Last night, Subasta de Ocio, the company that lets you bid on the overcapacity of hotels, restaurants, and other leisure activities, won Tech5 Barcelona, becoming the fastest growing startup in Spain.
After popping the champagne, Marc Zinck, CEO and co-founder of Subasto de Ocio said:
“We entered the competition almost by coincidence, we usually don’t participate that much in events, but we’re so happy to have won!”
The other Tech5 finalists were (in order of their growth rate):
2. Fever
3. Northweek
4. Trip4real
5. Nubelo
The aim of Tech5 is to identify Europe’s fastest-growing young tech companies. The winners are selected based on their growth rate between 2013-2015. This is not a pitch contest, the results are based on actual employee data and revenue.
To take part in the competition, the company must have been founded in 2011 or later, have revenues in excess of €200,000, and offer its own proprietary technology. It’s also necessary that the companies have their headquarters in one of the five participating countries.
TNW and Adyen hosted the Spanish edition of Tech5 at Artte, where the finalists and other great Spanish companies got together to celebrate and connect with companies from different cities in Spain.
“It is tremendously exciting to see the innovation displayed by all the finalists of the Tech5 event in Spain,” said Juan José Llorente, country manager of Adyen Spain. “Companies like these are driving growth in Spain, so it is really important that they get the recognition they deserve.”
No secrets – just 100 percent devotion
On their secret formula for their fantastic growth, CEO Zinck has no easy answers:
“The secret is that we have no big secret. Some people say that 100 percent focus on product is the most important, but I disagree. Product alone is nothing if you don’t know how your users behave. We are obsessed with how our users behave, not what they tell us, but how they interact with our product.”
Subasta de Ocio’s CTO Julian Gardner jumps in:
“The thing that’s the truth today, may not be the truth tomorrow. That’s why we constantly try to figure out, what’s the truth for our company today.”
While the winners may not believe in a 100 percent focus on product, the runner-up, Fever, certainly does:
“Our key to growing fast has been focusing 100 percent on our product, and we have seen great organic growth from this focus”, says Pep Gomez, CEO and founder of Fever.
Honorable mentions
Five Spanish tech companies that didn’t make the finals, but have shown tremendous growth over the last few years were Playspace, Typeform, ForceManager, Fintonic and Marfeel.
The Barcelona Tech5 event was the third of the European regional finals, after Amsterdam and London. From here, the competition heads to Stockholm, Paris and Berlin before the finals at The Next Web Conference next month.
You can track all of the participating startups on Index and look for Subasta de Ocio to win it all at The Next Web Conference in May!
Author Bio:
Sindre Hopland is a Senior Journalist at Barcinno, Barcelona’s international startup and tech platform. Previously he worked for NRK, Norway’s largest media and broadcasting company.
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