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🔥 Residence Permit for Startup Founders (work permit included) — an opportunity to legally relocate the whole family to the European Union!
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What is a Startup Visa in Spain
A residence permit for 3 years is granted to startup founders + family members (children, spouses + parents, with some conditions)
Official name: residencia para emprendedores, ley 14/2013
Requirements
- Innovative business plan (any IT project can fit into this)
- Professional experience that aligns with the startup business plan
- Ability to enter Spain (any Schengen visa for any duration)
- Have a startup idea (project description and business model) + some traction
- Show availability of financial resources (200% of the minimum salary per founder per year — 30,240€ + for the family)
Extra links (RUS editions)
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❓ You can find detailed guides translated into Russian here:
Spanish Startup Residence Permit: A Comprehensive Guide (2025 RUS Edition)
Digital Nomad Residence in Spain 2025
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Apr 2025 Updates
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☘️
- The speed of the plan review at ENISA remained stable at 1-2 weeks in the 4th quarter of 2023.
- The amounts that need to be shown on personal accounts have been increased by 5% in March — the new ones are already indicated in the guide so as not to risk!
- Personal approval statistics (statistically significant, dozens of applications!) remain at 100% approval. But no, there are still quite a lot of people with refusals around.
FRESH THOUGHTS on important points in the project description for ENISA
- It is critically important to have innovation, how to express and show it
- description of proprietary technology and R&D expenses
- show a noticeable useful (in terms of product/business metrics) difference from other players in this niche-segment-market, which was obtained (surprise!) due to that very technology, for example
- It is important to have TRACTION. How can you show this
- the product is at the MVP stage or launched - maximally stretch and show proofs that this is exactly so
- received investments - excellent external validation of the startup, that someone has checked and given money (write letters of intent)
- have clients - also validation that the product is needed by someone (at least - pre-contracts, LOI of partnership)
- It is important that the founders were able to talk about themselves as talents) google XYZ formula
- so that the team was adequate and corresponded to the complexity and theme of the project (e.g. - made a new application of a new interesting ML algorithm in agribusiness - among the founders are an experienced CTO and a guy who understands the industry, has been collecting data in agribusiness for 20 years)
- B2B is always better than B2C
- General formulations "we are for all the good against all the nonsense" - "we use ChatGPT to do better" - will not work (
How it works, why, why others haven't done it, what's the UVP, what's the difference
It's important to lay all this out.
And already talk about the condition that EVERYTHING IS DONE AND DEVELOPED (so to speak, about the target state)
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Approval Statistics 2023-2024 (May’2024)
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♻️ In an interview on 25/07, ENISA mentioned a plan approval rate of 57%.
According to internet surveys, the average approval rate is 70%-75% (10 Oct’23)
…but the statistics fluctuate, sometimes there is a wave of rejections for promising projects, and sometimes a wave of approvals for everything, including average projects.
THERE IS A PATTERN
- Projects that have at least 2 strong aspects out of N:
- have a product (service or app launched, can be tested)
- have clients (contracts provided or real transaction records)
- have investors or funding (investment shown or real investors)
- have entrepreneurial experience of the founders (previous startup failures, searchable and proven)
IN THIS CASE, the chance of approval for such a group is 85%+
- On the contrary, projects that lack any of these aspects, no matter how great the idea is, have a probability of approval of 15-20%
These are factors that you can control (provide a document and receive a clear “YES/THERE IS/EXCELLENT” in the evaluation column)
Unlike innovations, which are difficult to control
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UGE+ENISA Application 2024