Mentor – Idea Platform
As part of the Space Solutions team Gonzalo revitalised the ESA Investor Forum. Under its current form, the Forum has featured over 100 Space economy start-ups, supported them in raising well over €150M of private capital, and showcased the business opportunity behind Space economy to well over 500 investment firms worldwide. He manages as well the “innovation with purpose” financing instrument ASPIRE WITH ESA, a novel way for start-ups and SME to work with ESA.
Prior to this he developed ESA’s first Space for Fintech challenge atttracting the attention of London’s, Paris’ and Luxembourg’s banking community into the companies involved. Previous roles in the Agency included working on institutional programmes like the eHealth for sub-Saharan Africa and Space4Med sponsored by the European Investment Bank.
Before joining ESA, Gonzalo spent ten years working as team leader and engineer in space technology development for INSA S.A. (FUEGO and SMOS missions). He worked with big names in the Space industry including DLR, Alcatel Space, Alenia Aeronautica, Sener and INTA. Previously he worked in banking infrastructure development for Sema Group (today Atos Origin) and in a university start-up delivering software products for Xilinx Inc.
Although he is a big advocate of education as the only way to effectively build a better society, Gonzalo defends the importance of inspiring future generations and create bridges across disciplines. Hence, he likes to share his dream of ‘bringing Europe (as a society) to Europa (Jupiter’s moon). Gonzalo holds a MSc on Telecommunications Engineering and is an alumnae from University of Valladolid (ES), Politechnic University of Madrid (ES) and Henley Business School (UK).