16 April, World Entrepreneurship Day

World Entrepreneurship Day is celebrated on 16 April with the aim of promoting the entrepreneurial spirit and encouraging the generation of ideas and their corresponding implementation.

What is entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship could be understood as turning a new idea into a successful innovation through skills, creativity and exposure to risk, although there is no consensus on how to define entrepreneurship.

An entrepreneurship that must have a series of basic common characteristics, which could be the spirit and nose to anticipate the competition, skills to develop the venture, knowledge of the regulation of the environment, financing to establish the activity and having a network in which different actors participate in order to create synergies with other people who are undertaking the venture.

The importance of entrepreneurship in our times can be seen in the fact that some of the companies that have been occupying the highest market capitalisation positions in the world since the beginning of the 21st century have an entrepreneurial origin.

Companies as extremely relevant in our day-to-day lives as Google, Amazon, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft came about as a result of the entrepreneurial actions of their respective founders.

Wayra, more than a decade contributing to the evolution of the entrepreneurial system.

Since its launch in 2011 and with activities in nine countries in Latin America and Europe, Wayra has invested in more than 1,100 startups, of which 530 are active in its portfolio and 190 are working with Telefónica.

These figures have made Wayra, Telefónica’s main open innovation initiative, a benchmark in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, providing startups with access to Telefónica’s extensive network and helping them to achieve a global presence.

With the evolution from startup accelerator to corporate venture capital fund, Wayra offers a unique approach to help startups scale globally, having become a key player in open innovation, supporting large corporations and contributing to the evolution of entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Data on entrepreneurship in Spain

According to data from South Summit’s Entrepreneurship Map 2023, and in line with global data, 80% of entrepreneurs in Spain are men.

The average age is 32, one below the figure for 2022. With regard to academic training, 98% have a university degree and 79% have a master’s degree, which is 9% more than the previous year.

Regarding their previous professional experience, almost half (49%) were employed in a company, compared to 8% who worked in a start-up.

Women entrepreneurs

In the case of women, the average age is slightly higher than the overall average, at 35.

In terms of academic qualifications, 94% have a university degree and 53% have a Master’s degree, figures lower than the average we have analysed above.

In terms of professional background, 45% come from working in another company and 7% come from another start-up.

Entrepreneurial Women’s Day

On the other hand, 19 November also marks International Women’s Entrepreneurship Day, a day that emerged in 2014 as an initiative of Wendy Diamond, businesswoman and founder of the Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Organization (WEDO), which seeks to increase the visibility of the obstacles and difficulties that women entrepreneurs may encounter.

WEDO’s own website explains that the movement “was founded with the mission to raise awareness of girls living in poverty around the world and to empower women around the globe. By celebrating, supporting and encouraging women entrepreneurs around the world, we are creating a more equitable world for women through the power of entrepreneurship”.

The gender gap can be seen in a figure we have already mentioned: four out of five entrepreneurs are men.

With regard to investment data on the European continent, and according to figures from IDC European Women in VC, startups founded by women did not raise even 2% of the investment: only 1.8%, a percentage that rises to 9.3% if we are talking about teams with mixed founders.

Thus, the remaining 89% corresponds to startups with founding teams formed by men, according to data from the year 2021.

#ScaleUpWomen: a source of talent in the face of the gender gap

#ScaleUpWomen is an example of how Wayra is committed to diversity as a source of talent in the face of the gender gap that, as we have just seen, exists in the world.

The initiative emerged in 2015 as a pioneering programme which, through talks, events and training, raises the profile of female entrepreneurship and promotes investment in startups led by women.

In fact, Wayra’s investment team is made up of more than 50% women, a proportion that far exceeds the European average of 20%, according to the European Women in Venture Capital report.