Internationalization is usually a complex process, in which you have to go country by country, because each of them has its peculiarities. These difficulties are well known to Lourdes Cuevas, who came to Catalonia to launch the American company for which she worked at the time on the European market. “After a while, the company stopped being interested in the European Union and they asked me to return to the United States, but I quit my job to stay here,” Cuevas explains. To earn a living, the entrepreneur chose to dedicate herself to what she already did: launch business projects in other countries, but this time on her own.
Together with her co-worker Pilar Macchiavello, Cuevas founded the startup Güipup in 2018. The company was led by both partners for the first few years, until Macchiavello left the project at the beginning of 2021. At that time, Cuevas signed two new partners. On the one hand, Emilio Giménez, with more technological knowledge, and, on the other, Linda Naerheim, a former co-worker of Cuevas with experience in the North American market.
With a team of 13 people, 80% of whom are women, Güipup accompanies companies at all stages of the internationalization process, from the moment they set this goal until their product is already available on the shelf. “Our clients are mass consumption companies of a certain size, from ten million euros in sales”, explains the founder. The markets in which they have specialized are Canada, the United States and Mexico -where the entrepreneur is from-, but also South America and Western Europe.
In order to help more and smaller companies, Güipup is creating software to automate and digitize the processes prior to entering another market. Somehow, this software will go on to do the work now done more manually by the startup's employees. To develop this software, the emerging company has opened a round of investment of 300,000 euros, which will be added to the 400,000 euros of financing provided by the company itself. Cuevas advances that the forecast is for the platform to be operational as of mid-2024, from which time they expect the company's workload to grow exponentially.
Güipup closed 2022 with a turnover of 520,000 euros and in its four years of life it has managed more than 150 company projects.
