About us

Who We Are

Spanish independent Venture Capital Firm, specialized in high technology start-ups.

Javier Ulecia and Miguel del Cañizo have known each other since 1990 when they started working together at Renault in France just after they finished their engineering degrees.

Ten years afterwards, Javier and Miguel collaborated in the launching, management and posterior closing of an Internet Incubator named Doing, focused on broadband products and services (May 2000-March 2001).

After closing Doing, and around the middle of 2001, they started, with the strategic and financial support of Bruno Entrecanales, a new fund (Bullnet Capital I), with the aim of eventually becoming one of the reference players in the incipient Spanish technology VC market.

At that moment, given the very little interest of the investment community in technological projects, we decided to swim against the current and establish our fund on several, basic arguments:

Focus on projects related to information technology.
Product positioning (vs. services).
Project selection with a technological differential value sustainable over time.
Instinctive drive to “exit” even before investing.
Every caution taken during the “Due Dilligence” process, knowing how to combine technological and strategic analysis.
Add value and contribute to day-to-day running of participating companies.

Helped to a great extent by the initial support of Bruno Entrecanales, financial sponsor of the Project, we managed to convince a series of private investors as well as an institutional investor, the European Investment Fund, to, at last, put together in March, 2003 an initial fund of 18 million euros to support the launch of technological start-ups in Spain. Our initial objective was to invest over the following five years in five or six companies around 2 million euros in each one.

Since going into action, Bullnet Capital I invested in five technological companies, all in very early stages of development when investment was made.

During these years the only full time employees were Javier and Miguel, counting on Carmen Arenzana for all the administrative tasks. At that time Carmen was Financial Director of Bruno Entrecanales’ investment company.

In 2007 we started to think of a new fund, Bullnet Capital II, and we concluded that we needed to strengthen the structure of the team. Carmen started to spend more and more time at Bullnet until she became a full time dedicated member in 2009, when the fund rising had just finished. With a short period of time thereafter, we started the recruiting process of a new investment professional resulting in José Luis Gómez joining the team in December 2009.

Since then we have worked closely together.

Principles Of Our Work

Focus on technology

There are plenty of investment opportunities out there, in companies that fall under the “technology” umbrella. Even if we limit ourselves to the Spanish ecosystem, we see hundreds of projects every year. However, many of them offer just incremental improvements from the technical side, or leverage on existing products to innovate only the business model. We discard all of these to focus only on companies with underlying breakthrough technology.

Sustainable competitive advantage

Some companies are highly dependent on gaining traction quickly, to capture a relevant stake of the market before another competitor pushes them out. If another player with more money enters their market, they may be easily surpassed. Instead of relying on market timing and gaining traction quickly, we focus on companies with sustainable competitive advantages based on the company’s IP and know-how, that stands its gound 5 to 10 years into the future.

Hands-on approach

Instead of diversifying too much and carry out an unattended management of our portfolio, we prefer to concentrate our efforts on relatively few initiatives, wisely selected, and commit a lot of effort in them (not only in the amount of money invested but also in management time). In this way, we follow a hands-on approach, helping the companies in their day to day operations, and become aware of potential problems before they happen.

Our team

Javier Ulecia

Founding partner

Biography

Javier Ulecia (1962), graduated from the Universidad Politécnica, Madrid, as an Aeronautical Engineer. He holds an MBA from the H.E.C. School of Management, Paris.

In 2001 he co-founded Bullnet Capital. Javier Ulecia is a member of the Board of Bullnet Capital’s portfolio companies as well as of other non-technology companies.

Before Bullnet Capital, he was co-founder and CEO of Doing (an Incubator specialized in broadband technology) and prior to that he was Senior Manager at Bain & Company.

Mr. Ulecia worked at Renault in Paris-France since 1990 to 1994 and prior to that he served as After Sales Engineer at EADS-CASA in Madrid.

He has been an associated teacher at Instituto de Empresa during several years and also participates on a regular basis as a speaker or jury in Venture Capital forums and conferences.

He has been President of ASCRI (2015-2016) and previously Vice-President and responsible of its Venture Capital Committee (2013-2014).

He speaks fluently Spanish (mother tongue), English and French.

Miguel del Cañizo

Founding partner

Biography

Miguel del Cañizo (1964) graduated from the Universidad Politécnica, Madrid, as a Telecom Engineer. He holds and MSc in Advanced Materials, Nanotechnology and Photonics from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), and he is currently pursuing a PhD in the context of the Official Doctorate Programme in Condensed Matter Physics, Nanoscience and Biophysics at UAM, exploring the topic of “Theoretical study of 2D materials: Mechanical, electronic, and thermodynamic properties from classical and quantum atomistic simulations”.

He cofounded with his partner Javier Ulecia in 2001 Bullnet Capital. Since then, Mr. del Cañizo is devoted to the management of Bullnet. He is a member of the Board of all the portfolio companies.

Before, he was co-founder and CTO of Doing, an incubator specialized in broadband technology.
Prior to joining Doing, Mr. del Cañizo worked for Hewlett Packard as Director of its Spanish Telecom and Service Provider unit.

In particular, he managed the conception, design and development of several software products that have become part of HP Openview product standard catalogue.

Before HP, Mr. del Cañizo worked in the IT Division of Renault in France.

He participates on a regular basis as a speaker or jury in
Venture Capital forums and conferences.

He speaks fluently Spanish (mother tongue), English and French

Carmen Arenzana

Financial Director

Biography

Carmen Arenzana (1968), graduated from the Universidad Complutense, Madrid, as Economist, with emphasis in finance, and holds an Executive Management Program at IESE Business School.

Since she joined Bullnet Gestión as CFO in 2001, Carmen Arenzana has been responsible for financial and legal reporting to the CNMV, financial reporting to shareholders, the supervision of fund accounting, and assisting portfolio companies in legal and financial matters.

Since 1998 and until 2009, Mrs. Arenzana worked as CFO at ACE 53 (since 2005 only part time), a Spanish Investment Company, being responsible for financial reporting, follow up portfolio companies, track and supervision of accounting, taxation policy and legal matters.

Prior to joining Bullnet, Mrs. Arenzana held different management positions, at KA International (International Business Development Department), Schering and Plough Group (Finance Department) and IDAE (International Relations Department).

She speaks fluently Spanish (mother tongue), English and French.

José Luis Gómez

Investment Manager

Biography

José Luis Gómez (1980), graduated from the Universidad Complutense, Madrid, as Computer Engineer, first in his class, and holds a Master’s Degree in Finance.

In December 2009, he joined Bullnet as an investment analyst, collaborating in the identification of new investment opportunities and in the management of the portfolio companies from an operational and financial standpoint.

Prior to joining Bullnet, Mr. Gómez worked at Hewlett Packard in different roles both in Consulting & Integration and Finance, where he joined the finance department with an internship in June 2002.

During his time at Consulting & Integration, he worked in the deployment and customization of HP software products for telco operators, mainly in the BSS (Business Support Systems) area (fraud detection, revenue assurance and data retention). His duties during this period included, among others, acting as project manager and software architect in several engagements, customer interfacing, hiring of external contractors, and 24×7 support to the deployed solutions.

In the roles he held in different Finance departments, he acted as an IT support and data analyst for different departments (mainly Controllership and Enterprise Storage and Servers) developing and maintaining internal web applications, and improving the existing financial processes.

He also participates on a regular basis as a speaker or jury in Venture Capital forums and events.

He speaks fluently Spanish (mother tongue) and English.

Jorge Fernández

Investment Associate

Biography

Jorge Fernández (1992), graduated from the Universidad Carlos III of Madrid, as a Biomedical Engineer, and holds two Master’s Degree diplomas: an MBA for recent graduates at Escuela Superior de Estudios de Empresa, and an MRes in Medical Device Design and Entrepreneurship at Imperial College London.

In September 2019, he joined Bullnet as an investment analyst, collaborating in the identification of new investment opportunities and in the management of the portfolio companies from an operational and financial standpoint.

Prior to joining Bullnet, Mr. Fernández developed an international career at Philips, both in the Netherlands and Northern Ireland.

During his time working at Philips, Jorge was part of the Emerging Business group, a division focused on the development of new technologies for the Dutch multinational. In his first role in Eindhoven, Jorge worked as a developer for the Light & Health business unit, where he supported the development and feasibility analysis of a new generation of medical devices to treat dermatological conditions (particularly psoriasis) using light.

Further down the line, Jorge moved to the Digital & Computational Pathology business unit in Belfast, where he partook in the development and release of a state-of-the-art AI solution for tumor quantification in molecular pathology, interfacing between the market and the development team to help implement the best features as captured from key stakeholders. During his time in Philips Emerging Businesses, Jorge was also involved in a strategic consultancy program where key employees carried out extensive research to act upon potential business and technical opportunities for the company in the neurology sector.

He speaks fluent Spanish (mother tongue) and English.

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