From Corporate Law to Startup Connector: Q&A with South Summit CEO Nacho Mateo

By , in conferences Spain startup journey on April 26, 2025 . Tagged width: CEO , interview , leadership , Madrid , South Summit

In this exclusive interview for StartupReporter, Nacho Mateo, CEO of South Summit, shares his journey from corporate lawyer to leading one of Europe’s most important startup platforms, his vision for global expansion, and the critical importance of connecting entrepreneurial ecosystems worldwide.

You started as a corporate lawyer in Tokyo. How did you end up in the startup world?

That’s a very interesting question, and I’m very proud about that. I always talk about my “past life” as a lawyer because it was a completely different part of my life. I studied law and was working in a finance and banking law firm. Then I decided to study my MBA. I applied for a European Commission Scholarship and was selected to study in Japan, in Tokyo. After that, I started working as an intern in an international law firm.

The story is quite interesting because I was not planning to come back to Madrid. I was living in Tokyo, and I came back to Madrid to renew my professional visa to continue my internship at the law firm. While visiting my family for a few weeks, I met the two co-founders of South Summit. They told me about the project they were developing to foster the economy and help entrepreneurs.

I fell in love with the idea. Actually, besides being a lawyer, I was always a tech enthusiast. It was my hobby in university to assemble PC components and build my own PCs, which I sold to help pay for my studies. So when they told me about South Summit, I made a difficult decision to change the suit for the sneakers, and I completely got on board.

I started from the very beginning of the project in 2013, from a very low profile. I began by managing the social media and Twitter account as a part-time job. Then after a few months, they gave me the responsibility of managing the startup competition and investor relations. After scaling the competition, I became COO, managing all operations and growing with the team. When we started, we were just 5 people, and now we’re 32 in Madrid with another complete team in Brazil. Very recently, I was asked to become the CEO, so now I’m facing a sweet but very challenging moment.

What did the expansion to Latin America teach you about startups, markets, or yourself?

Since the very beginning, the name “South Summit” reflected our vision of how to give visibility to what everyone at that time was talking about as the “northern ecosystems” – Silicon Valley, London. The movement of South Summit, when we changed the brand from Spain Startup to South Summit in 2014, was exactly because we wanted to say: “Of course the Northern ecosystems are fantastic, but in the South we have the same talent, the same entrepreneurs, all the actors of the ecosystem. We only need to give it more visibility.”

By “South,” we didn’t mean only Southern Europe – we meant South America too. Since the beginning, our vision was to connect Latin American ecosystems with European ecosystems, especially because Spain and Portugal have strong cultural connections with Latin America.

In terms of learnings, what we learned is that the best way to foster any ecosystem – in Europe, Latin America, or anywhere – is by building bridges between those ecosystems and making global connections. Since the first year we started operations in Latin America, we saw that model worked fantastically well, even if specific ecosystems in certain countries weren’t as mature.

The synergies between connecting global ecosystems was the key to our growth and success. We started in Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina, and then Brazil was consolidated as our main headquarters in Latin America.

What we learned is that the location of the initiatives is not the most critical thing. Everything we build should be global, international, and involve bringing together the main actors from all international ecosystems. That’s been one of the keys to South Summit’s success – we always think globally and believe everyone wins when we connect ecosystems.

We don’t consider ourselves an event – we’re a business platform. Of course, the conference and speakers are important and attractive to the international community, but the core of South Summit is creating a platform where startups, investors, corporations, institutions, and universities can make critical connections to grow together.

You mentioned María Benjumea played a key role as a mentor to you. How has she shaped your leadership?

I can say clearly that María has been the person who has most influenced my professional career. I’ve never met someone with that leadership, that special personality, and that vision to guide something from just an idea to become as big as it is now.

For me, María is a total inspiration. My goal in life is to be maybe 50% of what María has been in her life. The energy she gives to everyone around her is impressive. She’s 70 years old, and sometimes at the office, we feel she’s the person with the most energy. She’s always the last one leaving every place at South Summit, even if we have night events or dinners that finish at 1 AM.

She takes care of every single person at South Summit. She treats everyone with the maximum standards of humanity, whether you’re a top-tier investor or a single entrepreneur just starting out. For me, that’s what a leader should be – someone who takes care of every single detail and is always smiling.

South Summit is not just about making business. You can feel the energy in the people, in how we treat relationships, how we always look to help others. That corporate culture comes directly from María. The values of South Summit are exactly the values of María – always putting people first, always humanity, always being kind.

As CEO of South Summit, what is your vision for the organisation?

We have a very entrepreneurial mindset at South Summit – we consider ourselves a startup. It’s true that we’ve been organising 14 editions of South Summit in Madrid since 2012, and we’re in a very sweet moment with our expansion internationally through South Summit Brazil, which is growing very fast.

But it’s also a very challenging moment because we need to scale, like when a startup needs to become a scaleup. My vision is that South Summit has all the potential to be the global connector in different regions worldwide.

I want to create the same model we’ve done with South Summit in Brazil – positioning that edition as the headquarters in Latin America – and build an annual circuit where we have presence in all continents. We would have Madrid as the flagship event in Europe, Brazil as the flagship in Latin America, and editions in other regions – like a Formula One circuit with stops every month.

We’re looking for an edition in Asia – we started in South Korea last year in Seoul – but my vision is to establish one headquarters operation in Asia and scale it as we’ve done with Brazil. I also see editions in the Middle East, Africa, and North America.

It’s an ambitious and risky plan. We’re now in a comfort zone with our editions in Madrid and Brazil because we know the market, we have partners, we have the audience, we have the brand. Growing in markets where we don’t have expertise or local teams is risky, but we need to take risks if we want to keep growing. I think we have all the ingredients to be successful.

Many entrepreneurs face failures. What’s your relationship with failure, and is there a lesson you’ve learned the hard way?

We have failed a lot. Probably not in big initiatives like creating a South Summit edition that became a failure, but in terms of operations and strategy.

I always say that PowerPoint supports everything. Sometimes when you’re thinking about the strategy and the project, you feel completely secure that the plan is going to work. You present it to the team and say, “We’re going to achieve this, this, and this.” But reality sometimes slaps you, and we’ve experienced many slaps.

What I’ve learned is that the one that rules the plans and measures the success of operations is the real market. Especially in product design, we’ve been pivoting a lot – what types of tickets should we offer, what benefits should they include, what pricing should we set. We might think specific numbers will work, but once we launch it on the market, we see it’s not responding as expected.

These failures in defining products, pricing, and proposals have been the tools we’ve used to evolve our services. That’s what makes us competitive. The failures in defining products, services, and markets have been critical for us to evolve our strategy and make the PowerPoint work in reality.

You’ve led entrepreneurial initiatives at universities. What have you learned about the connection between academia and startups?

That’s a very important question. The connection between academia and entrepreneurship is crucial. I’ve worked at a university where one of the four core values is entrepreneurship and the second is innovation.

Entrepreneurship is not just about technical skills – it’s much deeper than that. It’s having the mentality to say, “You can do whatever you want. You have to take risks. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re going to suffer during the journey, and you need to be prepared with values, discipline, and empathy.”

These values are part of education, and what I can tell you is that I feel envious seeing students today starting with these values. At my time in university, nobody explained anything about entrepreneurship. The educational system was focused on training students to work in big companies or law firms, not on building your own company.

Entrepreneurs are born in schools and universities. If you don’t give new generations that education and those values, you’ll never have a society focused on entrepreneurship. In the US, they’ve been doing this for many years, which is why the entrepreneurial mindset is common there. Everyone recognises that if you fail, that’s good – you tried. In Europe, sometimes the fear of what people will think if you fail outweighs what you might learn from creating a startup.

Universities need to be deeply connected with the entrepreneurial community because they’re forming the next generation of entrepreneurs. Not all universities – public or private, in Spain or worldwide – are putting enough effort into developing this entrepreneurial mindset in students.

And it’s not just universities – I’m talking about primary schools too. Everyone at 16-17 years old should know what an accelerator is, what a venture capital firm is, what an incubator is. If you know these things when you’re deciding what to study, you might say, “I would love to be in an accelerator or work in venture capital.” I would have loved for someone at 16 to tell me this world exists and could be my professional life.

What talent do you have that you feel you’re not using enough?

I think I’m very good at math and numbers, but I don’t use that much working with the financial department now. But I can tell you what skills I find most useful as a CEO – empathy is one of the key skills for my role now. I’m learning that personal relationships and communication are so important, and probably in previous roles, they weren’t as critical.

Once you become CEO and need to build relationships everywhere and talk to everyone, communication skills and empathy are the two skills I’m using most now. I think those are the most critical skills any leadership position should have – much more than technical knowledge or the MBA you studied. Empathy, communication, and human values are the best tools for a leader.

Which book, movie, or song truly changed your perspective on life?

For books, “Leaders Eat Last” by Simon Sinek. I love that book about leadership – it changed my mindset about how leadership should be focused. It reflects much of what we’ve been discussing about taking care of people and being the last one to leave the room.

For songs, I’m a classic rock person, so I’d say AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long.” It’s one of my favourite songs that gives me energy on important days when I need a push.

For movies, I love cinema, so I have many favourites. I’m a big fan of Steven Spielberg, and I love “Schindler’s List” – it’s a super powerful movie for me. I’m a fan of World War II documentaries and really love history. There are a lot of lessons from the errors humanity committed in the past that we should not repeat, and “Schindler’s List” is one of my favourite movies without a doubt.

If you could have dinner with any three people from history, who would they be?

One would be Elon Musk. I know he’s controversial now, but he’s been my idol for 15 years, since PayPal. In terms of entrepreneurship and having vision, for me, Elon Musk would be one person I’d love to have dinner with.

Another would be Pope John Paul II. I am Christian, and he was a very inspirational person for me that I learned a lot from in my early years.

The third would be Antonio Escohotado, a philosophical figure here in Spain who died a year or two ago. He had very good philosophical reflections on ideology and politics, and I loved his point of view and how he expressed it.

What’s one question you’ve never been asked but would love to answer?

Have you ever had impostor syndrome? No one has ever asked me that in my professional or personal life, and I think it’s a very powerful question because I really have experienced it.

Sometimes when you’re in leadership positions, there are many times when you feel, “Am I really skilled to assume this responsibility? Am I really the best person in the room to speak about this?” Of course, this happens because you put pressure on yourself.

Usually, people assume that every role a person has is because they completely feel they deserve it. Sometimes it’s not like that – sometimes you feel you have some skills but lack others. So yes, I have had impostor syndrome sometimes in my professional life.

Any advice for founders preparing to pitch at South Summit this year?

Always put yourself in the shoes of the person you’re pitching to. Sometimes in entrepreneurship, we tend to mechanise pitches – you have three minutes, and you talk one minute about your team, etc.

Empathy and putting yourself in the shoes of the listener is super powerful to create a message that gets attention. You shouldn’t keep the same message forever. If you’re pitching to a company that could be a potential client, focus on what that specific person is looking for. If you’re pitching to an investor, remember that they’ve heard the same exact format of pitch 3,000 times before you.

So, you need to show more empathy towards that person. For me, asking rather than pitching and selling yourself is much more powerful. If you get a connection with the person listening to you by personalising your approach – “I know your fund is looking for this specific tool” or “I know you struggled with fundraising last year” – that’s the most important thing. Otherwise, you become just one drop in the sea.

There’s a lot of noise and competition today, so you should approach pitching differently than everyone else does.

This interview was conducted by Sasha Komarevych (StartupReporter).

From Corporate Law to Startup Connector: Q&A with South Summit CEO Nacho Mateo

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