Explosion In New Spanish Business Angels

A new report on the business angel environment in Spain was just released by The Spanish Association For Business Angels (AEBAN) and IESE business school. The report sheds new light on a group of people that gives life to the startup ecosystem in Barcelona and Spain.

More than 200 business angels in the network participated, which for Spain may be a representative selection of the total amount of angels.

Almost 60 percent of Spanish business angels has been active only for 5 years or less.

There is many different interesting metrics in the report, but one thing is for certain, the number of angels is growing. Over 60 percent of the asked group said they started investing within the last five years, and 75 percent of them is investing in startups and internet related businesses.

Only 17 percent of the asked investors said that they had been active for ten years or more.

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Getting younger, challenging myths

The report also shows that the angles are not only investing in their own startup ecosystems, but across the whole of Spain.

Even more surprisingly, over 30 percent of the angels invest outside of Spain, a number even higher than the UK, where 22 percent of the angels invest abroad.

As for portfolios, around 40 percent of the investors, say they have five or less companies under their wings.

Spanish business angels are becoming younger. 44% of them are younger than 44 years old (exactly the same percentage as in the UK, although the percentage is lower when it comes to younger than 25). This fact challenges the traditional view of business angels as retired businessmen, CEO’s and other executive positions that after quitting their main activity have more time to invest.

There are still very few woman investing in Spanish startups and projects.

Embarrassingly few woman

As if numbers were not low enough among startup founders and entrepreneurs, AEBAN’s numbers show that only

eight percent of the investors are woman.

As most of us are aware of, this is not a Spanish problem, but a global one. However, both in the UK (14 percent) and in the US (20 percent) the number of female angels are significantly higher.

When it comes to the role of state and public administration, very few have used benefits offered, as tax deductions connected to investment. Only 27 percent say they have used such benefits.

Return on investment

The most common amount of investment among Spanish angels is the group between €25.000-50.000 and €100.000-200.000.

One third of the angels asked want to multiply their investment between 3-6 times. Some, nearly 45 percent, want to see their investment multiplied 7 – 20 times. These expectations, according to AEBAN are similar to other angel investors in western Europe.

You can read the full report here (in Spanish)