But it has not stopped graduates of Spain’s IESE Business School from trying. Its MBAs have caught the start-up bug and are launching companies everywhere. Around 40 IESE students have founded 32 VC-backed companies over the past five years, raising $171 million in combined venture capital, according to PitchBook, a venture capital and private equity research firm.
Below, BusinessBecause profiles two IESE entrepreneurs hoping conquer cyberspace.
Thomas Roggendorf
Ofertia
Thomas Roggendorf, co-founder and executive director of Ofertia, is bringing brochures into the internet age. The business digitizes catalogs and other print listings, making them geo-locatable and searchable for its 50 big retail and distribution clients in sectors such as food, electronics, and DIY.
Headquartered in Barcelona but operating across Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, the group has 177,000 stores geo-localized and more than 17,000 catalogs published online.
The company started life at IESE Business School, the result of obsessive brainstorming every morning by the three co-founders — Thomas, Jaume Betrian and Oriol Carerras.
The trio’s clogged up mailboxes eventually sparked the idea to marry paper with technology. Professors and peers helped to define the business plan.
“The three of us wanted to start something new and instead of doing an internship during the MBA program we started our own adventure,” says Thomas, who prior to the MBA worked at Goldman Sachs. “It’s a very different working environment, but I learnt a lot of things that help me build and grow Ofertia,” he says of the investment bank, such as a strong work ethic and attention to detail.
Founded in 2011, the company has grown from three to 55 employees and has raised three venture capital rounds, from investors including Bonial Internacional Group, the creator of the digital catalogue and leaflet distribution model, which has a 64% stake in Ofertia.
Thomas declines to provide figures but says the company raised more than €1 million in its second funding round from FINAVES, the seed capital fund of IESE, and other sources.
“We learnt a lot from different business case competitions at IESE,” he says, including how to negotiate with investors.
Avi Meir
TravelPerk
Avi Meir, co-founder and chief technology officer at TravelPerk, says the online travel booking platform can challenge market leaders like Expedia or Skyscanner, by targeting small and medium-sized businesses.
“We aggregate over 800 airlines, 800,000 hotels and virtually all car rental agencies in the world,” he says, saving enterprise clients precious time — and money. The company uses a complex algorithm to calculate budgets based on companies’ travel policies and real-time market prices. Businesses are then provided with comprehensive reports to more clearly understand their travel spend.
“It’s a huge market with tons of growth opportunities, especially for technology start-ups who try to fix old processes and systems,” says Avi, who adds that “hundreds” of companies are interested in the platform.
TravelPerk was founded in January this year by Ron Levin, Javier Suarez and Avi — veterans of Booking.com, a leading travel site owned by Nasdaq-listed Priceline Group, which bought out Hotel Ninjas, another start-up Avi launched in 2012.
“I stumbled into the travel industry almost by mistake,” he says, explaining that his first travel gig, VP of product for budgetplaces.com, came about through an alumni connection of IESE Business School, John Erceg.
“IESE provides an amazing network of alumni and professors who are helpful every step of the way,” says Avi, who graduated from the MBA in 2011. “Many of our customers come [from] our IESE connections as well.”
The real difficulty Avi faces in making the transition from MBA to entrepreneur, though, is altogether different. “One of the biggest challenges is to see your classmates’ skyrocketing careers in banking, consulting and multinationals, while you are struggling,” he says.
Some days you doubt your decision to work 160-hour weeks for less than minimum wage, he says, “rather than taking that high-paying executive job you were offered coming out of the MBA”.
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