Alejandro Artacho

I’m the CEO and Co-founder of Spotahome. I studied Law and Business in Madrid with two exchange programs in Mexico and China. I speak English, Mandarin, and Spanish. I have always been obsessed with making the world smaller by simplifying every possible difficulty across the border. To that end, right after University, I moved to China for 3 years where I set up 2 companies: an exporting business and a travel agency. After that experience, I moved into tech companies and launched a startup related to job mobility worldwide that got selected in competitions in Portugal and Spain and incubated in the IE Venture Lab in Madrid. After a lot of learning, I moved and worked in Lisbon and London in the real estate industry, where I saw a massive opportunity to change the sector forever, so then I launched Spotahome in 2014. 5 years later, Spotahome employs directly more than 300 people and indirectly almost 500. It has raised $72M in capital, including a Series B led by Silicon Valley based Kleiner Perkins. My goal in life is to influence and inspire others to turn the impossible into the possible. I want to look back in time when I’m old and be able to say that we improved some things on this planet. That we changed how things are done. I’m a huge believer in human potential. We can achieve whatever we want. We can shape our destiny. And it all begins with the power and control of your mind. I stand for that self-control of your state of mind. Being conscious and self-aware, to be grateful and to understand that achieving anything depends on you and the people you surround yourself with.

How did IE help you get to where you are today?

Through IE I learned about tech startups and what they meant. While I was studying the International LLM, our project got selected at the Venture Lab. There we learned about MVPs, user feedback, fundraising, scale-ups and more. IE showed me something I didn’t know, and most importantly, introduced me to incredibly talented people who had experienced the scale-up stage. Also, the program inspires by introducing global startups with products we all use today but had humble beginnings in the early days.

How did you come up with the idea for your company?

I was working in the student accommodation sector in London back in 2013 when I thought about how the travel industry has been digitized – Any product or service related to transportation, accommodation, and activities can be purchased entirely online. So why could that not be the case in real estate?

What is the key to the success of your company?

There is still lots to do for success. However, we focus on trust through investing heavily in customer experience and quality of ads through in-person verification by our HomeCheckers. This is only possible through a great team driven by purpose.