There are those who do it with great fanfare, whose names appear on the charts of the main national and international media. But there are also those that grow under the radar, so it is somewhat more difficult to identify them.

One of those lists in which many entrepreneurs would like to appear is the one published each year by the Financial Times with the thousand fastest growing European startups. In the last edition, only 54 national startups appeared, with Jobandtalent, Foot District, ID Finance and Wetaca at the top of a ranking in which startups of British origin dominate.

Outside the lists, one of the most notorious cases of rapid growth in the current national ecosystem is represented by Capchase, the fintech founded by Miguel Ángel Fernández Larrea, Luis Basagoiti Marqués, Ignacio Moreno Pubul and Przemek Gotfryd less than a year ago and which has already exceeded $ 300 million in funding in three rounds. With a non-dilutive solution to finance SaaS companies, Capchase already has more than a hundred clients, the majority in the United States, and expectations are very high since the intention of the team with the new funds is to extend its help throughout Europe . finance the ecosystem of businesses based on recurring income.

 

 

Growing lung

 

But growth is not always linked to exorbitant figures, especially when the objective is to advance with a customer base, without resorting to external financing. In this case, Doofinder fits, a technology company founded by Iván Navas and Enrique Martínez that offers an internal search engine for ecommerce and that has managed to rise to the European leadership in this segment. In less than two years, Doofinder has gone from having a staff of 30 people to assembling a team of 90 and having a turnover of 3.5 to 10 million euros. And all this at the lungs and with 80% of the income from foreign markets.

 

 

 

Also little by little and using customers as the only source of income is Metricool. The social media solution founded by the marriage of Juan Pablo Tejela and Laura Montells in 2014 is a tool for managing social networks and online advertising on the web and mobile. The company was born with 50,000 euros of its own resources and another 50,000 from a participative loan from Enisa.

This has been the only capital that Metricool has needed to position itself as one of the most successful startups in the social media environment. “A long-term company that is stable and profitable. That is what we are looking for” stated some time ago Juan Pablo Tejela, the CEO of the company. And it seems that they are succeeding because currently the company continues to grow at a rate of 8% per month and already has a team of 25 people. As for the turnover, they go for 2.5 million euros.

 

 

 

Wave of acquisitions

 

The acquisition by a company can also be interpreted as a sign of vitality and brilliance of a startup. Several recent operations have taken place in this regard. The latest is that of BIPI, whose a la carte car rental solution has just been 100% acquired by Groupe Renault to join the powerful trend of subscription economy.

Shortly before, the Flat 101 from Zaragoza was acquired by Indra, through the Minsait company. In this case, the objective is to strengthen services in the field of electronic commerce and commercial distribution, with strategic consulting capabilities and omnichannel experience design, among other areas. The operation includes the incorporation of 150 professionals from Flat 101 to the group. Also in the case of BIPI, the 120 employees of the company are taken over by the new owner.

Facilitating the landing in Spain is what Outfund pursues with the purchase of the Spanish startup Clicfunds. Outfund is a British company that also acts as a non-dilutive provider of e-commerce startups, the same field of activity as Clicfunds.

Sonada, due to the speed of the operation, was also the sale of Blok, a dark store startup founded in January 2021 in Barcelona by Vishal Verma -ex-Glovo employee-, Hunab Moreno -ex-employee of Deliveroo- and Varun Kapoor and bought in a few months by Getir, a Turkish delivery giant specializing in ultra-fast delivery.

Already in Valencia, among the latest acquisitions, there was talk in this medium about the purchase of the startup Wohcash by the security company Prosegur.

 

The opinion of entrepreneurs

 

A few months ago, the entrepreneur Jacinto Fleta (CMO of Flamingueo) opened a thread on twitter in which he invited other entrepreneurs to express their opinion about ‘quiet companies’, startups that do not make much noise and whose main objective is to build profitable products Among the names suggested by the entrepreneurs were Freepik, a Malaga company specialized in offering content and other resources for designers that managed to consolidate itself a few years after its birth as a benchmark in its segment, Minderest, a competitive price tracker or Lexgoapp, a legal marketplace made up of more than 3,000 specialized lawyers, which connects users seeking legal services with lawyers seeking clients quickly and easily.