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Desayunos Esade with Oriol Vila, Former CEO and Board Member of Holaluz

The gathering brought together the alumni community for an honest conversation on entrepreneurship, leadership, and the different stages of a company’s growth.
Oriol VIla

As part of Startup Day, Esade Alumni held a new session of the Desayunos Esade at the Esade Madrid campus, featuring Oriol Vila, co-founder, former CEO, and member of the board of directors of Holaluz.

During his talk, Vila revisited the journey of Holaluz, a company founded in 2010 with a strong transformative ambition. “Holaluz started in a business school, thanks to an Executive MBA; together with Carlota Pi and Ferran Nogué, we wanted to change things,” he explained. What began as a three-person project grew to 300 employees by the end of 2021 and reached a peak of 900 during its most expansive phase. Such rapid growth, as Vila acknowledged, also brings tension and difficult decisions.

After more than a decade leading the company, Oriol Vila decided to step aside. “I felt more comfortable in the early stages, and with divergences among partners, I chose to step down,” he said. Holaluz is currently in a rebuilding phase, following a bank refinancing and the entry of a new investor, adapting to market realities and a changing business environment. “We are in a rebuilding phase,” he noted, emphasizing the need to readjust expectations after such accelerated growth.

Oriol Vila

Key Decisions and Management 

One of the central themes of his talk was purpose as a strategic driver. “We believed the world could run on 100% renewable energy,” he recalled, stressing that having a clear purpose “helps in making difficult decisions and in attracting talent, among many other things.” In his experience, purpose acts as “a beacon to follow regardless of where you are,” but only works if it is communicated consistently and coherently. “Communicating our purpose was key, both internally and externally,” he stated.

Alongside purpose, Vila highlighted corporate culture as one of the essential pillars for sustainable growth. “A company has a culture, whether you like it or not, and working with it is crucial,” he noted. For him, culture represents the “how” of the organization—the way it operates and makes decisions—and is indispensable: “Culture is fundamental to building a team that drives the company forward,” he insisted.

The third pillar of his message was entrepreneurial self-awareness. Over his ten years as CEO, his role had to evolve, a process that required deep introspection. “I learned to focus on myself and take responsibility for what was happening,” he explained. Vila emphasized the importance of sharing vulnerability within teams and relying on tools such as coaching and mentoring which, in his words, “help you stay present” and support decision-making in uncertain environments.

In this vein, he also reflected on the limits of founder leadership. “It is very difficult to be the best person to lead a company from zero and also when it becomes a 200-person organization, because the required skills are different,” he said. He acknowledged that many entrepreneurs struggle to accept that there may come a time when they are no longer the right person to continue as CEO. “Entrepreneurs fear that if you’re not the CEO, then what do you do? But there will always be a role for you,” he affirmed.

The fourth major theme of his presentation was networking, an area Vila considers undervalued and often poorly managed. “We are quite bad at networking because we lack knowledge and method,” he argued. In his case, he admitted that he practiced it unconsciously for years, despite meeting his partners and many key employees through his network of contacts. “It is a mistake not to train it,” he warned. To be effective, he stressed that networking must have a clear objective, be planned, and be part of one’s professional agenda. “It should not be left to chance,” he concluded.

 

Oriol VIla

This reflection connects directly to his new project, BlaBlaNote, an initiative focused on applying artificial intelligence to networking and communication. “I want to help the right people connect, and I want to be there,” he explained, summarizing a professional stage in which he has moved from leading large teams to supporting people and projects from a different perspective. Vila recalled a Holaluz motto: “Companies are people working with people for people,” a statement that becomes even more relevant in the current context of AI.

Describing himself as a “father, industrial engineer, and entrepreneur,” Oriol Vila closed his talk with an honest reflection on the strain of leading growing organizations. “I aim to build something that can scale, and if it doesn’t, that’s not so bad either,” he admitted. A conclusion that captured the tone of the entire session: realistic, approachable, and far from triumphalist narratives—placing the focus not only on growing companies but also on knowing when and how to transform alongside them.

 

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