Jordi Altimira: “A balance is needed between the emotional connection with the entrepreneur and investment”

Jordi Altimira, CEO of UpBizor, General Partner at Lánzame Capital and one of the first Pledge Funds in Spain. He graduated in Industrial Engineering, with a Master in Investment from the CASS Business School and another university degree from the IESE Business School, the Executive MBA. He stands out for his bidirectional profile as an entrepreneur as well as an investor. His experience in the educational world is focused on the informative field as a professor at the BMF Business School “I have always been closely linked to the university, I created a business school and my own master's degree” he explains. In the field of Vocational Training he has not had any type of experience but he believes that it is a very favorable place to generate new startups “Many of the academic formations have a very abstract and not very concrete vision, but VT is much more specific. I think that in this specificity there can be an approach to foster a company that is not based on intellectuality but on practicality” he points out.

To all those young people who want to set up a startup after finishing their studies, he indicates that the main thing is to think about the purpose, in order to know why they want to promote it and how that vital purpose can be fulfilled “ It is very hard to undertake and If you don't have that why defined at the beginning, you would throw in the towel many times. On the other hand, when that is well defined, it gives you a lot of energy to continue.”

Although the impulse of new companies is not linked to age. After the different crises in Spain, many people have decided to set up new startups, many times generated by necessity. Faced with this vision of getting ahead, Altimira believes: “It's a way out, when there is no professional way out, the easiest way to do it is to create your profession yourself.” But it cannot be just an element with which to get money, he stresses that it is very important that it has a fundamental purpose with a solid foundation.

Given the increase in startup proposals that there has been in recent times, many investors use a checklist when assessing the various companies. What Altimira focuses on most is creativity “Creativity in execution is very important,” he explains. It also has a series of ponderables when choosing which companies are chosen, such as: a sufficient market, the right moment to launch the company, a good compensated team and a market value proposal that works over time. “This makes a viable and feasible company potential” he concludes.

Telecommuting as a point of union

The evolution of technologies allows us to work from different countries, which enriches the company since it is nourished by different perspectives. “Diversity is always good because it allows us to attack the complexity of current problems,” explains Altimira, who says that within his own company they have a mixed team of thirty people with eight different nationalities. “You realize the different ways of thinking and this is positive when making decisions and entering a problem” he says. Although it is possible to highlight a problem with this hybrid, it is the initial process of creation as well as the creativity process, moments in which skills are needed that are complicated to do through a computer but “Well processed, everything is feasible and can do” ends by saying Jordi Altimira.

In the last two years, teleworking has achieved that companies expand the workforce to different countries, but it has also achieved that people from other communities are hired within Spain, other than where the physical company is located. This happens with the Canary Islands, for example, an archipelago far removed from the peninsula that has always had difficulties being connected to the rest of the country. For Altimira, the islands have a very important potential, however, from her point of view, they still have a way to go, the creation of an ecosystem: “An ecosystem is cooked with time, it is a breeding ground that has already been seen in other cities Why not in the Canary Islands? It just has to be created with patience and courage” he concludes. Although he lacks it, Altimira has had some experience in the Canary Islands, with two companies. He also says that in recent years there has been a rise in the creation of companies and that ecosystems are increasingly drawn.

The importance of investment

There are many investors who have decided to invest in companies in early stages for some time. Altimira is one of them: “There is more and more capital. the current macroeconomic context that can change both with inflation and with interest rates but in recent years there is liquidity in the capital to invest, so that causes competition between investors and that causes investors who are in investments later phases go down the cash curve and go down to earlier phases. This is where we meet” he explains. He says that with each passing day, investments are closer to the American model, which generates their own deal flow. Altimira advises all those entrepreneurs looking for investments in the seed phase “in the first phases that it invests, it is in those where there is a trained team, there is technology (at least at the level of proven MVP), there is a product market feed carried out, there are the first metrics and first traction and is willing to take market risk.” They are the most important parts where the company must emphasize if it wants to obtain financing.

A novel way of financing is through the tokenization of startups, a new and little studied model. Altimira explains that she has invested in a project that goes in that direction, but that there are few companies where this type of financing makes sense: “In the end, a strategy has to fit into a project, perhaps projects that are not scalable have to have a more traditional financing as it has always been done. Projects that are more scalable as venture capital can be an interesting formula. Projects where decentralization makes sense, then tokenization makes sense.” You can never generalize, especially when talking about monetizing a company, he concludes.

Finally, Altimira also sends advice to all those who plan to invest at some point. The first thing to do is learn to invest, study how to do it to get the greatest possible benefit. “You need a balance between the emotional connection you make with the entrepreneur and the investment, and when you get that, that's when you can start investing in the real world,” he concludes.