François Derbaix

Who they are

François Derbaix is Co-CEO and Co-founder of Indexa Capital — a Belgian-born serial founder who sold Toprural.com to HomeAway and Rentalia.com to idealista.com before building Spain's leading robo-advisor, and who also co-founded Bewater Funds and Aplazame.

Person

François Derbaix studied Business Administration at the Université catholique de Louvain before moving to Spain and spending two decades building and selling internet companies. He co-founded Toprural.com, a rural tourism platform sold to HomeAway in 2012, and Rentalia.com, a vacation rental platform sold to idealista.com the same year — two exits in one calendar year. He then co-founded Aplazame, an instant credit / BNPL platform that was acquired by WiZink Bank in 2018, and Soysuper, an online supermarket comparison startup. The through-line is spotting consumer internet categories early in Spain, building to exit, and redeploying the proceeds into the next wave. He now runs Indexa Capital, Spain's leading automated investment manager, alongside co-CEOs Unai Ansejo and Ramón Blanco, and separately co-founded Bewater Funds, a private equity fund vehicle. He writes at francoisderbaix.com and at the Indexa Capital blog on entrepreneurship, startup exits, fintech, and long-term investing — and has been a mentor at SeedRocket since at least 2008. He also has 30-plus angel investments, including Novicap.

Company

Indexa Capital crossed €5 billion in assets under management and 150,000 clients in 2026 — its most concrete growth milestone to date. In 2025 the firm expanded beyond pure investment management, launching a strategic alliance with Aon in claims management, a partnership with A&G Banco for an interest-bearing account, and a tie-up with Caser Seguros for a life insurance product. The company positions its cost structure as a core differentiator: average total costs of 0.520% for fund portfolios as of January 2026, which it describes as around 81% lower than the average fees charged by Spanish banks and funds. Its earliest external funding — $2.16 million over two rounds, the latest a Seed round in December 2016 — is long in the past; the business has scaled organically from there.

Market

Indexa Capital operates in the Spanish automated investment management market, competing directly with MyInvestor, Finanbest, and inbestMe. The company holds the leading position in its category and differentiates on cost, having reduced fees every year since launch. Broader geopolitical uncertainty in 2025 — including global market volatility — has created headwinds for financial institutions generally, though Indexa's low-cost passive model is structurally less exposed to active-management fee pressure.

Network

At Indexa Capital, François runs a three-way co-CEO structure with Unai Ansejo and Ramón Blanco, both co-founders. Outside of Indexa, he has been an active business angel with 30-plus investments including Novicap, and a long-standing mentor at SeedRocket, Spain's early-stage accelerator, since at least 2008.

Unai Ansejo· Co-CEO and Co-founder, Indexa Capital
Ramón Blanco· Co-CEO and Co-founder, Indexa Capital

How they likely show up

Four founded companies across rural tourism, vacation rentals, BNPL, grocery comparison, and fintech → pattern-seeker who moves category to category rather than deepening in one vertical.
Two exits in 2012 (Toprural and Rentalia) followed immediately by new builds → high tolerance for restarts; likely energised by zero-to-one phases.
Long-tenure signal at Indexa Capital, still Co-CEO after growing to €5 billion AUM → willing to stay and scale when the category is large enough.
Mentor at SeedRocket since at least 2008, 30-plus angel investments → operates with a giving-back orientation; probably values reciprocal, peer-level conversations over transactional ones.
Public writing at francoisderbaix.com covers long-term investing and compound interest as recurring themes → likely thinks in decades on wealth-building, even while building fast-growth companies.
Podcast appearances discuss exits, business angel strategy, and entrepreneurship education → comfortable being candid about the mechanics of selling a company, not just building one.

Conversation tips

→ Reference a specific post from francoisderbaix.com or the Indexa Capital blog — he writes substantively and will notice if you've actually read it.
→ He's done this multiple times; ask about the differences between exits (HomeAway, idealista, WiZink) rather than treating 'exit' as a single data point.
→ The 150,000-client / €5 billion AUM milestone is current and concrete — a good anchor if you want to talk about where Indexa is now without sounding vague.
→ He mentors founders at SeedRocket; if you have a genuine early-stage question, he'll engage — but don't ask for generic advice he's already written about publicly.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on the Aon and Caser Seguros partnerships in 2025 — Indexa moving into insurance and claims management is a real strategic shift for a company that started as a pure-play robo-advisor, and he has a view on where the product boundary should be.
Reference the Aplazame-to-WiZink exit — he co-founded a BNPL company before BNPL was a global category and sold it to a bank; that sequencing says something about how he reads market timing.
Mention his Outliers podcast episode on 'Invertir para hacerte rico lentamente' — he chose that framing deliberately, and it runs against the grain of the fintech growth narrative he operates inside.

Discovery questions

You've reduced fees every year since launch and you're now at 0.520% — is the cost-leadership position a permanent moat or does it get competed away as the category matures in Spain?
You ran Toprural, Rentalia, Aplazame, and Soysuper before Indexa — what's different about the decision to stay and scale Indexa rather than exit and restart again?
With the Aon, A&G, and Caser partnerships all landing in 2025, how do you think about the right scope for Indexa — is this bundling for retention, or a genuine product thesis about where automated wealth management goes?

Avoid

Don't pitch generic 'financial inclusion' or 'democratising investing' framing — he has been building and writing about low-cost investing in Spain for years and will see it as filler.

Make it yours