups will be scheduled for every Wednesday afternoon at 7pm, at our offices in Tetuan during those weeks. Some sporadic extra meetups might be scheduled to assist to entrepreneurial events but won’t be obligatory (although advisable).

Fees and weird contracts claiming your soul

NON, nada, FREE as in beer. So there is no excuse for not attending the program.

Enrollment

If after reading all the above warnings and advice you still feel fit for it, fill in the inscription form here with your information and the information of any of your teammates (please don’t send 3 inscriptions per team member, with one per team is enough). Inscriptions WILL be closed February 19th but the number of slots for interviews are limited so BE FAST or you’ll end up with no slot.

If you don’t want to attend but know someone that might fit our requirements and might be interested in attending, please send them our way!

Any questions or inquires?

Feel free to ask us
• Contact form
• twitter.com/tetuanvalley

Hi-ho, tetuanees!

@Statupjedi here. I’m writing this short note to invite you to our next Okuri Talk: “Managing Uncertainty“, by our great StartupBootcamp mentor and Executive coach Juan Carlos Arrese.

Why is it gonna rock? Because, that’s why!

Juan Carlos has been coaching executives for the last 7 years, and he’s always been driven to find out what are the critical issues that enable best performance and execution mindset.

In this talk, JC’s gonna speak about how to deal with uncertainty. For entrepreneurs (and other mammals) this is really crucial. We humans try to move in safe environments, and around them we build and illusion of control. BUT, are we ever in control?

Remember grandpa’ Darwin’s friend saying: “The survival of the fittest“. The fittest, in this context doesn’t mean those in the best physical shape, but those who better adapt to their immediate environment.

Startup art and craftmanship verses a lot on that. Entrepreneurs ought to be more flexible than Bruce Lee to build, measure and LEARN. The Lean Startup way is somehow opposite conflicted with the control-freakness of 5-year business plans and stone-written roadmaps.

So JC, will help us to hone our skills to accept the unexpected challenges our startups will through to us… gamifing your tasks and better defining your execution goals.

Come this Wednesday 25th January at 19.00 and enjoy another Orange Night full of awesomeness and likeminded entrepreneurs. Get your FREE tickets now!

(This Okuri Talk will be in Spanish)

These series of guest posts are written based off of interviews done with entrepreneurs in Spain, as part of an initiative to bring awareness about the Startup Spain movement. Today we interview Miguel Acosta, Partner & CEO at beruby

Company: BeRuby
Founded: 2008
URL: http://beruby.com
Twitter: @beruby_es
City: Madrid
Founders:

 

Miguel Acosta

• Miguel Acosta Linkedin
• Miguel Acosta Twitter
• Miguel Acosta Company

 

Nieves Perez

• Nieves Perez Linkedin
• Nieves Perez Twitter
• Nieves Perez Company

 

Samuel Arenas

• Samuel Arenas Linkedin
• Samuel Arenas Company

BeRuby is (i) having a virtual desktop with your favourite sites in one place (“the cloud”concept), (ii) saving money through your daily online activity (when you shop, visit sites, register, see videos, etc), and (iii) creating a community of users that shop (social shopping).

Who is behind this project? Who are the team members?

The project has had many shareholders and people who have helped the company during the past four years.  The co-founders that still work in beruby are Samuel Arenas, Nieves Perez and Miguel Acosta.

We all had known each other for many years and, at one point, decided to create beruby as we thought there was a market opportunity.  Nieves left her job at Telefonica and started the company, Miguel joined the following year (after being at Ask.com and Yahoo) and Samuel Arenas one year later (after being at Ask.com and Páginas Amarillas).

How did you came up with the idea? What is the story behind it?

It would be cool to say that it came one night in a bar… unfortunately the story is not so glamorous:

After many years working with internet companies we were seeing that the most valuable players in the sector were the users (which is kind of obvious).  The second most valuable players were the advertisers. And in the middle, there were lots of intermediaries.

A typical transaction would take place as follows:

(i) user searches for a product

(ii) search engines send the user to a content page

(iii) content page would have links from an affiliation network

(iv) the affiliation network link would take the user to the shop

For every intermediary there was a margin. Taking this into account, the idea behind beruby was to create a page for the users where they could start their internet experience (a “homepage”) and to give them the chance to go to the merchant directly, sharing with them the commissions the advertiser was willing to pay.

These simple ideas took us several months.

How do you envision the future of your business and what are the key challenges and questions that your market niche is facing?

E-commerce is definitely growing and we think that, given the opportunity, anyone would be happy to save money from each online transaction they make.

Our biggest challenge?  Earning money on the Internet has a negative connotation.  To overcome this, our strategy is to be open and offer transparent communication (for example: who we are, our address, our terms and conditions, etc) but it is definitely not easy when you are talking about giving out money online.

What is your status as of today or, in other words, what are you guys up to these days?

Our focus right now is on international expansion (we just launched Mexico), redesigning the page (we don’t know why but it seems that we always need a more modern version) and grabbing the attention of new advertisers and users.

What is the single most important barrier you have had to face in order to start this venture in Spain and how did you overcome it?

The most important barrier is funding… there seems to be a lot of seed capital but, once you reach a certain size, you are in the middle of a desert (too big for most local Spanish investors and too little for strong international investors).  Our strategy to overcome this phase (we are still in the middle of it) is to achieve breakeven and subsidize our growth with our revenues.

A word of advice to other entrepreneurs…

Hire slow and fire fast (this, by the way, is easy to say buy very hard to execute).

Parting thoughts…

The hardest part in a startup is that you wake up one morning, and you feel great about the day, and you think, “We’re kicking ass.” And then you wake up the next morning, and you think “We’re dead.” And literally nothing’s changed

Joe Krauss (Cofounder, Excite)