The endless vines of Pablo Campos, the man who went from Google to the modesty of startups

There are many ways to position oneself. In some cases, the person chooses a project (sometimes the project chooses the person) and establishes a blood tie with it. Despite the ups and downs, Steve Jobs forged an everlasting bond with Apple , just as Larry Bird and Magic Johnson did with the Celtics and the Lakers respectively. Amancio Ortega is synonymous with Inditex, no one would understand Telefónica without the 26 years of José María Álvarez-Pallete and it would be lunatic to write the history of La Caixa without Isidro Fainé.

But there is another type of nature that is more attached to plural stimulation, to the succession of emotions, to a vision that is less extended in time where an objective is glimpsed and, when satisfied, gives way to a new adventure. The figure of the serial entrepreneur would fit perfectly into this definition and, however, it does not fit one hundred percent to the character and career of the Galician Pablo Campos.

Born in Geneva (1979) to immigrant parents, Campos can lay down the cards of a straight flush, a feat that few can achieve. In his quarter-century professional career, he has worked at Google, Stellantis and Telefónica, has collaborated with educational institutions such as IE Business School and the universities of Cantabria and Helsinki, has co-founded and/or directed startups such as VMS, Xesol Innovation, Onira Research and Solum, is one of the promoters of the mini venture capital fund Unitatea (two vehicles of one million each) and has just disassociated himself from MasterChef World after promoting the digital exploitation of the brand.

For 15 years, dividing forces between Spain and abroad, the attention of this manager/startup/investor was shared between various large corporations. When he joined Google, where he stayed for two years, he was working at the European engineering headquarters, located in Zurich, as head of Google Street View for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. There he learned that "the secret sauce" of every successful organization "is the colleagues", top-notch specialists with CVs that would make the smartest person in the class turn pale.

Campos had already paved the way at Comunitel, a B2B telco that would undergo various acquisitions until it ended up integrated into Vodafone. "There I already understood a lot about processes, about decision-making and about how a business is consolidated." He then joined Telefónica . "It's impressive to see how a great player on the board is advancing," he sums up. During this phase (2007-2009) he took on the role of head of sales engineering and witnessed the readjustments derived from the purchase of O2 (October 2005), tectonic plates in full shift, countless flights and meetings, countries and more countries in the rearview mirror and on the horizon. Google meant a similar degree of intensity and so an inevitable thought was forged. "I wanted to go back home."

Campos cultivates the theory of seeds. "70% of highly qualified jobs are never advertised. Getting to them depends on the seeds you plant throughout your life.

As the years go by, some of them come together and others don't. But by jumping from one project to another, you meet different people, you make an impact and sometimes you talk to them again some time later." Perhaps this explains the stage at Stellantis (2014-2016), where he signed on as a freelancer and immersed himself in the innovation department. As is known, Stellantis has a plant in Vigo. That was the twist that enabled the return to the familiar land. "You don't start looking for opportunities when you need them, but much earlier."

Interestingly, the Stellantis opportunity planted an additional seed that is now seeing the light of day. “It is now that the group (which includes brands such as Peugeot, Fiat, Citroën, Opel and Jeep ) is marketing the first vehicles that incorporate some of the software systems that we devised then. The approach was to take advantage of the car’s sensors to make them available to application developers. We selected 150 sensors to study possibilities. An example of what is to come: these cars are almost like weather stations. They incorporate light and rain sensors, thermometers and geolocation. Thanks to the information they provide, a lot of data could be extracted.”

From tortilla to chickpeas

There was one pending subject, the transition from multinational vastness to cutting and sewing startups, small creatures with an uncertain future in the tidal wave of trial and error. The Galician recalls three: VMS, dedicated to the manufacture of three-wheeled motorcycles with two of them placed on the rear axle (it filed for bankruptcy in October 2024); Xesol Innovation, which applies AI to autonomous vehicles and was worth 230 million (today Dealroom rates it at a maximum of 11.5 million); and Onira , where he was CEO and co-founder, an initiative by several scientists from Lleida to tame resistant hypertension by controlling sleep apnea.

The corporate bells and whistles contrast with this modest, or less glamorous, sequence of entrepreneurship from the ground up. "The question always arises: What would have happened if one of these companies had become a unicorn?" Campos concedes. "But these are minor moments because success lies in enjoying the day to day, in establishing connections with people, in facing challenges. "This is a very uncertain environment where you work with a lot of ambition and often you don't achieve your goals. Within this permanent redefinition, sometimes you have to change."

Spain and the grey

The interviewee's speech becomes more hardened in this passage. Although Spain is on the maps of innovation, Campos detects a lack of boldness. "The differential fact is to lead or follow the leader. And Spain does not lead anything nor does it have the necessary level of institutional support. It is striking that Germany, with many fewer hours of light per year than us, is ahead in the segment of renewable energies, a segment that we could well lead from here. That we have unicorns and some projects that stand out is not circumstantial. We have not defined in which sector we want to stand out and we are a bit in the dark for everyone," he says.

Don't Look Up

Once again, fiction precedes reality and the character of the techno-messiah in the film, directed by Adam McKay, passes the baton to a real Elon Musk , who is deeply involved in the administration of the US federal government. Campos believes that the problem with politicians is that "they do not dominate the technological board and so the recipient of the information looks to people who generate greater confidence. For example, the CEO of a big tech company. This phenomenon, however, is frightening because of the power accumulated by people like Musk himself or Jeff Bezos."