- You are the President of the Youth Business Spain (YBS) Foundation. What is YBS? What are your objectives?
YBS is a foundation that promotes an alliance of social entities and whose main, though not sole, objective is
support for youth entrepreneurship. We are a community of shared knowledge, through which we all improve and adapt these new methodologies to the territorial needs from which we work at a local level.
- You are also the Director of the Ronsel Foundation, YBS’s member in Galicia. What has being part of YBS brought you?
New methodologies to support entrepreneurs, among which Mentoring stands out; a brand that gives us prestige and unites us, allowing us, together, to achieve more ambitious goals; and a community of great professionals to rely on and with whom to share effort and motivation.
- YBS is also a member of Youth Business International. How has being part of this global network helped YBS?
YBI is made up of more than 60 entities that support youth entrepreneurship worldwide and was the catalyst for the birth of YBS in Spain, uniting entities from different Autonomous Communities that focused on entrepreneurship, distancing ourselves from new entrepreneurship support tools, with special prominence for Mentoring, a novelty 10 years ago, which allows us to continue supporting entrepreneurs when they formalize their business and helps reduce the risks of the first years and increase their consolidation levels.
Today, it is a
fundamental source of knowledge and contacts, through which we can grow as a network and obtain more and better resources to support our young people.
- This year you celebrated YBS’s tenth anniversary. How do you assess these 10 years? What are the challenges for the next 10 years?
My assessment, which is personally very enriching, is tremendously positive professionally.
We have quadrupled the number of entities, we are already in 14 Autonomous Communities, and we know ourselves to be more capable, with greater reach and influence.
The challenges are many, but if I had to highlight one, it would be
the contribution to improving the youth entrepreneurship support system in Spain. A country with scarce youth entrepreneurship, and in Spain this happens as shown by the data from the study we carried out jointly with GEM Spain (only 3 out of 100 decide to undertake), is a country with less economic growth, less innovation, and a society with less equality of opportunities.
- You recently presented an evaluation of your voluntary mentoring program for young entrepreneurs. What are the main results?
I would highlight its contribution to the
creation and consolidation of almost five thousand jobs, the
creation of a network of more than twelve hundred volunteer mentors, an 86% professional satisfaction among participants, of whom 46% state that they have improved their turnover after going through our program and, finally and most strikingly, a 91% increase in business survival.
- Our motto is “I am what I want to be.” And you, are you?
I am a restless Galician who always wants to improve and take on new challenges, so I am also what I want to be.
