Marta Príncep and the business of staying

Marta Príncep once described choosing a startup in language more commonly reserved for choosing a spouse. There had to be mutual attraction. The relationship would last. Both sides were doing the selecting. For a conversation about company formation, this was refreshingly candid: a spreadsheet may introduce you, but it cannot make you agreeable company for the next several years.

In a January 2021 interview, the BHV Partners co-founder explained why the firm was selective about the businesses it worked with. A long commitment required a match between the people involved. The commercial arrangement had a human condition attached. Anyone who has endured a meeting that should have been an email can appreciate the distinction.

Príncep’s career has repeatedly returned to the work that begins when an idea must acquire an organisation around it. She has worked in research, innovation management, operations and technology consulting. At BHV, which she led as CEO until January 2024, those strands came together in a proposition: help scientists build companies, and remain involved beyond the opening act.

“En el fondo, nos seleccionamos mutuamente.”

Marta Príncep, 2021
“In the end, we select each other.”

A Sunday newspaper, and a useful irritation

Long before BHV, Príncep was thinking about the distance between knowing something and doing something with it. In February 2011, while director of innovation at Biocat, she wrote about reading two items in a Sunday newspaper. One concerned expectations that government would solve the problems of a recession. The other discussed Muhammad Yunus and microcredit. Their proximity on the page caught her attention.

Her response was practical. She argued that scientific training needed to connect more closely with the skills companies required. Universities produced knowledge; young businesses also needed people who understood management, intellectual property and business development. Her concern was the passage between those settings, where a qualification did not automatically supply a commercial vocabulary.

The anecdote reveals something specific about her public voice. She could begin with a newspaper juxtaposition and end with a proposal for professional mobility. The observation became an invitation to act. Even her closing question returned to the newspaper editor: had the pairing been deliberate? A small editorial joke had carried her into a serious argument about work.

Teaching an idea to keep accounts

Príncep brought a scientist’s education to those questions. She earned her doctorate at the University of Barcelona; her doctoral work was presented in February 2004. Her qualifications also include postgraduate study in statistics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and management education through ESADE and Wharton. Research and executive training sit together in her biography, an arrangement her later jobs would make thoroughly useful.

Her earlier career included departmental leadership at Ferrer and participation in the steering committees of international joint ventures. At Biocat, she became innovation director and a member of its leadership team. She also worked on entrepreneurship initiatives and the organisation’s reporting on the Catalan research and business landscape. The scale of the job had moved beyond any single company.

In September 2010, she was scheduled to present an employment trends report at Barcelona Activa and moderate a discussion involving company and research-park representatives. By April 2011, she was explaining Biocat’s approach to training at the interfaces between science and business. The recurring concern was clear enough: a young company needs people who can do the work its next stage requires.

Another stop in her career was ADVentura Capital, where she worked in operations and helped startups with internationalisation. Taking a company into another market adds questions about partners, access and execution. Her work across these settings placed her close to the business requirements that sit around technical development. The later co-founder had experience of supporting other people’s companies before leading a venture builder of her own.

This is a less photogenic part of entrepreneurship than announcing a launch. It involves job descriptions, professional training and conversations between institutions that keep different calendars. Yet it gives Príncep’s later venture-building work a history. She had already spent years working on the people and capabilities a research-led business would need.

The legal department enters the plot

In September 2014, Bellavista appointed Príncep to lead its technology department. A firm of lawyers and economists might seem an unexpected setting for a scientist. The job description makes the choice intelligible. She would help technology companies develop growth strategies, define value propositions, find opportunities and form alliances. She would also coordinate their work with specialist departments inside the firm.

Intellectual property, company law, tax and employment questions all appeared in that remit. A business can have an elegant concept and a remarkably inelegant set of contracts. Bellavista’s arrangement put those concerns in the same conversation. Príncep’s role was to connect the technical ambition of a client with the professional services needed to organise it.

The appointment announcement also described work on partnerships, negotiations, due diligence and the creation of new business areas. These are the verbs behind a company’s polished nouns. “Strategy” sounds agreeable at dinner; negotiating responsibilities and following a project through implementation are where the evening becomes work. Her career was accumulating experience in precisely that territory.

Four founders, a longer appointment

BHV Partners brought Príncep together with Albert G. Zamora, Joan Bigorra and Joaquim Trias. The company’s establishment is generally dated to 2019, with its early formation activity reaching back into late 2018. It connected Barcelona with Silicon Valley, where Trias was based. The founders combined scientific, entrepreneurial and executive experience rather than asking one person to impersonate an entire management team.

By November 2020, Príncep was describing the venture builder as a kind of company factory. The work could start with a researcher’s first steps toward forming a business and extend to investment preparation, commercialisation and licensing or sale agreements. She argued that the support available from short programmes could end well before the company’s need for help did.

The useful detail is the duration. A programme has an end date that looks reassuring in a brochure. A new business has a collection of problems that may be indifferent to the brochure. BHV’s model made room for sustained involvement. Its proposition covered strategic decisions and operational management, alongside the preparation needed for successive stages of financing.

That also explains the mutual-selection language in her 2021 interview. Working together for years calls for agreement about more than an interesting technology. The founders and the venture builder would share decisions, uncertainties and the ordinary strain of making progress. Príncep described a relationship in which each side had to choose the other.

The arithmetic behind the ambition

In October 2020, BHV announced a move to the Barcelona Science Park and the closing of a €500,000 investment round. It then had three startups in its portfolio. Its investors included entrepreneurs, executives and other private backers who could contribute professional knowledge and introductions as well as capital. The firm was also extending its connections into other parts of Spain.

The location suited the work. Príncep welcomed an environment where researchers, laboratories, startups and established businesses could meet. A science park puts potential collaborators within practical reach. For someone whose earlier work had involved connecting professional communities, choosing such a base followed a familiar logic: make it easier for people with complementary abilities to find each other.

In June 2023, BHV opened a further funding round seeking €2.5 million. At that point, its announcement described six startups created since 2019, together valued at €20 million, and a network of more than 70 partners and senior experts. Those were figures attached to that announcement, rather than a claim about today’s portfolio or a tally of money returned to investors.

Príncep’s explanation was admirably plain. Having established the model, the firm needed additional financial capacity to expand. Growth required resources of its own. The people helping other companies become investable had to make their own case for investment too. Entrepreneurship has a habit of assigning its lessons twice.

Passing the chair, keeping the thread

Albert Mascarell became BHV’s CEO on 1 January 2024. In the announcement, Príncep welcomed his experience in creating startups and developing them through to markets, mergers and acquisitions. Her own period at the head of the company had run from its establishment in 2019. The handover gave that founding chapter a clear boundary.

Alongside company leadership, she has continued to appear in the practical education surrounding entrepreneurship. The BIND mentor directory identifies her work with technology-transfer initiatives including The Collider and CaixaImpulse. A September 2022 venture-building session organised for researchers put her alongside Asier Rufino, Lisardo Fernández and Mario Grande to discuss how research could move into the market.

Her participation in that 2022 event is a useful detail because its intended audience included doctoral candidates and researchers with projects approaching the market. Venture building was being presented as a working option for people considering how to transfer their knowledge. Príncep was there as someone already engaged in that work.

The latest dated public role in this story comes from the October 2026 BNEW programme in Barcelona. It lists her as Senior Manager Innovation at GIANT, Grifols Innovation and New Technologies. She was scheduled for a discussion connecting companies, researchers, universities and local government in Sant Cugat’s innovation community. The institutional setting had changed; the question of how different participants work together remained.

Príncep’s career makes room for the work that tends to disappear from a founder’s photograph: building teams, organising expertise, preparing negotiations and staying through the next decision. Her memorable language about mutual attraction supplied a small kindness to the business plan. Choose your collaborators carefully. You may be keeping each other company for quite some time.