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Podcast #31 Talking about Cambridge Analytica with ex-Facebook team member Antonio García Martínez

In itnig’s Podcast #31 Jordi Romero, CEO at Factorial speaks with Antonio García Martínez about his past experiences designing ad-targeting products at Facebook and his perspective on the current Cambridge Analytica controversy. Listen to our podcast on Youtube, iTunes or iVoox.

After a doctorate in Physics, I started working at Goldman Sachs as Quant Analyst in 2005. It was the time of the financial crisis in the US, an economic apocalypse. I thought the only thing that might survive after this crisis is the technological sector.

So I became a Research Scientist in an online advertisement company, a niche in the tech sector. There I got to know my co-founders, we applied to YCombinator and went through their Bootcamp as a startup. During this time, all problems that can occur happened to us. After 10 months Twitter bought us in a so called Acqui-Hire, when they buy a company but what they are really after is the talent and to get the founders and employees on board. After a bit of drama I went to Facebook.

At Facebook, my role was that of a Product Manager of ad-targeting products. At this time, in 2011, the whole team at Facebook were 20–25 engineers and 5–6 Product Designers. We all fit in a meeting room. However, Facebook had about 1 billion users and even with almost non existing business or monetization model the revenue was high. It was the time Facebook would transition from a startup with a crude business model to what it is today.

I was involved in product development for things such as the Custom audiences. With the IPO Facebook went public and started to turn its focus towards monetization models. These two years of developing products are what makes Facebook money now.

What is going on with Facebook now in terms of privacy?

The Cambridge Analytica crisis comes from the Facebook platform. You probably all remember the time when you could login on Spotify through your Facebook account and would receive some kind of spam to your Facebook profile. Facebook decided to take this step of creating a platform to make an integral product that could span and connect different sites. However, this was not a good product, a fail, as in the long run nobody was using the Facebook platform. As a user, you would use Facebook to log in, some of your personal data are shared with the product you are logging in to and this data might be used.

There really is not much Facebook can do to regulate the data flow and what happens with this information once it leaves the Walled Garden of Facebook. And that’s basically what happened as researchers at Cambridge University created a psychographic model, an app which by asking questions tries to make a psychological assessment of you as a person. They were creating a five dimensional graph based on the big 5 personality traits (Ocean — openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism) and projecting the user’s personality in five dimensions.

Through a model they then correlate this with your political views, eg. pro Trump, pro immigration.. and combine your psychological profile and political stand with Facebook’s ad platform to be able to find a person on Facebook and specifically target advertisement to the believed preferences.

Obviously the story has some James Bond badness, researcher, an almost hidden secretive company, financing Breitbart, Bannon’s involvement as editor — It’s a compilation of different elements that makes this story.

If the problem was that Cambridge Analytica breached the terms of service of Facebook, why did Mark Zuckerberg hide?

This is a bit curious. I think it’s simply because Mark Zuckerberg is not the most social person, he’ll do a Q&A internally and answer all kind of questions but externally he seldomly shows his face.

The problem is the perception, not so much the actual impact it had in the elections but the perception of it.

What about Fake news?

I think fake news is a real problem but it’s hard because there is no obvious solution. Compared to ad content, organic content is much harder to control. People are used to having a Feed of content optimized to their likes by default. In the US a lot of media consumption happens through Social Media, that’s hard to change. Two months ago, Facebook made a change to the Feed, giving journalistic content less importance and in a way bringing the old Facebook- between friends- back again.

This reminds me of the last podcast in which we spoke about cultural fit. You once told me about the employee handbook, the little red book that you received at facebook. Can you tell us a bit about it?

In my book, Chaos Monkey I talk about it a bit. During the interviewing cycles, somebody will always ‘there is no cultural fit’ and this can be some hidden part of racism, sexism…it might mean ‘the candidate is not like me’. T

In regards to the Little Red Book, it was born in 2012 out of Facebook’s fear of converting into an old, structured company. Worried that they would not be able to keep the agility and aggressiveness of a startup, the Little Red Culture Book was one way of fighting against the corporate ageing that might creep upon us as an organization.

On the last page for example it reads:

If we don’t create the thing that replaces Facebook, someone else will.

That’s the tone of the Little Red Book, I still have one copy actually.

If you want to find out more about it, we recommend to read Antonio’s book with many more anecdotes from his time as Product Manager at Facebook: Get the book here and listen to the whole podcast on Youtube.

Listen to our podcast to learn more about Antonio García Martínez takes on Silicon Valley. Learn more in this Podcast in Spanish on our Youtube channel, listen to it on iTunes or enjoy it through iVoox and subscribe to our newsletter to stay always up to date.

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Startup PR: How startups can increase their chances of getting press coverage

Especially after the initial product launch and after achieving the first milestones, startups most often try to get some press coverage, in order to increase the attention of venture capital firms, business angels and early adopters for their product or service. For that reasons, they usually reach out to local or international tech and startup publications. Getting featured in one of those can be as challenging as securing funding or getting your first customers. So it’s important for startups to take a close look a the publications they aim to target and to avoid common mistakes.


The tech and startup media landscape, internationally, in Europe, Spain & Barcelona: Aside of international tech publications like TechCrunch, TheNextWeb and Venturebeat, there are European startup/tech publications like tech.eu and EU-Startups, Spanish ones like El Referente and TodoStartups, as well as local ones in Barcelona like Barcinno and Barcelona Startup News. In order to get to know some of these startup publications better and to get a behind the scenes view, we recently organized a little round table discussion with Vivien from Barcelona Startup News, Sophie from Barcinno and Thomas from EU-Startups. If you’re interested in Startup PR, the role/state of tech media and the startup ecosystem in Barcelona, this one is for you:

During the discussion, there already came up a few tips and tricks. Publications like Barcinno, Barcelona Startup News, and especially international startup publications receive a huge amount of press releases per day, so in order to increase your chances of getting press coverage, you should really make sure to reach out the right way. To provide you with an overview, below you’ll find a summary from the discussion between Vivien, Sophie and Thomas, and some additional best practices:

What is news? The fact that your startup exists or just launched is usually not newsworthy. Unless you just invented a time machine or teleportation technology. Most interesting content for startup and tech publications is exclusive information and news that make their readers go „wow”!

Prepare a good press pitch: Provide all relevant information. Make it as simple as possible for the editors to understand your product, it’s USP and why your story is newsworthy! Keep your email pitch short and suggest an interesting angle for an article. Also: Don’t ask for permission to send a press release. Just do it!

Sending your press releases via email: Keep your emails to each of the contacted editors short and don’t send too many releases to the same editor in quick succession. Send them out individually, with a personal note (never: Dear editor…). If your email shows that you understand/read the publication, your chances of grabbing the editor’s attention clearly increase. Best case, the press release will be sent by someone the editor already knows.

Be a good communicator: When contacting editors, pick the subject line of your email carefully and make it stand out. Some editors of popular startup/tech publications get a few hundred emails a day, so you wanna make sure they at least open your email. If they do, and afterwards reply with some questions, save them time, by quickly replying. Sometimes it’s really a matter of minutes. If you don’t reply fast enough, the editor might already consider another story. On the other hand, if you are the one asking questions, make sure the editor can answer with one line or a simple „yes“ or „no“. Saving time is key!

Keys to good press releases: Great content and exciting news spreads automatically around the web. Your press releases should be a good read, easy to understand and as interesting as possible. Readers of startup publications, like pretty much all humans, like big numbers, interesting facts they didn’t know yet, successful people/stars, nice pictures, stories that spark emotions.

A sense of exclusivity: Media people like to talk to the people in charge. That being said, press releases should be sent by the startup’s CEO not by an intern or a PR firm. This is true especially for early-stage startups. And: Journalists like exclusives! By giving a publication the exclusive right to publish first (embargoed news) you will clearly increase your chances of getting featured there!

The perfect timing for sending your press release: Send your press release with advance notice. For example: If you’d like to see your news/story covered on Wednesday afternoon, reach out on Monday morning at the latest, saying that the day of the announcement will be Wednesday. The most important thing to keep in mind is: Editors don’t like old news! On the same day the first press coverage about a specific topic goes online, all other media outlets should have received the corresponding press release. Otherwise your chances to get additional press coverage are almost at 0%.

And if it doesn’t work out? Don’t take it personal if a publication doesn’t write about you and your startup! If your team and idea is strong, you will make it anyway! Other ways to get visibility for your startup are to properly present it on AngelList, Crunchbase, F6S, Product Hunt, Betalist, and of course on big social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.

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Podcast #30 Cultural Fit — Does it exist or does it develop over time?

In itnig’s Podcast #30 Jordi Romero, CEO at Factorial speaks with César Migueláñez, Product Director at Factorial, Roger Dobaño, Product Manager at Quipu and Bettina Gross, Talent Acquisition about the concept of cultural fit.

Roger talks about the evolution of culture inside Quipu’s team, the selection process for open positions and we see examples of culture rendered transparent at PayPal, Facebook and Rebooth.

How did the culture at Quipu evolve?

We started almost 5 years, we were 2 people working inside of itnig very closely and we have grown to be a team of more than 20 team members, with one general managers and big changes in the organization. There are big cultural differences from the beginning to today.

What differences do you see?

In the beginning, we had very little experience and our founders’ personalities marked the culture of the initial team. In small teams you influence the culture directly but as the team grows, as you install levels of management it becomes a task to maintain the initial enthusiasm as the company grows. I think there were basically two phases at Quipu: When we were about 10 people, young people with a lot of energy, we shared a lot, not just work but also our private lives. Then there is a second time, when the company has become more professional, growing form 10 to 20 people, new departments like Sales.

The first contact a new employee at Quipu has is a talk with me, Roger, talking about our culture, our history and our plans for the future. I think it’s important that the first contact be a kind of anchor for this person — if you have any question, I am here for you.

What do you talk about in two hours on the first days of a new team member? How to refer to company culture?

There are two main things: First, a retrospective and then a basic guideline on how we solve problems. And then of course depending on the person and his/her future position I focus on the team and challenges ahead.

Do you believe the cultural fit is made or exists? Does a personal develop it within the team or come with a predetermined cultural fit?

I would say more than cultural fit, it’s about values. What do we share as group of humans? What are our underlying shared beliefs and values? And I think in this sense it’s something you have innate in you when you join a team or not but also something that develops over time.

If you think of culture, you can also take the example of migration. You move to a new country, the culture is different, but I still believe that you can become part of the group, of the society.

It’s interesting you say that Bettina. You actually come from a different cultural background, you did not grow up here in Spain or Barcelona and you’ve become part of the local culture. Do you think the differences become shorter over time?

Yes, I believe the distance becomes shorter. Maybe it’s just my own ideal or my own illusion but I think you can integrate in a new culture.

You believe you can overcome this distance?

Yes, if not I think I would not be living here.

You spoke about values — During interviews in the selection process, or even in employer branding when writing job offers, do you use values to describe the company?

Yes, at least that’s something we try and it’s something we have been speaking about a lot. How do different part of the team interact, should people from other teams be involved in the selection process. It does not have to be the founder who’s involved if in terms of values we are all aligned.

Even though a person from another team might not be able to assess the professional skills, he/she can still detect if there is a kind of cultural fit or not.

Cultural fit which for me is an important pieces, just as important as the professional talent of the person.

When we try to explain our culture, which is really hard, culture of the company is like DNA, changing constantly, adapting. Our initial culture is a part of Cesar, Bernat, Pau and me and that’s where we got our values from. We all sat together and each told their version of the story. When the first person joined our team we told him clearly that he is going to expand our culture. We are aligned at the base but he joins and expands our culture. And it’s the same for the 20th team member who actually joined us this week. He expands our culture just as much as the first person did.

I think this is very important that you talk about expanding. Sometimes the idea of cultural fit is also scares me, it may imply a fixed set of behavior, a group that is homogeneous and either you fit in or not. Especially in small structures like a startup I think it’s important to have somebody from outside, with another way of thinking and the ability to doubt or question.

Roger: My approach is not about saying this is how it is but more than anything about how we solve problems. I think we need a connection between humans who feel good around each other and can work together well. We had a person with us at Quipu who was very important for our culture and our group and even though she left her spirit and attitude are still with us today.

Bettina, you worked at PayPal some years ago, a US company and you were working in Berlin. What was the culture like for you? How did they transmit the company culture? Did you have contact with a very senior person explaining the beginning and history to you?

When I started I had a training of one or two weeks focussed on what it meant to be a PayPalian — there were even tests to make sure we were following. It’s an interesting way. The culture is always given from above, that’s clear, but to have it in paper (or well a software), is a whole different levels. There were a lot of rules but I think this was also positive. When you start somewhere new, those rules help you understand what the group expects of you and what you can contribute, whereas when you ‘swimming in uncertainty’ it is hard to find your place.

After the two weeks, what’s next? Do you get feedback? Do you hear you don’t fit in?

No, this I think was already clear from the selection process. But there were many follow-ups, like monthly meetings with teams, HR teams and senior teams. This was really helpful for me especially because it was my first job after leaving university — where do I see myself? How do I want to evolve?

I liked that you mentioned these two weeks of training. Actually at Facebook they have a small red book, The Facebook Way, that includes values. It’s the bible of why you are here and how we do things.

What kind of question do you see acceptable to find out if a person might be a good cultural fit or not?

I think you have to be cautious in terms of profiling. I think all questions should be acceptable if they serve an understandable purpose. For example you asking about technology used at home to find out if the person is ‘techy’. The goal was to find out if the person is ‘techy’ and not if he/she uses Mac or Windows but it can still be critical.

Well yes it’s always tricky, I think you have to find a way to create a conversation, because you will be in the position where one party scrutinizes the other.

Jordi, and you at Redbooth, a company founded here in Europe that suddenly comes to have a management team from the Us. How did that go?

Actually at Redbooth the concept of cultural shock took a different turn because I actually think we had two cultures. With a basis of Spanish or European culture we flew to San Francisco and set up an office there with people who had grown up in the US culture. Adn we left. So the company had a way of doing more or less US but a team from Silicon Valley ambitious, powerful and aggressive. We spoke different languages — two people who tried to do the bridge between San Francisco and Barcelona. We tried but in the end we were not able to understand each other.

An example: At some point in time we had a high churn rate and we set this as a priority to tackle. In Barcelona we wanted to all get together, create posters, a roadmap, to celebrate together but from the US direction, where our CEO was, the guideline was to make a Churn Bounty. The individual person who does xy, gets xY Euro. like the hunger games against churn but one agains the other.

In the end the company kept these two cultures, both in their ways, but without meeting midways. We tried to translate but it was not an integration.

And now, with a bit of distance. Do you see anything you could have done to create this integration between the two cultures?

I don’t believe in the concept of creating a company here, hiring a person there and working in two centers. I think the only way of creating a structure in the US in this example would have been moving a part of the core team to the US, staying for 3 years and not months and from there creating the US team. It’s really hard to transmit your ways of doing if you are not aware of them yourself — we were a young team, very inexperienced in leadership and communication. So it was all very implicit.

Thinking of this, how was it for you Cesar, to join Factorial when Jordi and Bernat and Pau had already known each other for a long time?

Good. I already knew Bernat well before we started Factorial but the other I got to know while working. I did not have much time to think about the culture either, we were so focussed on creating the first product. The compatibility of the personality formed our culture. It was very organic in the end.

And has it happened to you that a person, even though technically or professionally perfect fit with the team, ended up leaving because he/she was not able to connect with the group?

Yes, and it’s bad for both parties. If you are not collaborating well or not feeling well in the team it’s impossible to work together. You cannot add anything to the company if you are not feeling well.

Maybe that’s it the culture fit — that you feel good about where you are.

Yes, and you have to realize it quickly.

Now that we have Quipu and Factorial here, do you think there is a common culture among startups?

Yes, actually it’s also something I look for when interviewing candidates. Startup experience per se is professionally completely irrelevant but it teaches you what we expect from you, what we want to achieve, how we work towards it. I think it is another way of doing business it is underlying in most startups. A small structure where we are inventing something every day, no structures, no certainties — I think the strength it takes to do this transpires to all team members.

Listen to our podcast to learn more about Factorial and Quipu’s ideas on cultural fit. Learn more in this Podcast in Spanish on our Youtube channel, listen to it on iTunes or enjoy it through iVoox and subscribe to our newsletter to stay always up to date.

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The Future of Banking

Fintech trends and startups that will change the way we approach banking

The banking sector as we know it is ready for disruption. Who needs huge transaction fees, mountains of printed forms and long waiting times in our digital age? Technology and startups are already changing and hopefully optimizing the way we approach banking and traditional banking services.

According to a BI Intelligence survey from 2017, “71% of millennials say it’s very important to have a banking app and 60% say it’s very important to have an app to make payments.” While many traditional banks are not there yet to serve this need properly, fintech startups from across the world are ready to fill the gap.

This week we looked at some of the biggest trends in the financial sector, to give you an overview and to introduce you to Europe-based startups that are innovating on top of these trends and that are already profiting from the underlying changes.

Lending marketplaces for SMEs

Instead of borrowing money from traditional banks, more and more SMEs are using online lending providers and lending marketplaces. Compared to traditional banks, these solutions are often a bit less bureaucratic and less time-consuming. Three startups that are innovating in that space are: Spotcap, which operates as a direct lender to SMEs (already secured over €100 million in funding), Bitbond, which is a Blockchain-based SME lending platform from Berlin, and Barcelona-based LoanBook, a marketplace which focuses on the provision of working capital loans and other types of financing to Spanish SMEs.

Consumer Credits and Credit Scoring

Also for consumers, online lending marketplaces become more popular. Do you have a stable income, own some real estate, do you have debts? These are probably the most important and most common factors for banks and other financial service providers when it comes to estimate the credit-worthiness of a client. But actually, there are many more factors or approaches. Kreditech, for example, also measures some data points from social media platforms in order to evaluate if you’re credit worth or not. The German fintech startup not only does credit scoring, but also offers consumer loans. Another fast-growing company in that space is Barcelona-based ID Finance. The most prominent ID Finance assets is probably the smart data online lending service MoneyMan. An online lending service with more than 3 million registered clients. The idea behind MoneyMan is to help people to solve their short-term cash flow needs by providing a fully automated loan service operating round-the-clock.

Blockchain Technology

In the future, blockchain technology might have a big impact on the global banking system. The implementation of the distributed-ledger technology has the potential to play a major role when it comes to payments, settlements or compliance. The blockchain’s key properties of decentralization, immutability, efficiency, cost-effectiveness and security might lead to the technology’s adoption across the entire spectrum of financial services. Although it’s an exciting concept, there are not so many working use cases for it yet. One example of a European startup using blockchain technology is the Estonia-based Funderbeam. The crowdinvesting platform uses blockchain to secure issuing tokens, trading tokens, keeping track of investors (cap table management) and clearing the trades. This way, the blockchain carries many roles that in traditional stock markets are provided by many intermediaries. It is the trust that intermediaries should represent and the trust is now built in technology — blockchain.

Cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrencies will change everything and will democratize and decentralize the whole monetary system as we know it. That’s at least what my taxi driver told me last week. Let’s hope he’s right, when we think of all the money that is currently getting invested in that field. In the physical gold rush times of the past, companies selling shovels and gold digging supply made a lot of money. Today, this is also the case with cryptocurrency marketplaces. No matter if prices go up or down, they win. The leading and most basic cryptocurrencies marketplace is probably Coindesk, which was founded in 2013 by the London-based serial entrepreneur Shakil Khan. Coindesk lets you buy and sell Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoins.

Saving up money

Saving up money can be hard, especially if you don’t have a big salary. But there are more and more startups that set out to help consumers save up money. They haven’t replaced savings accounts or piggy banks yet, but they are on a good way. You want to grow your savings as well? One of the newest and most promising startups in that space is probably Madrid-based Arbor. It’s an automatic savings app with the mission of helping users save seamlessly without impacting their lifestyles. Users control how and when they want to save. Arbor for example offers to round up all card and bank transactions to the next euro. All these little amounts are then going into the user’s savings account. With Arbor you can also just set up recurring savings transfers. For example by choosing to save up €5 every Tuesday. The Arbor solution integrates with the user’s existing banks which means they don’t even have to change banks.

Equity Crowdfunding for Startups and SMEs

Another alternative financing form which gets more and more popular is equity-based crowdfunding. Instead of raising money from traditional venture capital firms or getting a loan from your bank, you can offer some shares of your company through platforms like Seedrs, Crowdcube or StartupXplore. Of course it still needs some time and efforts to create a successful funding campaign, but some standard due diligence processes and most of the bureaucratic steps are handled by the crowdfunding platform. Most importantly to note is, that it’s not necessarily easier to raise funding via a crowdfunding platform, but in many cases it will happen faster compared to traditional fundraising.

International money transfer

Are you also annoyed of huge transaction fees and long waiting times when it comes to international money transfer? With Transferwise and other solutions, this is now a thing of the past. London-based Transferwise was founded by Estonian entrepreneurs in 2011 and today is headquartered in London. The fast-growing fintech company makes sending money overseas up to 8 times cheaper than traditional bank, and their borderless account allows you to manage money in 28 different currencies. The Transferwise team aims to provide the fairest, easiest way to manage your money internationally.

Mobile banking

With mobile banking, you can do most of the things you can do with your regular bank account, but all on your smartphone. For example with apps like N26, Revolut or Atom. With those modern banking providers, opening a new bank account takes less than 10 minutes and can be done directly from your smartphone. Users receive a credit card to pay cashless or withdraw cash all around the world. They can block or unblock their card with a simple click and send money instantly to friends and contacts. And it’s no secret that the mobile banking space is really booming right now. Earlier this month the UK-based mobile bank Atom raised £149 million in funding led by Spanish bank BBVA. This week, the Berlin-based mobile bank N26 raised $160 million to accelerate growth in the US and the UK.

Conclusion — the future of banking

It’s of course hard to predict the future of banking, mostly due to the yet untapped potential of the blockchain technology. But with traditional banks and startups exploring innovative use cases of decentralized financial solutions, there will be certainly big changes coming, which will completely transform the way how consumers and businesses access/use banking services. And most likely it will not be the Deutsche Banks or BNPs of the world which will be leading that field in the future, but probably a fintech startup that is just getting started.

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Podcast #29 — Talking Insurtech with Eugeni Morales

In itnig’s Podcast #29 Bernat Farrero, CEO at itnig speaks with Eugeni Morales about his experience in the Insurtech and Proptech business. Eugeni is one of our partners at Factorial and someone we have the pleasure of working with day by day.

At itnig every Friday we sit down to talk with interesting people whom we meet throughout the week and we make a podcast (in Spanish) out of our conversations. You can listen to it on iTunes, subscribe to our channel on Youtube or enjoy it through iVoox.

For this Podcast #29 Bernat Farrero, CEO at itnig and Eugeni Morales come together to talk about the beginning of his career in Insurtech, what he has learned, how digitalization has shaped the sector and how he got involved with Factorial.

Eugeni, how did you get started in the world of insurance?

I had the chance that my family already had small businesses. I started to study engineering and straight out of college worked for a multinational company. After a few months I realized that this was not what I was looking for and started to work in a family business dedicated to insurance for medical sector. Eventually we sold the company to insurance executives and after this first experience in entrepreneurship I continued to create another business in the insurance sector.

In 2003 / 2004 I was leading a medical services business oriented to companies and other businesses connected to this. We had about 200 employees and revenues of 6 million Euros facilitating medical services to construction firms for example.

What are the margins in such a business?

When you work for insurance companies the margins are very small, whereas in the public sector you can reach a higher margin. All in all however it was very complicated work because you had a high costs for overheads for the doctors. In the end we sold the company.

Why did you decide to sell if the business was working for you?

It was a lot of work with high labor risk for a low margin. At that age, I preferred to have a less labor intensive business. We sold the company and I decided to go into the real estate sector. After living through the real estate crisis, I took a break in 2010 to travel the world and recharge.

Upon coming back to Barcelona I started again. This time I had the idea to start online. Not that I knew anything about Internet but I thought there were many opportunities. That’s when the idea of Insurtech started taking form.

The first online company I created was an insurance information portal — where you as a user could have access to all insurances you have, see the costs and compare them and contract new / switch insurances right through the platform. An insurance comparison if you will.

This business is where I lost the most money in my life. It did not work — I did not execute it well and the market was not ready.

The insurance sector is a very regulated business. You cannot apply lean or startup methodologies of trial and error if you are in such a regulated space. Regulations condition your philosophy of trial & error.

What went wrong? What was your go-to market plan?

I dedicated a lot of time to create the product and little time to think about what the user would want. Our time to market was delayed a lot because we needed to reach agreements with insurance companies. When we finally launched, the margin time we had to interact with the market, to have traction was really short.

We were an aggregator of insurance policies as app. For a lot of users it was the first time they knew how much they were spending on insurance, which insurance they had contracted and a chance to compare them.

What was your business model?

We worked as brokers, with a commission based on all insurances. However, the insurance companies at that time were not so interested in digital world. Now of course this has changed and they are investing a lot online.

From what I learned here new businesses emerged and I maintained a good relationships with an international broker looking at what online business can grow, what opportunities there are for brokers.

So what kind of projects do you do in Insurtech?

Different products like insurance cancellation for travel companies like Waynabox, Real Estate sector or even all kind of Classified sites like for example Wallapop.

We are not looking for distribution but rather new business models for insurances in the digital space. Where there is insecurity between buyer and seller, we can create an insurance product dedicated to bridge this gap.

An exempla is the fintech startup Marketpay. You buy a product from someone far away and you don’t want to go to physically pick it up and check it is in good conditions. We can do logistics and an insurance for warranty of product for you.

We work with escrow payments on the platform. The buyer pays for the product, the company keeps the money until product is received and validated by the buyer. Only once the product is checked, is the money released to the seller. If it turns out that the product does not work in the limit of 30 or 60 days, the product is returned — repaired or the money is reimbursed partially. We are part of this operational flow of Marketpay — creating a new insurance product that did not exist before.

Without escrow, without validation by the buyer this would be impossible.

In this way, I look for startups where we can test new products like this — before bringing it to a much bigger customer.

A bigger customer like Airbnb?

Yes, for example.

We created an insurance that covers the damage a visitor might leave in your house. The traveller instead of leaving a deposit, could pay a premium that covers the damage. That could be an option, substitution the deposit for a premium (which will never be recovered). There is a friction between traveler and renter. Renters needed to have money in cash- that makes it more complicated and we think that in this case for example an insurance would be better.

Airbnb can make a margin off the premium, on a deposit Airbnb does not make anything.

What changes do you see in the business? Is there anything that surprised you lately?

The model that I most liked could be the one used by Marketpay, using escrow but some would consider this more Fintech than Insurtech. Another interesting project I recently saw in the US is a company offering to cover certain risks but instead of asking for a premium they ask for more data of their users. If you give us access to this data and the buyer, we’ll cover the risk. Substituting the insurance for data could be a possible future.

What about Factorial? You got to know Factorial in the very beginning and you decided to invest. Where did you see the opportunity?

The strong suites I saw were and are that technology has a high importance. There is a clear market necessity, brokers were already doing it (benefits), so there was an existing demand. The capacity to monetize was diversified not just insurance but through other products as well. The commission is small but the volume is high and the segment is growing. As there is more pressure on our social welfare system, young people are looking more and more for private insurance — if they can get benefits by going through their employer why would they not do it?

Another important part in my decision was itnig. Knowing that itnig is behind Factorial meant that I did not have to worry that the entrepreneur would get scared, it’s not the fist time they are doing it, they know how to build a business.

In general, what motivates you when investing?

I only invest if I know about the sector, if I can bring contacts and add value, if I see a strong team and an infrastructure like an incubator that gives more security, behind the startup.

If I don’t know anything about the space the startup is working in I don’t go in.

What are you planning to do int he next years?

I have some ideas to start a business in Real Estate. And for the other projects, where I have invested I look to contribute the most to make it a success like Factorial or Marketpay.

Listen to our podcast to learn more about Eugeni’s story. Learn more in this Podcast in Spanish on our Youtube channel, listen to it on iTunes or enjoy it through iVoox and subscribe to our newsletter to stay always up to date.