Juse Hernanz

Jose María Hernanz Fernández-Aguado is a Partner at JME Ventures, a Madrid-based early-stage venture firm, where he rose from Principal to Partner (a promotion dated to around September 2022). JME is one of Spain's larger early-stage platforms, managing on the order of €120–150m across four funds (2012–2024) and having backed 70+ startups. The firm grew out of the venture arm of a family foundation tied to Acciona's chairman before spinning out to manage independent funds, and it maintains an unusually tight focus on Spanish-founded companies.

Hernanz has a finance and capital-markets background. He holds a degree in financial markets from Universidad Pontificia Comillas (ICADE) and passed the CFA Level I exam. He began his career as an associate in equity research at UBS Investment Bank before moving into the startup and venture world, including work described as Tech M&A (VP) at BlueBull and an investor role at 5punto5 SkinLab (he has also been associated with a co-founding role at FabricaDCamisas).

As an investor at JME he has been active on portfolio boards, holding or having held board seats at BCN3D Technologies (desktop/professional 3D printing), Biome Makers (agtech soil-microbiome analysis), Ironhack (tech education / coding bootcamps), and ODILO (digital learning content, former). He is also a writer and educator on venture mechanics, publishing on Medium about financial modeling, exit math, liquidation preferences, and the Spanish tech IPO market.

• Invests at seed stage in Spanish-founded / Spain-based technology startups, across both B2B and B2C.
• Team-first, not thematic: JME explicitly leans away from thematic/vertical mandates and backs strong founding teams with a unique, compelling vision of their market.
• Check size ~€100k–€3m: smaller checks (sub-€300k) can be committed quickly with light process; larger commitments (€500k+) go through full approval/diligence.
• Philosophy of "Empowerment, not interference" — founder autonomy with global-scale support offered when sought.
• On deal terms, Hernanz has publicly argued for standard investor protections — e.g., *"Reasons why we DO include liquidation preference in our investments,"* advocating a 1x non-participating liquidation preference.
• On the ecosystem: *"Money follows good companies. We have showed that many good companies can be built from Spain in traditional sectors"* (from his Spain tech-IPO overview).