Anna Marmyleva is a venture builder at GCO Ventures. Trained at IE Business School, she has experience in open innovation, strategy and intrapreneurship projects for organisations such as CaixaBank, Naturgy, Telefonica, EIT Urban Mobility and Mediclinic Group. Her profile combines analytical rigour with execution capability in highly uncertain environments. In this interview, she dismantles one of the most entrenched myths in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and pinpoints where founding teams often fall short.
If you had to explain what you do at GCO Ventures without using your job title, what would you say?
I manage uncertainty, or at least I try to. I simplify and break down complexity so that a large vertical, a market or an opportunity becomes addressable, and so that studying it leads to insights and intelligent decisions for the future business. I design the strategies and tactics that enable quick wins. Across all phases of building: exploration, design and construction.
What did you believe about the startup world before working here, and what did you change your mind about most quickly?
That a successful startup idea always appears “suddenly” and depends only on the entrepreneur’s creative and observant eye. In reality, I am now aware that ideas that are sustainable over time and deliver good business results are born not only from creativity, but also – and much more – from a reasonable and balanced combination of proactive research and creativity.
What type of person – founder, builder or teammate – makes you think: “I would get into trouble with this person”?
I would embark on a project with people who bring perspectives different from mine, who are curious and who enjoy building. I think the best teams are those that combine complementary capabilities – business, product, growth, technology or finance – and are able to transform apparently far-fetched ideas into propositions that make sense for the market. And, above all, people who enjoy the process, because we spend a very significant part of our time working, and for me it is essential to have a good time while building things together.
What skill would you never put on LinkedIn, but is essential in your day-to-day work?
I would say empathy, and the ability to adapt to each person’s way of working. I try to understand how each person thinks and what they need, without losing sight of my own boundaries.
It is not so much a “visible” skill, but it is very present day to day: helping the team work well, building trust and keeping communication flowing. For me, it is important to take care of those small details that make people feel comfortable and respected when working together.
The professional mistake that has taught you the most, and that you would make again despite everything.
I do not really consider it a mistake, although it can have its downsides. Extending research or user validation timelines slows the process down, but it allows you to build something that truly responds to people’s needs and does not only make sense in projected numbers. And also being very honest in my feedback.
What question would you like more teams to ask themselves before raising a round?
What do we want to achieve with this? Will scaling or giving certain investors significant stakes and powers harm our core product or service and our relationship with customers? Does it create an additional burden for the team, and how are we going to mitigate it?
What trend is currently overvalued, and which one is undervalued?
Artificial intelligence is having a moment of enormous prominence. Rather than overvalued, I would say that sometimes it is applied without being fully clear about what it is for. It has huge potential not only as a copilot for optimising processes, but also to move towards systems capable of making decisions autonomously in certain contexts. Precisely for that reason, the challenge is to integrate it with judgement and in the cases where it truly adds value. At the same time, it is important to properly understand its long-term implications, including how it affects our capabilities and the way we work.
At the same time, personalisation has become an omnipresent concept. When applied well, it can create highly relevant experiences, especially in areas such as health or wellbeing. However, in some cases its meaning has become diluted and it is used more as a label than as a real value proposition. The challenge is to use it consciously, ensuring that it responds to a real need and not only to a logic of consumption.
When a project does not work – startup, product or initiative – what usually has the greatest impact: context, the idea, the team or ego?
Rather than a single factor, I would say what tends to weigh most is bias in decision-making. And that bias can come from different places: ego, the pressure to move quickly, lack of information or even the team’s own previous experience.
When a team operates with biases, it tends to limit its ability to adapt and its openness to questioning what is not working. By contrast, the teams that evolve best usually combine complementary profiles with a certain practical humility: the ability to review their own assumptions, listen to other points of view and adjust course when necessary.
What do you do outside work that, without realising it, makes you better at your job?
Sport, which brings joy. And painting, which brings peace.
If someone reads this interview five years from now, what would you like them to think about your time at GCO Ventures?
I would like them, beyond my time at GCO Ventures, to remember the importance of the team: the value each person brings and how we treat one another. Because, in the end, the true success of a company is not built only on good ideas, but on great teams.
Anna Marmyleva leaves us with an idea worth keeping in mind: the greatest risk in a project is not the market or the technology, but the bias of the team building it. That someone with her profile focuses on the biases that shape decision-making, regardless of where they come from, is not a casual opinion. It is an observation built from the practice of building, not from theory.
Want to get to know the GCO Ventures team better? Keep reading our blog and discover the perspectives of the people building the ecosystem from within.
