The euphoria that the digital sector was experiencing has faded. After years of spectacular growth sponsored by the pandemic, startups have succumbed to the macroeconomic situation.
"We are going through the worst moment since the financial crisis of 2008. The war in Ukraine, inflation, the rise in interest rates and the fall in the stock markets have caused a tectonic change, the first decline in investment in the sector in recent five years”, said Bryce Keane, author of the report The State of European Tech 2022, presented yesterday by the British fund Atomico.
As the graph reflects, investment in Europe has fallen by around 18%, going from 103.6 billion to 84.5 billion in one year. Yesterday, no one was talking about a burst bubble, but they were talking about a significant drop in valuations. The startups of the continent have gone from being worth 3,110 to 2,700 billion.
The number of new unicorns (startups valued at 1 billion) has plunged, from 106 to 31 this year. The statistics show that last year's record was extraordinary and that the figure of 31, without taking into account the last weeks of December, is already higher than that of 2019 and 2020. In addition, the IPOs of these large companies have shone Due to their absence, there have barely been 2 compared to 25 last year.
Another of the most shocking data has been that of employment. The sector, which has always promoted the creation of quality employment, has destroyed around 14,000 jobs this year, 7% of the total in the sector worldwide. The most notorious layoffs have been those of the big startups –such as Klarna, Gorillas, or Cazoo– that have seen the demands of their investors increase after receiving huge sums of money and seeing how their growth prospects were not met.
"In this new scenario, only expansion promises are no longer valid: investors are now looking closely at short-term profitability and sustainability projections," Chris Grew, a partner at the US consulting firm Orrick, commented yesterday.
In Spain, the ecosystem has also suffered from the macroeconomic turmoil. Investment in emerging companies has gone from 3,600 to 3,100 million in one year, a drop of 15% which, if compared with that of Europe as a whole, has been less severe. In the ranking of countries (see graph) Spain has been in sixth position, surpassing the Netherlands, Finland and Norway but maintaining a long distance from the United Kingdom, France and Germany, the three countries that play in the first technological league.
In fact, Spanish investment in startups barely accounts for 7% of the total. If these data are compared with those of the previous year, Spain has held up. In fact, it has maintained its sixth position, while France has surpassed Germany and the Netherlands has fallen from fifth to seventh position. In this year's edition of the report, the ranking of investment by cities, in which Barcelona and Madrid used to be among the top 10, has disappeared.
Despite the withdrawal experienced in 2022, Atomico urged yesterday to look beyond this year and to value the maturity of the European ecosystem after 20 years of experience. “We can be optimistic. We came from a year with astronomically high figures and in 2022 we still exceed figures from previous years”, stated the director of Atomico, Sarah Guemouri.
