We spoke with Víctor Manuel Gragera Salcedo, Chief Operating Officer of the Cáceres Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Investment Committee of Cáceres Investor Hub.

In this interview, we speak with Víctor Manuel Gragera Salcedo, Chief Operating Officer of the Cáceres Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Investment Committee of Cáceres Investor Hub —the first business angels network in Extremadura— about how entrepreneurship and private investment are being driven from a territory that is strengthening its entrepreneurship and investment ecosystem.

Throughout the conversation, he shares the lessons accumulated over more than 25 years devoted to internationalization, entrepreneurship, and economic development, currently leading growth programs for startups in the pre-seed and seed stages and taking part in the selection, analysis, and support of technology projects in strategic sectors such as energy, Industry 5.0, agrotech, and e-health.

He also reflects on the investability and scalability criteria applied by an early-stage fund, on how the tensions of a heterogeneous investment committee are structured and managed, and on the most common mistakes that hold back projects seeking funding. When discussing these processes, he stresses a key idea: private investment “is largely based on trust.” That is why he advocates for a model in which the investor does not merely provide financial resources, but acts as “that industrial partner, that collaborative partner that brings clear value.” A philosophy that sums up his commitment to a solid entrepreneurial ecosystem, built from the territory and aimed at generating long-term value.

You’ve spent years fostering entrepreneurship from a region with a lower density of startups. What signs help you identify when a project can generate real economy in your territory?

The first sign, above all, is that the project doesn’t remain just an idea or an attractive technology, but can have direct applicability in companies and in the local industry of the region. We understand that entrepreneurship must be useful for something and must solve real problems in the business fabric we have here.

That was one of the purposes behind the creation of Cáceres Investor Hub, the first business angels network in Extremadura, made up of 16 entrepreneurs, each of them a referrer and a prospector in their respective sectors. On many occasions, Extremadura’s local industry does not directly apply innovation to its production processes or to how its products are made, and we saw that attracting entrepreneurs and startups from other territories that develop technological solutions useful for Extremaduran companies could be an effective way to boost innovation in the region.

That is why, when we consider investing in a startup, the first thing we analyze is whether its proposition responds to a very clear purpose and aims to solve real business problems.

At Cáceres Investor Hub you assess very different projects. What is the first criterion you apply to decide whether a startup deserves to move forward in the investment process?

The first thing we usually do when any kind of project comes to us is an initial screening. From the investment fund and our entrepreneurship center, we have a checklist where we validate and assess, above all, the stage each of those projects is at. Depending on the maturity stage, we suggest they go through some training phase or capacity- and skill-building; and if it arrives at a more mature stage, we direct it to our growth and scaling phase, which is also where our investment vehicle comes into play.

But let’s say we are looking at a project in those more advanced stages, mainly seeking external funding. For us there are two key aspects. One is investability: a project can be very interesting, useful, have impact, and solve a real problem for local industry, but not necessarily be investable by our fund. Sometimes we find very interesting projects, but with a valuation that is somewhat high. Our fund has an average ticket of roughly €50,000 to €80,000, and when valuations above €4 million appear, we ask ourselves: when this startup goes to raise its next round, by how much does it need to multiply its valuation to generate returns for our fund? This is a red flag for us.

The second aspect we consider in our assessment is scalability. I said earlier that the project must solve challenges in our industry, but we also need it to be scalable beyond Extremadura.

Building a strong investment committee is not trivial. What roles are essential, and how do you structure a team that makes decisions at such early stages?

The truth is that our investment committee is very heterogeneous: we find very diverse profiles, and that multidisciplinarity among our partners and members creates a very broad richness. Our investment network is made up of 16 entrepreneurs from Extremadura, and the investment committee is composed of 7 of those 16 members. There we find those with deep knowledge of the sector in which we intend to invest and, on the other hand, those with proven and extensive experience in the world of private investment.

It’s true that a certain debate arises among the partners themselves, and above all what we try to defend is that the fund’s decision responds to entirely objective criteria. We leave behind any personal interests that any committee member may have.

Another thing we do is rotate committee members depending on the investment thesis being analyzed at any given time. If we are facing a project in the energy sector, we try to ensure that within that committee there is an investor with experience and expertise in that thematic area. It’s something we value highly.

In investing there are always tensions: expectations, timelines, risks. What mechanisms do you use to manage conflict within the committee and keep decisions objective?

In any committee we will find tensions and completely different points of view, because our committee is very heterogeneous and the profiles are very diverse. But I think that’s good. Tension should be understood as part of the investment process itself. If we all agreed from the first minute, we probably wouldn’t be analyzing projects properly and we would make many mistakes.

Keep in mind that Cáceres Investor Hub invests mainly in very early-stage projects, early stage, in a more pre-seed and seed phase. That often makes it difficult for the committee to fully see a project’s investability, growth, and scalability potential, because it does not yet have metrics, traction, or a very clearly defined customer group.

One of the things we try to do, so that managing that tension is healthy, is to separate interest in the project from the investment decision. This is very important to us, and we tend to lean on our corporate collaborators. Perhaps I hadn’t mentioned it before, but our fund is highly verticalized in Extremadura’s productive sectors. There are four very defined verticals: energy, health, agrotech and foodtech, which are the region’s most important sectors.

For this we rely on technology centers that add a lot of value: when a project is being analyzed, it can carry out trials and proofs of concept at these centers. 

In the energy sector, for example, we work with the Iberian Center for Research in Energy Storage (CIIAE), an investment by the Government of Spain that is currently being implemented in Cáceres. It aims to be the center around which all research pivots on new uses of energy storage, because it is not so much about producing energy as it is about how to store it when we do not have those production levels. The proof-of-concept tests required by a technological solution can be done at this partner center, and that metric is often of crucial importance for the committee when making its decision.

In the health vertical we work with the Center for Minimally Invasive Surgery, where new surgical techniques and new instruments are tested and later applied in healthcare. Here, for example, the Da Vinci robot was tested and tried out for performing remote surgical operations. 

And in the agriculture and livestock vertical we collaborate with the Extremadura Agri-food Technology Center, one of the most important in its sector, which enables those technological solutions with direct applicability in the field—improving crops and harvests—to generate yields and efficiency that increase the competitiveness of our business fabric, in the primary sector as well as the secondary and tertiary sectors. 

You’ve seen many mistakes in projects seeking investment. Can you share a typical mistake that has held back a startup, and what impact it had on its progress?

Very often we find projects where, beyond the idea being interesting and even having fairly promising technology, they still haven’t sufficiently validated it in the market. We try to explain this a lot to the projects that are part of our funnels, whether in the entrepreneurship center or in the investment fund.

Another frequent mistake at these very early stages is that sometimes the entrepreneur talks to us a lot about their technology. They are usually technical profiles: they tell us about every product feature, but they don’t quite explain what problem it solves. Or we find teams that lack a certain balance between the technological side and the commercial side. Their solution can be very robust and directly tackle a real problem in the business fabric or in society, but when you ask “how are you going to monetize this?, how are you going to sell it?”, certain gaps appear. 

Having a good technological solution is just as important as having it aligned with how I’m going to make money. In the end, when we build a company, we do it with the intention of making money, and when we invest there is an inalienable duty to the vehicle’s partners: to return to them, multiplied, the initial ticket they put into the company.

Another area we focus on is the cap table. We often find unclear and confusing cap tables, where we already observe, even at very early stages, a certain dilution of the founding team, and even advisors who hold a percentage of the company’s equity. That makes us somewhat uncomfortable. Keep in mind that an early-stage project still has a long journey and many rounds ahead before reaching a Series A; early dilution and very complex cap tables from the outset tend to be a fairly important red flag for us. 

You work with strategic sectors such as energy, agrotech or Industry 5.0. What signs tell you that a startup is aligned with the real needs of the region’s business fabric?

Above all, what we look for is that the startup understands that Extremadura is not only a place to operate from, but a territory from which to grow organically. That is fundamental for us. Extremadura, like any region, depending on its productive profile, has challenges very aligned with the sectors I mentioned: agriculture, livestock, the agri-food industry, energy, and health. We are very interested in the projects we invest in being closely connected to these real challenges, and not seeing Extremadura merely as part of their market, but coming with the intention of integrating and adding value locally.

For example, in the portfolio of investees we currently have in the vehicle—8 investees— all of them are from outside Extremadura. We still haven’t managed to invest for the first time in an Extremaduran startup, and it’s not because we don’t want to, but because perhaps we still haven’t seen here the project that fits the investment thesis and is at the right moment to be invested in. 

But it matters a lot to us to attract talent from other territories: we have startups from Barcelona, Zaragoza, Valencia, Albacete, A Coruña, Santander… And when these startups set their sights on our fund, they did so with that focus: beyond the money we can provide, they value our ability to help them grow organically.

And here the results show when the fit is good. Our first investment, for example, is a spin-off from the University of Barcelona focused on the characterization, valorization, and revalorization of waste. It decided we were the right partner because we could help a lot with that organic growth. So much so that, with this startup and through the Cáceres Chamber of Commerce, we have applied to European aid calls, such as a LIFE project and a Horizon project, which were recently granted and will give it the financial muscle needed to scale its business model. A project born in another territory thus has an extension in Extremadura: it has already opened an office with four people working here. That is, in part, what we aim for: to generate development by attracting talent from other territories at the national level.

This also needs to be understood in the global world we live in. Technology-based projects, if they have anything going for them, is that they can work remotely for a long time; they do not necessarily have to be in major cities. From Extremadura we can offer our infrastructure—coworking and coliving spaces under very favorable usability conditions—so that these projects can continue developing and improving their technological solutions. We aim to promote tech entrepreneurship in Extremadura as an intermediate city, but with a much higher quality of life than those top-tier cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, or Valencia.

With that purpose, the Cáceres Chamber of Commerce’s entrepreneurship center was also created: to attract talent to our territory to improve the competitiveness of our industry through the implementation of technological solutions—solutions that largely came from entrepreneurs and startups. That led us not only to mentor, advise, and support these projects, but we realized we had sufficient maturity to bring them first-hand access to external funding. That is why, a couple of years ago, we promoted the establishment of Cáceres Investor Hub. 

To close, what practical advice would you give a founder who wants to attract private investment in a region like Extremadura and doesn’t know how to start building trust?

Private investment is heavily based on trust: the trust the entrepreneur places in the investors, and the trust the investor team places in the founding team. That’s why one practical piece of advice I would give to an entrepreneur or founding group is to let themselves be advised, to listen. The investor does not want to impose a strategy or a decision, but through their experience and expertise they can add value and perspectives that perhaps weren’t considered at the beginning, and that can help make the best decision.

As investors, what we want is for the project we have invested in to grow, make money, and scale. Sometimes it is hard for the entrepreneur to internalize that message. In regions like Extremadura, where we do not have a very large population density, we do give that warmth and closeness to our entrepreneurs. Our fund and our business angels network do not just put capital into each investee; we like to be that industrial partner, that collaborative partner that brings clear value through knowledge, through closeness to the rest of Extremadura’s Public Administrations, and through our corporate collaborators, which are the most important technology centers in each of the region’s productive verticals.

And one final note: when we advise our projects, we say that external funding is great, but they should keep in mind that it is also the most dilutive. That mix with public funding—through tools and instruments such as ENISA, JEREMIE loans, or public aid calls that can provide direct grants to refine a technological solution—should also be taken into account. When a startup is raising a round, there is absolutely nothing wrong with raising part of that money through public funding, and not necessarily through private external funding.