These series of guest posts are written based off of interviews done with entrepreneurs in Spain, as part of an initiative to bring awareness about the Startup Spain movement. Today we interview David Pedroche, co-founder of ControlAd and Tetuan Valley Alumni from Fall 2010
Company: Control Ad
Founded: 2009
URL: www.controlad.es
Twitter: @control_ad
City: Madrid
Founders:
Control Ad is a company that develops tools to audit and control advertising campaigns
Who is behind this project? Who are the team members?
Both Pablo and I have always had entrepreneurship in our hearts and were always talking about what it would be like to create a project, become rich and create more projects. So, we both left our respective companies, told our parents we were fired, and started working full-time in our ideas in January, 2010.
In January 2011 our friend Raul Luque helped us run the numbers to explore the project feasibility, in June he decided to help us with some money ( thus, becoming our first fool.. sorry, investor) and in September he joined us to be our CTO.
By October 2011 we found Manuel Tereisa, other foo.. sorry investor that put in some money and helped with sales.
And here we are, four foo.. sorry entrepreneurs ready to kick some ass!
How did you came up with the idea? What is the story behind it?
Pablo and I were flat mates and one day Pablo showed me a demo he was working on. Initially, the demo allowed you to identify CD covers with a picture from your mobile phone, and he said he was thinking about selling it. I told him I had a better idea, to use this tool to create something of our own, and that day we started to work in Control Ad
How do you envision the future of your business and what are the key challenges and questions that your market niche is facing?
We want to see all the important advertisers using our tools to know better when, where and how their advertisements are shown in the internet thus helping them extract more value out their marketing efforts and make better decisions.
What is your status as of today or, in other words, what are you guys up to these days?
We have made our first big sale to a big client:
Infoadex, a leading Spanish company in advertising that uses our technology to estimate their budget for the online advertising market.
This month we have launched our second product line “Control Ad Black List” which advertisers can use to keep their ads away from sites they might not want their brand associated with, such as those that promote violence, drugs or illegal file sharing.
Next steps after that… TV and radio! 
What is the single most important barrier you have had to face in order to start this venture in Spain and how did you overcome it?
Bureaucracy is crazy in Spain, but there is something that pisses me off even more:
In Spain there is no entrepreneurial culture, everybody wants to have a “safe” job (extra points, if that job is for the government) and nobody will respect your work as an entrepreneur until you make serious money in your startup.
A word of advice to other entrepreneurs…
If you want free advisory from high-profile people, don’t pay for meals, invite them to breakfast.
Parting thoughts…
There’s one thing I learned in all my years. Sometimes you just gotta say, “What the fuck”
-Risky Business
