Three successful entrepreneurs strengthen Wayra's strategy in Europe

Wayra, Telefónica's open innovation hub network, renews three key leadership positions for the European market and appoints Bruno Moraes as director of Wayra UK, Florian Bogenschütz as director of Wayra Germany and Marta Antúnez as director of Wayra Barcelona. Three key ecosystems aligned with the strategic focus of the new Telefónica which will coordinate investments in start-ups, their global scalability and the business development of the portfolio of more than 500 start-ups in Telefónica's open innovation area.

Miguel Arias, Global Director of Entrepreneurship at Telefónica, explains about the new directors that "all three have a successful track record as entrepreneurs and investors, and know the industry and the telco business. Marta, Bruno and Florian will bring their experience to Wayra and apply it to corporate open innovation”.

UK, Germany and Spain, global talent pools

The new director of Wayra UK, Bruno Moraes has more than 12 years of experience as an entrepreneur and almost 10 years as a consultant in telecommunications for markets in Europe and Latin America. Previously he co-founded and was COO of Beegol, a start-up that uses machine learning to help telecommunications companies improve their broadband and Wi-Fi services. An engineer by training, Bruno founded and ran Stogas, an underground gas storage business in Brazil, for seven years. As a consultant, he was an Associate Director at McKinsey & Co. for nearly 10 years, where he focused on telecommunications and technology in more than 25 markets.

In the case of Germany, Florian Bogenschütz, former founder and CEO of Airgreets, a start-up focused on home-sharing services, will lead Wayra's positioning in the country. He has also worked as a consultant for Deutsche Telekom with a focus on intra-enterprise programmes. Thanks to his experience, Bogenschütz is committed to offering start-ups a more resilient and strategic joint business development, thus helping entrepreneurs to generate new relationships with clients and companies in an exponential way.

Finally, Marta Antúnez joins as the new director of the hub in Barcelona. A serial entrepreneur, Marta was co-founder and CEO of dress2b, a fashion sector start-up, and ChicPlace, a marketplace of stores with special charm that she sold to e-shop Ventures in 2016. Subsequently, she led the launch in Spain as general manager of the start-up Ulule, the first crowdfunding platform in Europe, and was director of Digital Ventures at the consultancy firm RocaSalvatella, where she led the areas of open innovation and corporate venturing, expanding its relationship with the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Marta thus completes Wayra España's management team, led by Andrés Saborido, which also includes the Madrid hub, whose director is Paloma Castellano.

With these recruitments, Wayra and Telefónica, pioneers in generating links with entrepreneurs on a global level, are reinforcing their commitment to open innovation. More than 130 start-ups are already currently doing business with the Spanish multinational and the goal is to increase this number to 200 by 2020.