A travel agency, a construction company, a restaurant, or a mobile application. No matter the sector, hundreds of businesses have managed to be champions of growth in the last three years in Spain, according to a list drawn up by Iberinform, group Credit and Suretyship. Crossing data from the trade Register, have been identified 834 gazelles, with less than five years of life, growing more than 20% in each of the last three fiscal years and billed over half a million euros with a workforce of more than 10 employees.
Are small businesses who do not know how to walk, only run. “Their collective value lies in the ability to tell us where are the niches of economic growth. And the answer may surprise you: in Spain, the gazelles continue to operate in traditional sectors. Only a minority of them work in the more innovative, such as e-commerce, ICT or biotechnology,” says Ignacio Jimenez, director of Iberinform.
The first of the classification, Travelperk, was founded in Barcelona in 2016 of the hand of the israeli Avi Meir and the salvadoran Javier Suarez, former Booking that were found in the business trip to a new market niche. “Last year was really strong for us. We continue to grow, we have gone from 155 to 433 employees, we opened a second office in Barcelona and we closed a round of funding of 104 million,” says Meir. With a turnover of 44 million in 2018, this year is posed to launch more products around the business trips.
Are twice as large as the second company more quickly, the construction is the Spine, a engineering founded in Madrid by people who had been working for 20 years in the industry, but they decided to give another approach to a traditional business. “The usual model is based on the outsourcing of a work with an auction among the suppliers. We’ve given it the back, our offerings have greater certainty, which has helped us to have a portfolio of recruitment of 50 million,” said Javier Cordoba, its ceo and partner. It is sometimes known, but the market is a blank page. It happens to Wallbox, a company founded by former Tesla, Enric Asuncion, and Eduard Castañeda, who is dedicated to design, produce and distribute chargers for the electric car. “We saw the need for other car manufacturers to create smart solutions for home, that would load faster, save money,” says Asuncion. In four years, they have managed to be present in Europe and now in China. “Our foundations are in the product, very differential, it really is a lot better than what there is in the market, that gives you an advantage.”
The product is also the philosopher’s stone for Elparking, an application that tries to be “the airbag of the car, with a utility to pay for services such as the ORA, but also related to driving”, defined by Enrique Dominguez, director. In a few years there have been 1.3 million users, of which 485.000 have made a transaction in the last three months.
Size of the companies that grow
Small
companies
668
Median
company
137
Large
companies
23
Source: Iberinform.
THE COUNTRY
Size of the companies that grow
Small
companies
668
Median
company
137
Large
companies
23
Source: Iberinform.
THE COUNTRY
Size of the companies that grow
Small
enterprise
668
Median
company
137
Large
enterprise
23
Source: Iberinform.
THE COUNTRY
Ramon González Cambray, director of the MBA of the UOC, create smes with vision and journey. “With so much competition and globalization, so that just by defining a company’s roe is in the efficiency of the processes. A key challenge is innovation, through digitization offers opportunities of business. And even if they are not 100% digital, secure that growth in this aspect has a major impact”.
Many digital models looking to scale, multiplying their customers. Sometimes forgetting the benefit. Rely on that to lose is the first step to win. Luis Pérez del Val, founder and ceo of Lola’s Market, a system of online shopping in supermarket, says that this kind of business only makes sense if they expand at the speed of light. His first company wedding online, Bodaclick, it came to trading on the MAB and ended up in liquidation. “You have to take advantage of the global presence that offers the Internet. Vouchers much more the more you lose. It happened to Amazon, which took many years to get benefits”. Val is a guide for the new metrics that are circulating in the virtual world: traffic, number of users, visits, followers… The cost-effectiveness seems to be lost sight of, although perhaps not so much. “For me it is also fundamental to know that I am winning on every order,” he recalls.
“The growth is complicated, it brings disorder, you have to go procedimentándolo everything to respond to the volume”. The model Lola Market is known and replicated by many of these new businesses. They are an aggregator: have no dealers or shops, only connect them through a platform that leads to the client. Your personal shopper are, as defined by Doe, “independent contractor”. Translated into Spanish, their delivery drivers are self-employed. The platform charge for each order that the user makes and receives from the supermarket a percentage of the invoiced volume. Enter by both parties.
Financing of the brick
The sectors most represented
Construction of residential buildings
Carriage of goods by road
Restaurants and food stalls
specialised construction Activities
technical Services of engineering
Manufacture of metallic carpentry
Plumbing and heating
electrical Installations:
information Technology and informatics
75
57
40
22
20
19
16
15
14
Source: Iberinform.
THE COUNTRY
The sectors most represented
Construction of residential buildings
Carriage of goods by road
Restaurants and food stalls
specialised construction Activities
technical Services of engineering
Manufacture of metallic carpentry
Plumbing and heating
electrical Installations:
information Technology and informatics
75
57
40
22
20
19
16
15
14
Source: Iberinform.
THE COUNTRY
The sectors most represented
Construction of residential buildings
Carriage of goods by road
Restaurants and food stalls
specialised construction Activities
technical Services of engineering
Manufacture of metallic carpentry
Plumbing and heating
electrical Installations:
information Technology and informatics
75
57
40
22
20
19
16
15
14
Source: Iberinform.
THE COUNTRY
Housers, born in 2015, is also a daughter of the technology. It is dedicated to Juan Antonio Balcázar, its ceo and founder, the crowfunding real estate: attracting capital to fund works. In the conversation are the magic words of the new economy: funding rounds. “We gained capital through them, we raise up to five million.” Their model allows, through a platform simple, that anyone to become an investor-promoter. All you need is 50 euros. “We have funded 265 projects, we have more than 110 million captured, we have already closed 65 works with an average yield of 9,22%”. Housers charged to the promoter that you need the liquidity, and also receives money from the investors.
Distribution by provinces
26
57
185
59
46
41
38
30
Madrid, Barcelona and the mediterranean coast together account for over 60% of companies analysed
Source: Iberinform.
THE COUNTRY
Distribution by provinces
26
57
185
59
46
41
38
30
Madrid, Barcelona and the mediterranean coast together account for over 60% of the companies analysed
Source: Iberinform.
THE COUNTRY
Distribution by provinces
26
57
185
23
59
46
41
38
30
Madrid, Barcelona and the mediterranean coast together account for over 60% of the companies analysed
25
Source: Iberinform.
THE COUNTRY
Although sometimes it’s not about innovating with an idea of the new economy: just get to go ahead with the business of life and work and vision. Gregory Rodriguez is one of the two partners Jiroca, a restaurant in Villafranca del Campo, Teruel. Is in the A-23 dual carriageway, which connects Valencia to France via Aragon, in the middle of nowhere. But offers some 200 meals daily, service of parking, showers for truckers and a bar of 14 meters full of snacks, tapas and snacks freshly made. “We run from the self-service, fast-food. We spent a lot of time making schedules, cleaning procedures and customer care”. She speaks with passion of their employees. “It is extremely difficult to get here 32 people, when you’re surrounded by towns of 200 inhabitants as much. We have made plans for continuing education, even language”.
The training is the strong point of the other gazelle, the school Cefes of Zaragoza. About 6,000 students pass through their classes face-to-face or virtual. “How it grows? Juggling. We have four years ago and we are 50 people,” says Luis Gonzalez, his owner. Every three months tells its employees how to go the accounts and reinvests everything they earn. In 2018 already billed 1.5 million.
Although not everything is a bed of roses. In the construction Taresco make the list of the difficulties they have to overcome smes, in their case in the construction sector: a difficult economic context, low public investment, panic, private investors, access to financing may be restricted by the limited confidence of banks, payments to suppliers short-term receivables from customers long, delinquency, recurrent, high taxes, no public aid and limited tax advantages for companies of new creation. Of things similar complaint Pedro Aranda, who has a small business of plumbing in Granada, Ofiteca. “We have begun to work for customers potent. It is difficult to maintain a high level of quality and service of certain confidence. The banks have to submit some accounts realistic, because without money we cannot do anything”. His stone in the shoe is on the VAT refunds. “Hacienda takes a lot of time [in reembolsarlas], and if you don’t have financial muscle, can’t grow.”
And without an initial capital is important it is also difficult to start. “When you want to be disruptive in a market, you can be an entrepreneur who bundled the blanket to the head with his money or seek venture capital, number Enrique Dominguez. Speaks of this lastor model has a better risk. “Many multinational companies are creating subsidiaries with people very prepared or put in contact with entrepreneurs so that their businesses grow within the matrix, cobijándola. Benefit of that in a start-up the level of bureaucracy is much less.”
you Can that of the 834 companies identified in the ranking, many die. But others may be the multinationals of the future. Those who know that, “if the opportunity is not calling you, it is best to build a door.”
Tips for not dying of success
Burn capital. Two words cursed for many companies that have based their progress in successive rounds of financing without an idea of sustainability on the horizon. “It is a serious problem,” says Anindya Saha, founder of Nero Ventures and professor of EAE. “In addition, we assume that our country is not the most liquidity guarantee, or of a part of the venture capital or the banks.” So firms very technology have a hard. Many, also, are little prepared to cope with a sudden increase of the size. “Grow to more than a 100% annual is not possible without generating a great chaos within the company. So you can’t attack multiple countries and at the same time increase template or have all the financial part controlled when you make that leap. In some businesses, that chaos becomes a habit”. The problem is that, when the bicycle stops pedaling and collapse, the entire ecosystem that they have created falls with them. “The play can be converted in binary, win or lose.” In traditional companies, Saha argues that everything is much tighter. “You must approach the business with prudence. In the toughest moments, to be able to lower the fixed costs and adjust their margins even below 10%”. A prudence which recommended to move to the bank. “To maintain a minimum base to fund their own projects”. And to think that outside of Madrid and Barcelona, where you will find start-ups due to the accumulation of capital, there is also life.
