First Tuesday Madrid with Borja Aranguren from Cobee
On 5th November, Callejón de Serrano reunited the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Madrid in a new First Tuesday meeting. On this occasion, the guest was Borja Aranguren, CEO of Cobee, the startup owned by BStartup that unifies, simplifies and automates the management of social benefits and flexible distribution of employees.
Borja Aranguren has a multidisciplinary and international profile that earned him the support of one of his former bosses when he launched into the world of entrepreneurship with Cobee. “The fact that he arrived recommended by his former boss was a guarantee to invest in the project,” said Carlos Blanco, who also participated in the financing round through Encomenda Smart Capital.
#FirstTuesday | Borja Aranguren (@Cobee_es): “Personalmente necesito estar centrado un tiempo en financiación y otro centrado y focalizado en producto”.
?@carlosblanco: “El hecho de que su antiguo jefe hubiese invertido fue una validación para invertir en @Cobee_es“. https://t.co/bAFRdiBqph
— BStartup (@BStartup) November 5, 2019
“At Cobee we have a product philosophy based on customer feedback. We always get a minimum viable product and collect comments about it to continue implementing improvements. ” After his career and personal experience, Aranguren detailed how Cobee’s beginnings were and how they have been pivoting his initial idea of being the digital card for restaurant tickets to the social benefits card.
The online platform founded by Borja Aranguren and Daniel Olea is linked to an application and a credit card that each employee receives in order to pay meals, transportation, childcare, training or medical insurance, discounting at the end of the month the amount from the payroll. “We are currently 10 full-time people on the team and all have phantom shares. These professionals have entered the project at a time of certain risk and this must be rewarded. ”
Cobee is one of the 10 startups selected in BStartup’s # BStartup10 program, where companies receive capital and personalized support that mainly helps them develop their market and access subsequent rounds. “Our product is a financial product and having a bank like Banco Sabadell in the shareholding made a lot of sense, besides being a very strong channel. From Cobee we do B2B and in that sense there is no better entity than Banco Sabadell, ”said Borja Aranguren.