What’s it like to be a startup founder in Barcelona?

Barcelona is an iconic city, known for its lively culture and creativity. However, in the last 20 years, the city has also become one of the world’s most attractive startup ecosystems. Barcelona is frequently ranked among Europe’s top five startup hubs and successful companies such as Travelperk, Typeform, and Glovo were founded in the city.

But what explains Barcelona’s popularity among entrepreneurs and what is it like to be a founder there?

TNW traveled to Barcelona to interview a host of international and local founders to hear what they had to say about the ecosystem’s strengths and weaknesses.

Who exactly did we talk to? Let’s run through them quickly along with a short tease of what they had to say — and do watch the whole video to find out more about Barcelona!

• Cecelia Tham, future synthesist and serial founder, discusses how the city has changed over the last 20 years and its unique co-working scene
• Xavier Carrillo-Costa, CEO and founder of Digital Legends, believes Barcelona is a great place to start up, but he wants the ecosystem to expand into the rest of Catalonia
  
• Nuria Pastor, CEO and co-founder of humanITcare, and Mariona Serra, CEO and co-founder of GoodGut, highlight health tech as the city’s key strength
  
• Jeroen Merchiers, founder and board member of LANAI Partners, gives an overview of the ecosystem’s investment landscape
• Laura Guerra Arias describes what it was like to found her company, Redpanti, during the pandemic and how the local networking scene helped her out
• The CEO and founder of Novicap, Federico Travella, explains how talent attraction factored into setting up shop in Barcelona
• And George Chilton, Creative Director at Hubbub Labs, talks about the city’s attraction and the effect big events have had on the startup scene

Don’t take our word for it though, hear for yourself what they had to say by clicking the video at the top of this article. And for even more information about Barcelona’s startup ecosystem, do check out this website by ACCIÓ.