Rafael Salazar Novo

Rafael Salazar is an entrepreneur, innovation strategist and advisor in Open Innovation for startups and corporations. He has gained broad experience from launching new ventures and bringing innovative ideas to reality, managing strategy consulting projects, and launching successful startups (some of them acquired) and failed projects in his entrepreneurial journey.

Rafael has worked as innovation advisor for large corporations, including top European and Latin-American companies and numerous Fortune 500 companies, combining his strategy consulting background with the creativity and exponential growth ideas from the entrepreneurship world to foster high-impact projects.

Rafael is currently focused on growing new business opportunities within the natural ecosystem between Latin-America and Spain, with emphasis on fintech, insurtech and microcredits platforms.

His latest ventures include Sendity and GeltGiro, two startups focusing on the remittances, payments, and top-up services for Latin-American migrants worldwide.

Both companies were acquired in 2022 and integrated in a cash management multinational corporation, taking a next step in the expansion of the services.

His field of interest is behavioral economics and data analytics, particularly the impact on real-life financial environments, risk analysis and decision-making processes. The application of his research will help develop social financial scoring models based on individual behaviors and profiles, to create disruptive fintech products for unbanked segments in developing countries.

In this field, Rafael co-founded Olvie in 2022,  a digital insurtech startup that leverages multiplayer aggregation for B2B solutions, focused on living benefits and life insurance.

Rafael is also professor and mentor for business schools and startups ecosystems, such as IE Business School, Geneva Business, and Google For Startups. He is also a senior leader for the TED community in Spain, crafting events related to impact networking and ideas worth spreading.

With an engineering, business, and tech background, he is primarily focused on entrepreneurship, innovation and strategy advisory.

Rafael holds a master’s degree in Telecom from Venezuela, a MSc in Technology Systems in France, and recently completed a dual Executive MBA from Columbia University (USA) and London Business School (UK).

CORPORATE EXPERIENCE

• COO Olvie Insurance

• Project Director and Innovation advisor. Royal Commission in Saudi Arabia

• CEO, Sendity , Spain, 2020 – Present (Acquired)

• Partner, G8, Spain, 2019 – Present

• Innovation advisor, Microwd, Spain, 2018 – Present

• Senior Advisor / Country Manager / Director, Opinno, Spain / USA, 2012 – 2019

• Director LatAm & Europe, MIT Innovators U35, Spain, 2016 – 2017

• Managing Director, Spain Tech Center, San Franciso USA, 2015 – 2016

• Senior Strategy Consultant: Telefonica / PSA / Analysys Mason-BCG, Spain/LatAm/MENA, 2007 – 2012

• Co-founder of BWater (integrated in Mahou Group)

• Co-founder of Aircoom, SuperApt, Sense Case, and other informal ventures

ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE

• Adjunct Professor. IE Business School. Spain, 2018 – Present

• Adjunct Professor. IE Business School, Spain, 2022 – Present

• Academic Advisor – Startup Lab. International MBA, IE Business School, 2021 – Present

• Professor and Program Lead. Executive Education and Exponential Learning, IE Middle East

• Guest Professor and lecturer: Deusto University (Spain), IED (Spain), EOI (Spain), ESIC (Spain), Geneva Business School (Switzerland), Univesidad del Pacífico (Peru), Universidad Javeriana (Colombia), Azerbaijan State University of Economics (Azerbaijan), Escuela Politécnica Nacional (Ecuador)

ACADEMIC BACKGROUND

• Dual Executive MBA. Columbia Business School / London Business School, 2019 – 2021

• Master on Innovation. EOI, Spain, 2012 – 2013

• MSc Communications systems and technologies. Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain, 2009 – 2011

• Master in telecom management, National Telecommunications Institute. Paris, France, 2007 – 2009

• Electronics Engineering. Universidad Simon Bolivar. Venezuela, 2000 – 2005