Barcelona consolidates its position as a benchmark city for entrepreneurial and digital talent

• Barcelona is perceived by startup founders as a good location for entrepreneurship and as a well-located city with a good quality of life to develop a business.
• Difficulties in attracting managerial and digital talent are diminishing in the list of the main challenges faced by scale-ups, who said they plan to hire new workers in the next eighteen months
• The Barcelona Global Scale-Up Monitor report maintains access to financing, taxation and regulation as the main barriers to startup growth

Barcelona has consolidated its attractiveness in Europe as a city for entrepreneurship, with an excellent location to start and develop a business and with the capacity to attract digital and managerial talent, according to the third edition of the Barcelona Global Scale-Up Monitor 2024 report.

The report, prepared by Barcelona Global in collaboration with CaixaBank, through DayOne, and with the methodological support of IESE, was presented today by the CEO of Barcelona Global, Mercè Conesa, at an event in which the director of CaixaBank DayOne, Gemma Beltrán, and the manager partner of Asabys and member of the Executive Committee (Comex) of Barcelona Global, Josep Lluís Sanfeliu, also participated.

The study is the result of a series of surveys and interviews conducted with founders, managers and professionals from 66 companies in Barcelona's entrepreneurial ecosystem with the aim of identifying Barcelona's strengths, challenges and opportunities as an innovation hub, and the actions needed to consolidate the city's international position.

Scale-ups are innovative companies that are newly created with a technological base, which have already acquired a certain dimension and are growing rapidly. These are considered scale-ups when they increase their turnover or number of employees by 20% per year for three consecutive years and their turnover is around one million euros.

Barcelona, with 2,100 startups and 280 scale-ups, is the largest startup ecosystem in southern Europe, the second preferred place for entrepreneurs in the EU and the fifth largest ecosystem in Europe in number of scale-ups and venture capital funding rounds.

The Scale-Up Monitor 2024 has highlighted the impact of this ecosystem on the economic and social diversification of the city. As an example, 94% of the scale-ups surveyed plan to hire new workers in the next eighteen months, and 22% of them believe that they will hire more than 30 people each, which denotes the high capacity of these companies to generate jobs.

Talent recruitment and retention

A significant fact from the Scale-Up Monitor is that access to qualified professionals is no longer perceived as an issue by respondents: only 25% of scale-ups stated in 2024 that accessing talent was a challenge, a significant decrease from 34% in 2021. On the other hand, talent retention is, due to competition with other global hubs and less competitive salaries than in other European cities.

The ability to find managers and digital talent has also improved. 55% of companies said in 2024 that they could find the management professionals they needed compared to 31% in 2021.

In terms of digital staff, 41% of companies reported being able to access this talent, compared to 22% in 2021. Although there is still a lot of work to be done, this data reflects a positive trend since the study began in 2018.

Of the total number of companies surveyed, 90% say they hire staff with an international profile and 35% say they plan to hire  professionals who work from other countries, a trend that, however, is going down, with only 27% of staff working remotely most of the time in 2024, compared to 85% in 2021.

Pending challenges

The results of the study show that Barcelona still faces barriers that hinder the growth of scale-ups, such as taxation, access to financing, regulation and administrative procedures.

Access to funding has deteriorated in each edition of the Scale-Up Monitor. 41% of entrepreneurs mention that it is the main obstacle preventing their company from growing, compared to 32% in 2021. Although 63% of entrepreneurs foresee new rounds in search of investment, these have decreased by 73% compared to 2021.

While accessing funding is challenging, those who succeed can attract larger amounts: 22% of entrepreneurs surveyed collectively secured more than €20 million in 2024, up from 12% in 2021.

Entrepreneurs have valued access to seed funding at 3.8 out of 7 in 2024, down from 4.2 out of 7 in 2021, and funding for company expansion fell from 4.39 out of 7 in 2021 to 3.4 out of 7 in 2024.

Entrepreneurs also cite regulation (33%) and red tape (24%) as barriers to growth. For entrepreneurs, it's easier to start a start-up now, but they say the complexity increases if it fails, discouraging you from starting over.

Participants were satisfied with the orientation of Spanish legislation, in particular with the ratification of the recent Start-ups law, but 37% continue to call for "more tax incentives and simplification of processes" to be globally competitive.

The Scales-Up Monitor ecosystem surveyed is mainly made up of entrepreneurs between the ages of 31 and 40, of which 74% are men. Women only make up 10% of startup founders and the majority are in the digital health sector. However, a significant majority of scale-ups have female representation on executive committees.

Mercè Conesa, CEO of Barcelona Global; Gemma Beltrán, director of CaixaBank DayOne; and Josep Lluis Sanfeliu, Managing Partner and Co-founder of Asabys and member of the Executive Committee (Comex) of Barcelona Global.