Welcome to the Smart Startup English Podcast!
Our goal is to help startup professionals take their English from intermediate to advanced in just 10 minutes a day. In each episode, we’ll talk about a topic related to the startup world, and we’ll learn some vocabulary that you can use to sound more natural in your day-to-day business interactions in English.
In this episode, we’re talking about the Spanish startup scene, and we’ll learn a few Business English terms to talk about a changing startup ecosystem.
But first, let me ask you this:
What Spanish cities come to mind when you think of innovation? What cities are leading the way in startup friendliness in Spain?
If you’re thinking Barcelona and Madrid, yes, you’re right. But that doesn’t paint a complete picture. The beauty of the Spanish startup scene is that it’s not as concentrated in one city as its counterparts in the UK, France or Germany.
A counterpart is a person or a thing – in our case it’s a city – that has the same function.
It’s true that Madrid and Barcelona are two of the fastest-growing startup scenes in Europe. But other Spanish cities are catching up. To catch up means to get to the same point or the same standard as someone else or something else.
Valencia is a relative newcomer to the startup scene. But the city is already gaining fame as a hot Spanish startup hub. A hub is the central point of activity, the center, the place where everything happens.
In this lesson, we’ll teach you 10 Business English terms you need to know to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of setting up shop in Spain.
A few words we’ll talk about are:
- a gateway
- a counterpart
- to test the waters
Here’s the episode audio.
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If you want to keep practicing the words you’ve learned in this lesson, sign up to get access to a free worksheet based on this episode. Doing the exercises in the worksheet will help you transfer the knowledge from your short term memory to your long term memory.
If you want to keep learning, here’s another episode you can listen to:
Episode 4 – The challenges of the Italian startup scene
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Image credits: Zach Rowlandson via Unsplash
