Bio

Miguel Arias, proud dad, serial entrepreneur, and startup investor, has +15 years of experience in building technology-based startups with a global reach. Miguel has founded startups before, and helped others grow in a variety of roles. He is a serial entrepreneur and experienced investor. He started in the webcasting industry with his company Imaste, which was later acquired by SV-based ON24 Inc. He later became an integral part of CARTO(DB) where he led the sales, financial, and operational efforts as COO, from its Madrid and NYC offices, directing the company's scaling-up up to more than 100 employees, raising over $100 million from top tier VCs like Insight Venture Partners, Accel Partners, Salesforce Ventures, Hearst and others He then moved into the corporate world as Global Entrepreneurship Director at Telefonica, where he defined a new stage in Telefónica's open innovation strategy, enhancing the connection international ecosystems from Brazil or Colombia to the UK, Germany or Spain. As responsible for Telefonica's seed stage funds through Wayra and Open Future, since 2018, he led the investments in more than 130 startups in Europe and LATAM in the fields of Cybersecurity, Data, AI, Mobility, IoT, VR, Fintech. Nowadays he helps entrepreneurs as general partner in K Fund, a multi-stage venture capital fund focused on tech startups in Southern Europe and LATAM, and leads Leadwind, the €250M first early growth fund in the region. Miguel is a skilled generalist who understands technology as well as people-matters. His expertise encompasses from the vision and strategy definition to operations, go-to-market and HR, with special dedication to SaaS scale up growth. He is a ruthless operator, who will provide honest advice and concrete expertise to our entrepreneurs. He loves to teach and share experiences as entrepreneurship professor at the IE Business School and ISDI. Trying to enhance the Spanish entrepreneurial ecosystem, he co-founded Chamberi Valley, the main Madrid-based association for tech-based scaled ups with over 1 million € revenue or 1 million € in investment which now has over 35 members which employ more than 5000 skilled individuals. He writes his thoughts about entrepreneurship at http://emprenderagolpes.com.