Welcome to Novobrief

The Spanish startup ecosystem has evolved significantly over the past few years. These days there are a lot more entrepreneurs, startups, business angels or Venture Capital firms than 5 to 10 years ago, when the local Internet industry was still in its early years and the economic crisis was in full swing.

However, one thing remains the same for Spain: there are few good publications covering the local tech scene and many abroad don’t know what’s going on in the country. I’ve experienced this many times when traveling to international tech conferences; eager to find out what VCs and entrepreneurs think about the evolution of the Spanish scene, I’d ask them about it, and the most common response would go something like… “I don’t really know. I don’t know where to read about it”.

That’s one of the main reasons why I’ve decided to launch Novobrief, a site where myself and others will try to explain what’s happening in Spain when it comes to startups, investors and entrepreneurship. I could do it in Spanish and probably have a bigger audience right away, but I honestly believe doing it in English will be better for the ecosystem and for our local startups and investors.

Novobrief won’t be just a news site. Covering acquisitions, investment rounds and similar kind of deals is fun and interesting, but there’s much more than can be done. It’s also possible to learn while reading long and interesting interviews, analysis of specific sectors, stories of how founders and startups have grown over the years or through guests that will share their thoughts on Novobrief from time to time.

In essence, we’re trying to build something that’s useful for the ecosystem because we believe it needs to be done and because we think we can have fun while doing it. And we hope you’ll join us for the ride.

I couldn’t have done this without the help of Javier Escribano, Diego Jiménez, Walter Kobylanski, Juan Luis Hortelano, Rubén Colomer the people at Gigas and many other friends that have offered me advice and, most importantly, encouraged me to follow my gut instinct. Oh, and by the way, Joe Haslam came up with the name.

Welcome aboard!