17th SeedRocket Campus for Business Angels

SeedRocket’s Business Angels Campus is the leading training programme on startup investment in Spain. Its seventeenth edition took place in a hybrid format: three online sessions between 20 and 22 April, followed by an in-person session on 24 April at VML The Cocktail, in Madrid. With attendance limited to 40 places for the in-person session, the programme deliberately maintains a reduced scale in order to preserve the quality of exchange between participants. 

The Campus covers the full cycle of early-stage investment: how the investor ecosystem works in Spain, how to identify and assess opportunities, the legal aspects of investing, valuation and negotiation, shareholders’ agreements and cap tables, and portfolio management through to exit. The teaching faculty combines experienced business angels, founders of venture capital funds and specialised lawyers. Speakers in this edition included Jesús Monleón (SeedRocket) and Marc Badosa (4Founders Capital), Iñaki Arrola (KFund) and Paloma Cañete (Fides Capital), among others. 

Two members of the GCO Ventures team took part in this edition, with the aim of staying close to the spaces where the next generation of investors in the Spanish ecosystem is being trained and activated. For us, these kinds of encounters are an opportunity to test criteria, understand how startup investment is evolving and maintain a direct connection with those driving new ways of supporting entrepreneurship. 

The experience reinforces an idea that guides how we understand investment: enthusiasm for the ecosystem is necessary, but not enough. Investing in startups requires method, judgement and a clear understanding of the incentives behind each transaction. Knowing how to assess a team, read a cap table structure or understand what each party is really negotiating in a shareholders’ agreement makes the difference between a well-founded decision and a well-intentioned bet. At a time when capital is more selective and funding rounds require stronger justification, training better investors also means building a more robust ecosystem for startups and entrepreneurs themselves.