Tech Scaleup Spain
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Tech Scaleup Spain Report 2020 with the support of: Version 1.0 | December 2020 Tech Scaleup Spain Report 2020 Data Powered by Spanish Scaleup Growth won’t be stopped by Covid Alberto Onetti Chairman, Mind the Bridge The Spanish scaleup ecosystem comes from ten years of sustained growth rate. The good news from our annual analysis is that Spain shouldn’t see this trend reverted by Covid 19. We estimate that Spain should close the year slightly below the 1 billion mark in new funding and with about 40 new scaleups. This represents approximately a 10% contraction versus 2019, while at European level we expect a downturn in the 20-30% range. Spain confirms to be the most performing innovation ecosystem among the Southern European countries. The less good news is that the gap with the main European countries and global ecosystems remains large. France, Germany and Sweden have a number of scaleups that is almost double than Spain and overall financing that is three/four times more. Not to mention the UK where numbers are seven and nine times higher. Then more scaleups are needed, and, among them, more companies able to become tech global giants. Spain has “only” 12 scaleups able to raise more than 100 million and (still) no super scalers (i.e. companies raising north of one billion), while the UK has 92 (plus 6 super scalers), Israel 87, Germany 46 and France 44. This situation of undercapitalization Spain (and Southern Europe in general) suffers can be solved only by pouring more capital. • Firstly, by domestic investors that currently contribute for less than one fourth of the total capital invested. More VCs (particularly later stage funds) are needed. • Secondly, by international investors: Spanish scaleups proved to be able to raise capital internationally. They need to continue to build up their international profile. Events, rectius platforms, such as the South Summit and Mobile World Congress, helped here and should continue to do so. • Thirdly, by stock exchanges that currently account for less than 10% of the total financing of Spanish scaleups. • Finally, by corporates. Open Innovation is growing in Spain, an extra push is needed (both domestically and internationally) to go beyond the current contributions in terms of investment (about 11% of rounds) and business. As said, despite Covid Scaleup Spain is alive and kicking. Time to scale. Page | 2 Tech Scaleups Spain | 2020 Report Covid-19 Scaleup Downturn The European continent, after years of seemingly And then Covid-19 came. exponential growth (the number of new scaleups increased on average by 22% year over year since Preliminary data indicate a to-be-expected 2010), returned to a relatively linear growth pattern downward trend in terms of new scaleups (about in 2019. The number of new scaleups did not -25% YoY) and capital raised (-20% YoY) in Europe. increase (1332 in 2019 vs 1379 in 2018), while Quite a serious downturn especially as compared to capital raised was $3.4B lower compared to prior the estimated European GDP contraction (currently year. minus 7-12%). Figure 1 TECH SCALEUP EUROPEGROWTH $31B* Before 2010 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 New Capital Raised New Scaleups 2020 Q1-Q3 actual 2020 Q4 forecast The European Scaleup Landscape: the Kings are in the North Talking about scaleups in Europe, performances Southern Europe is once again dragging its feet in differ from region to region. the innovation wave, with 10% of scaleups and 6% of capital raised regardless of their 20%+ share in The whole of British Isles outpaces the rest of Europe’s GDP and population. Europe, with about 35% of scaleups and capital raised versus 12% of the population and 14% of Eastern Europe’s potential is still to be exploited. GDP. Their current share (4% of companies and 1.8% of capital) do not reflect the potential represented by Though they represent 28% of the European their 161 million population (27% of total) and 3.5 population and 36% of GDP, the Central States led trillion GDP (15% of total). by France and Germany contribute to “only” 27% of scaleups and 30% of investments. On the contrary, Southern and Eastern Europe (as well as the the Nordics overperform considering their relative Baltics) show a situation of relative size (5% of Europe’s population and 6% of the GDP) undercapitalization compared to the other with 16% of scaleups and 19% of capital invested. European regions: as an average, they have a lower The Baltics follow a similar pattern, although they share in capital raised than the number of represent less than 1% of the continent's GDP and companies. population, they produce 1.5% of scaleups and 1.2% of capital. Page | 3 TECH SCALEUPEUROPE BRITISH ISLES CENTRAL EUROPE NORDICS SOUTHERN EUROPE BENELUX EASTERN EUROPE BALTICS Tech Scaleups Spain | 2020 Report Spain Stands out among Southern Countries Looking at country data as shown in the infographic smaller. These countries show a similar number of Tech Scaleup Country Index (data included are as scaleups and comparable amount of capital raised of December 31, 2019), Spain ranks 6th in Europe (here the Dutch figures benefit from 2018 Adyen per number of scaleups and 7th in terms of capital IPO). raised. The Tech Scaleup Country Index ranks countries according to the total amount of local tech The other Southern countries lag far behind Spain. scaleups and the external funding they raised (see Italy ranks 10th, Portugal 15th, and Greece 18th. Methodology). Spain hosts 4.5% of the total number of European While the gap with the first top countries (UK, scaleups, which attracted approximately 3% of the France, Germany, and Sweden) is relevant, the overall capital injected into the European tech distance with Switzerland and The Netherlands is scaleup ecosystem. Figure 2 TECH SCALEUP COUNTRY INDEX Country Rank Scaleups/Capital Raised UK FRANCE GERMANY SWEDEN SWITZERLAND SPAIN NETHERLANDS FINLAND IRELAND ITALY DENMARK BELGIUM NORWAY POLAND PORTUGAL AUSTRIA ESTONIA GREECE HUNGARY ICELAND CZECH REP. UKRAINE LITHUANIA Number of Scaleups (2019) LUXEMBOURG Capital Raised ($B 2019) ROMANIA Ranking Change (2019 vs. 2018) Page | 5 Tech Scaleups Spain | 2020 Report Is Spain Bridging the Gap with Europe? To best measure the innovation economy in amounts of financing (both above the European comparison to the size of the overall economy, we average). introduced two indicators, the “Scaleup Investing Ratio”¹ and “Scaleup Density Ratio”². The first one The bottom-left cluster includes the countries that compares the capital invested to scaleups to the underperform the average: Spain, together with all GDP, while the second indicator takes into account the other Southern and Eastern European countries, the population of a country and the presence of is positioned in there. scaleups there. Compared to last year, Spain increased its investing The comparisons allow us to take a measure of the Density Ratio by 0.35 points and the Scaleup “commitment” of each country to the innovation Density Ratio from 0.7 to 0.86 scaleups every 100K economy and track changes. people. As a conseQuence, its position on the Matrix furtherly moved up and right, which reflects a On average in Europe we record a “Scaleup Density consistent, relative increase in the capital invested Ratio” of 1.4 scaleups every 100K inhabitants (it and number of scaleups in Spain. was 1.2 in the prior year), and a “Scaleup Investing Ratio” of 0.64%, (up from 0.52% last year)³. Then we can project for Spain a future evolution trajectory towards the center of the Matrix. How In the top right Quadrant of the Scaleup Matrix, we much time this process would take would mostly find ecosystems (such as the UK and most of the depend on the amount of venture capital poured Nordics) characterized by many scaleups and large into the ecosystem. Figure 3 TECH SCALEUP MATRIX 11.0 6.0 5.0 4.0 3.0 2.0 SCALEUP DENSITY 1.4 RATIO 1.2 1.0 0.8 2020 2019 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 0.1% 0.2% 0.3% 0.4% 0.5% 0.64% 1.0% 2.0% 3.0% SCALEUP INVESTING RATIO ¹ “Scaleup Density Ratio”: number of scaleups per 100K inhabitants. Measures the density of the scaleup ecosystem compared to the size of the country. See Methodology. ² “Scaleup Investing Ratio”: capital raised by scaleups versus country GDP (measured in $, PPP). Measures the funding attraction capacity of local scaleups compared to the size of the economy. See Methodology. ³ Population and GDP (PPP, $) source: World Bank, 2019. Page | 6 Tech Scaleups Spain | 2020 Report How large is Scaleup Spain? As of September 2020, we tracked 407 scaleups Spanish scaleups collectively raised $6.9B in (about 4,4% of European scaleups). funding since inception. That represents 0.35% of the country’s GDP (the European average is 0.73%). That eQuals to 0.86 scaleups every 100k residents that is slightly higher than half of the European On the one hand, Spain is overperforming its average (1.4), but about 50% higher if compared to Southern European neighbours: the scaleup other Southern Europe countries (Italy is 0.43, while investing ratio is almost 4 times better than Italy - Greece is 0.50). 0.10% - , 2 .5 times than Greece - 0.13% - and 0.5 times than Portugal. On the other hand, the gap with Portugal here performs slightly better (0.96) if we the main ecosystems remains important: Germany take into account its population. In terms of scaleup (0.58%) and France (0.62%) are both above 0.5% density Germany is not that far (1.04), France is and the UK shows figures (1.97%) that are almost 6 pretty distant (1.81), while the UK (4.34 scaleups times higher.