“If you stop, you lose” and “it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission” are two phrases that may sound cliché but have helped build the culture – and success – of one of the most recognised native digital vertical brands in the ecosystem: Laagam. The brand created in 2017 by brothers Inés and Diego Arroyo and Cristian Badia’s mission is to “empower women to change the world”, and it does so by creating a growing community of enthusiastic customers, who buy its timeless fashion products but above all the lifestyle, the aspirational nature of affordable luxury that its co-founder and creative director transmits.

Inés Arroyo, who was an influencer before she was an entrepreneur, has shared her experiences as an entrepreneur in the fashion industry in a ‘Coffee with’ with the Tech Barcelona community. Inés talks non-stop, she is direct and empathetic, convincing and humble at the same time. If there is one thing Laagam has done in its years of history, it is to try any tool or channel that could bring value to the brand or its customers: a bag via crowdfunding on Kickstarter, Whatsapp group sales, pre-sales, the most raw narrative of the brand through TikTok…. And that results in a sum of hits and misses that you have to know how to manage. “We were too cautious during the pandemic,” she admits.

Like other digital native brands, Laagam is also making the leap to offline: it started with a pop-up, has a corner in the WOW centre in Madrid, and this week inaugurates the first space inside an El Corte Inglés in Madrid, which may be the beginning of a fruitful collaboration and expansion. It is all part of the learning process, of the team and of the company. The next step, Arroyo acknowledges, will be the company’s own shops. “Our goal is to be a 100 million company, maybe in ten years’ time”.

With a growth model that began like that of any startup – and the support of Luis Martín Cabiedes, among other well-known investors in the tech ecosystem – the company recorded sales of 5 million in 2023 “and we hope to double that and reach 10 in 2025”, and 70% of sales come from abroad. In a world dominated by fast fashion, the company is gaining a foothold among local suppliers -mainly in Barcelona-, but also in Italy, Portugal, Morocco, and does not rule out going to China in the future, “because of technology and cost, especially for accessories”.

When we talk about startups we usually associate that first stage with finding an ‘eureka’, raising the money and looking for the team to make it happen and bringing it to market. After the euphoria usually comes the valley of death. And those that survive then face the challenge of any company: to grow profitably. We talked about this moment with two startups with consolidated internationalisation strategies, Innovamat and Lodgify, and with Kibo Ventures, a VC that has supported some of the great success stories of the ecosystem from the beginning.

Internationalisation, financing, company culture and governance were the central themes highlighted in the meeting organised by Tech Barcelona with our partner Oracle Netsuite. Here are some of the main messages of the session:

Juan López, partner at Kibo Ventures

From betting on early-stage startups, to selling them to companies like Airbnb, Apple or Paypal. VC Kibo Ventures has a decade of experience growing startups in Europe.

• Founders. “It is not positive that the financial partner leads the company. They are not involved in the day-to-day business. We believe very much in the fact that companies belong to the founders, but it is clear that in the growth stage it is increasingly difficult to maintain that character.”
• Collaboration. “When we started ten years ago, Spain was not a very competitive country. Our first fund was 43 million euros, so as soon as you did a round, it was too small. This has led us, from the beginning, to be collaborative and invest with other funds, ideally international, to provide vertical and geographic knowledge.
• Internationalisation. “For a company to become international, it needs to internationalise everything: from the employees to the board. And it is not always easy. You have to mitigate culture clashes and adapt to the principles and values of each place, both in terms of investment, staff and customers.

Andreu Dotti, CEO at Innovamat

Founded in 2017, Innovamat is a platform that transforms the way children learn mathematics. “But we don’t define ourselves as a technology company, we don’t connect the child to the screen,” says Dotti. It has 320 employees and is present in more than 2,100 educational centres in 8 countries (20% of its business is international).

• Company culture. “As we grow, we have to maintain a balance between the startup spirit, the feeling of being agile and the complexity of management. In our case, the creation of the company culture and its processes came naturally: from onboarding, to working on trusting relationships despite being a hierarchical organisation.”
• Focus. “We are committed to grow only in mathematics, and only in large markets.
• Investment. “We have maintained sustainable growth. If I have to give you a piece of advice, go get the money when you don’t need it”.
• Mentality. “In the face of adversity, some of us founders have a very high capacity for self-deception. Sometimes positivity is a good thing”.

Alex Giralt, CFO at Lodgify

Founded in 2012, Lodgify is a backoffice system for organising holiday flats, which employs 300 people and generates more than half of its business in the United States (only 3% in Spain). With an annual growth of 50% in the last three years, it has the ambition to be the leader in short-stay flat software.

• Growth. “Since 2012, the growth process has been slow and with many iterations. We prefer to feel like scale-up at the moment: decision making changes and the steps need to be much safer.
• Product. “If you don’t have a ‘hype’ product, your decisions to grow need to be much more thoughtful, under your own model”.
• Work culture. “Evolve with your own growth: the pandemic changed a lot of things in the business, but it also meant the consolidation of remote working. And it is very important to work on the links outside of work; we have a specific team for dynamisation and activities”.
• Investment situation. “The Spanish market has been doing very well up to seed, but after that you have to leave. It is very important to maintain your independence and judgement despite the influence of investors. Even if you have an alternative investment plan that keeps you going.

“A startup, in the beginning, is nothing more than an experiment”. Red Points has certainly not been a startup for a long time, but an ambitious scaleup with a global business, offices in Barcelona, New York, Salt Lake City and Beijing, a team of almost 300 people and a turnover that this year will exceed 30 million euros. And what’s more, as of this September, it is a profitable company. A milestone in the history of this Barcelona-based company founded in 2011 and dedicated to combating online fraud.

In a conversation with Tech Barcelona, its partner and CEO since 2014, Laura Urquizu, recognised as one of the most influential leaders on the technology business scene, explained the lessons learned throughout her career and explained how profitability, in the current decisive economic climate, has become an increasingly sought-after objective among investors and entrepreneurs:

“We understood that we could no longer be experiments, that we had to prove that our business model was real: we had to put aside ‘growth no matter what’ and measure the profitability of every euro we invested. We started this journey in April 2022 and today I can already say that we are ‘cashflow positive’. We are masters of our destiny.

On the horizon, Urquizu does not rule out any future option for further growth, whether it be going listed on the stock exchange or becoming part of an industrial group. What is clear is that the market in which he operates continues to grow globally. Counterfeiting has only increased and become more sophisticated, forcing the company to prioritise technology development. This has been the case for more than ten years. Ten years in which the company has raised rounds of 76 million euros. Ten years helping more than 1,200 clients around the world, such as Hugo Boss or Real Madrid. Ten years of “passing screens”, making mistakes and solving them. And a year in the ‘path to profitability’.

The story of Red Points and Laura Urquizu continues, now, under the “peace of mind” that comes with profitability. You can watch the whole session here:

When you grow a startup, there are things that you know will happen and yet are difficult to manage. Others that you don’t expect and, without warning, appear and you have to deal with them. And there are issues that are rarely talked about. Oriol Vila, with his experience as co-founder of Holaluz (TB Partner), has given us his advice on how to go from startup to scaleup, suffering as little as possible along the way: “Startups are a succession of mistakes. In the end, those that make the fewest mistakes or have the most money survive”.

Things you KNOW will happen

• Hire someone from ‘People’ as soon as possible, without waiting for the company to reach 100 employees, and work on hiring, onboarding and follow-up processes.
• Establish a single message, aligned with the company’s vision, mission and culture, and repeat it “until they tell you you’re a pain in the ass”.
• Grow as a founder. “Although it is difficult to leave the ‘Excels’, ‘Powerpoints’ and newsletters behind, you have to know how to delegate in order to be able to keep your mind on the long term”.

Things you DON’T KNOW will happen

• “With 100 people you feel you are going slower than with 20”. Communication multiplies, egos emerge and silos and power struggles are created on a small scale. In short, everything becomes more complex. Possible solution? “Try to limit the areas of friction, creating transversal teams by objectives, where there will always be common ground”.
• “A founder can easily reach 25 employees. When this ratio breaks apart, the message starts to get diluted and subcultures emerge”. A solution? Define formal methods of spreading the company’s culture.
• One of the main failure factors in startups is the relationship between partners. It is essential to align values, review roles and responsibilities, be humble and, above all, “go out to dinner and party”; work on the personal and professional side together. “After this 13-year journey, Carlota Pi, Ferran Nogué and I have had our tensions, but we consider ourselves a success story”.

Things that are talked about LITTLE

• In the Growth phase, it is essential to make a Secondary Sale and sell part of the shares. “Having money in the bank gives you more security.
• You have to know about taxation. “You don’t have to be an expert, but you don’t have to be caught out either”.
• Going public helps align interests between entrepreneurs and investors.
• And finally, “the answers to everything are in the books”. Oriol Vila recommends “Who: The A Method For Hiring” by Geoff Smart, “Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World” by General Stanley McChrystal and “Conscious Capitalism” by John Mackey and Raj Sisodia.

Listen to first-hand advice in the full video of the session:

Why do startups have to grow so fast? How important is the control that founders have over equity?

Carlos Pierre, CEO and co-founder of Badi, does not hesitate to explain out loud the mistakes made in the years in which Badi grew up thinking of being a unicorn. The story could have ended badly, like so many others, but a pandemic, many adjustments and 55 million lost, a recapitalisation and a new business model later, the company claims to be at the end of the tunnel.

Many entrepreneurs were able to listen to him live and talk to him in the first edition of “TB Coffee with…”, leaving us with three great learnings or tips from his experience as an entrepreneur:

• Do not artificially oversize the team. “You don’t need to have stars either, just highly motivated people with the capacity to learn”.
• We can be informed about what others are doing, without becoming obsessed! “If we have a good product and service, it will work”.
• And enjoy the journey. “I haven’t made a great exit yet, but I have a great time every day I go to work.

Here is the video of the session; you can also play it in the background as a podcast ?