The objective pursued by the startup law is to promote innovative entrepreneurship, which has recently been approved by the Council of Ministers for submission to the Cortes. The regulations seek to promote this type of entrepreneurship and generate opportunities for the youngest, in addition to being a pole of attraction for investment and talent.
According to the bill, those companies that are innovative and that are also up to 5 years old will be considered startups, 7 in the case of biotechnology, energy and industrial companies; and that have their registered office in Spain. The same will happen with those companies that have not distributed dividends and are not listed, and whose income is up to 5 million euros.
Among the advantages of the Startups Law for entrepreneurs, the elimination of notarial and registration fees stands out in the case of companies that are created under the standard statutes and electronically. Companies can be incorporated quickly, since only a single electronic document will be needed and registration in the commercial register will be done in 6 hours when the standard statutes are used.
The law also removes the previously existing requirement to obtain a foreign identification number for non-resident investors. Regardless, during the first 3 years of life, the startup is exempt from the cause of dissolution due to related losses or those that generate an equity imbalance.
Entrepreneurs and workers will also have a favorable tax regime. This means that the tax rate on corporate and non-resident income taxes will be reduced. Likewise, they will be allowed to defer tax debts without guarantees or default interest and the obligation to make installment payments will also be eliminated. Thus, the maximum deduction base to which newly created companies may opt will be 100,000 euros per year. The National Innovation Company SA (ENISA) will be in charge of accrediting companies as startups so that they can access the benefits established by law.
Spanish startups manage to capture more than 1,400 million so far this year. The network of Spanish emerging companies is made up of more than 10,000 companies with an average of 2.7 years and between two and ten employees. Specifically, in the absence of data for this 2022, the value of the Spanish entrepreneurial ecosystem multiplied by five between 2015 and 2021, from 10,000 million to 46,000 million euros.
Of this figure, 15,000 million corresponded to unicorns, while future unicorns contributed 8,000 million and the rest of the Spanish entrepreneurial ecosystem, 20,000 million. However, the value of the ecosystem is not the only thing that has risen considerably in recent years in Spain, but so has investment.
So far in 2022, investment in Spanish emerging companies has reached 1,433 million, after a first quarter in which they exceeded 1,226 million, 13% more than in the same period of 2020. Some figures that point to that during 2022 the investment of 2021 could be exceeded, a year that closed with 4,300 million, almost four times more than the volume of the previous year. Moreover, so far in 2022, more has already been invested than in 2020, 2019 or 2018.
larger rounds. Between January and April 2022, 135 operations were carried out with an average value of 10.63 million, compared to the 6.51 million in which the operations were closed in 2018. If compared to that year, the investment volume has grew by 271%, while the number of operations has grown by 130%, which is explained by the significant average size of the rounds.
To this we must add that the rate of creation of unicorns could accelerate this 2022 in Spain, since according to the Top 100 Next Unicorns, nine Spanish startups could soon reach that category, which would almost double the current figure, which varies between the 12 and 15 companies, according to the criteria applied by the different reports. All in a sector that, in the case of Spain, is made up of people with an average age of 42 years whose motivation to undertake is the lack of employment, followed by the generation of wealth.
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