François Derbaix

Who they are

François Derbaix is Co-founder and Co-CEO of Indexa Capital — a Belgian who moved to Spain and built the country's leading robo-advisor from scratch in 2015, now managing over €5 billion.

Person

François co-founded Indexa Capital in 2015 when automated investment management was nearly absent in Spain — joining as an early-stage bet on low-cost, algorithm-driven wealth management at a moment the Spanish market was dominated by high-fee traditional banks. Before that, he built Toprural, an online rural accommodation marketplace, which gave him the founder playbook he'd later apply to fintech. The through-line across both companies is the same: take a market with structural inefficiencies and opacity, strip out the middleman, and compete on price and transparency. Alongside those two companies, he's deployed capital as a business angel in more than 30 fintech and startup investments. He writes actively — on his personal blog at francoisderbaix.com and on the Indexa Capital blog — covering automated investing, long-term wealth building, fintech entrepreneurship, and startup exits. Possibly — the Belgian-to-Madrid arc reflects a personal relocation that ended up shaping a decade-long career in Spanish fintech.

Company

Indexa Capital crossed €5 billion in assets under management and reached 150,000 clients in 2026 — the clearest signal yet of its scale as Spain's dominant robo-advisor. In 2025 the company moved beyond pure investment management: it partnered with A&G Banco on an interest-bearing account product, with Caser Seguros on a life insurance offering, and launched a strategic alliance with Aon in claims management — a deliberate push to become a broader low-cost financial services platform. Earlier funding rounds brought in a total of $2.16 million from investors including Viriditas Ventures and FIDES Capital Partners, modest capital for a company now at this scale. A $2.5 billion valuation figure has appeared in connection with a 2026 funding development, though the details of that round are not fully confirmed.

Market

Indexa competes in Spain's automated investment management space against MyInvestor, Finanbest, and inbestMe — all fighting on fee compression in a market long controlled by high-cost bank distributors. Geopolitical volatility in 2025, including tensions affecting global capital allocation, has added uncertainty to the macro backdrop for all wealth managers. Indexa's position as the largest independent robo-advisor in Spain, and its early claim to being the first profitable independent automated investment manager in Europe, gives it a structural cost and trust advantage as the category matures.

Network

François's closest collaborators are his Indexa co-founders: Unai Ansejo Barra, who shares the Co-CEO title, and Ramón Blanco. The company also counts Manuel Conthe — a financial regulator and advisor — and Luis Martín Cabiedes — one of Spain's best-known early-stage investors — among its board and advisory orbit.

Unai Ansejo Barra· Co-founder and Co-CEO at Indexa Capital
Ramón Blanco· Co-founder at Indexa Capital
Manuel Conthe· Financial advisor and board member at Indexa Capital
Luis Martín Cabiedes· Investor/advisor at Indexa Capital

How they likely show up

Long tenure at Indexa Capital (co-founder since 2015, now over a decade) → thinks in multi-year compounding arcs, not quarterly cycles.
Active blogger on francoisderbaix.com and the Indexa Capital blog → comfortable being publicly accountable for his views; transparency is a working value, not just a marketing message.
More than 30 business angel investments alongside a full-time Co-CEO role → high personal agency, likely energised by parallel bets rather than single-threaded focus.
Built two companies (Toprural and Indexa Capital) both premised on disintermediating opaque, high-margin incumbents → pattern-matches quickly to fee structures, information asymmetry, and 'who captures the rent' questions.
Co-CEO structure with Unai Ansejo Barra → accustomed to shared leadership and probably values clear division of accountability over heroic solo decision-making.

Conversation tips

→ Reference a specific post from his blog — he writes about long-term investing and fintech entrepreneurship with genuine conviction, and will engage much more deeply if you've read the work.
→ Ask about the Toprural-to-Indexa transition — it's the move that defines his founder identity and he'll have a considered view on what transferred and what didn't.
→ Engage on cost structure and fee transparency — these are not talking points for him, they're foundational beliefs that explain every product decision Indexa has made.
→ Don't treat him as a pure finance person; he's a serial founder with an angel portfolio, so startup and operator framings land as well as wealth-management ones.
→ The Co-CEO model is unusual — if it's relevant, ask how the division of responsibilities actually works; it's a deliberate structural choice he's had to defend publicly.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on Indexa crossing €5 billion AUM and 150,000 clients in 2026 — a milestone he's been building toward for a decade, and a natural moment to ask what the next inflection looks like.
Reference the 2025 product expansions — the A&G Banco account, the Caser Seguros insurance product, and the Aon claims management alliance — because they signal a deliberate shift from single-product robo-advisor to low-cost financial services platform.
Mention his personal blog at francoisderbaix.com; he's been writing about automated investing and startup exits for years, and leading with a specific piece shows you've engaged with his actual thinking, not just his LinkedIn headline.

Discovery questions

The 2025 moves into insurance and interest-bearing accounts look like a deliberate platform expansion — is the long-term bet that Indexa becomes a full financial services layer, or is it still anchored to investment management?
You've made more than 30 angel investments alongside running Indexa — how do you think about what you're trying to learn from that portfolio versus what you're trying to return?
Toprural and Indexa are both built on the same disintermediation thesis in very different markets — what did running a marketplace teach you that you brought directly into building a regulated investment manager?

Avoid

Don't pitch high-fee, complex structured products or anything that depends on opacity in pricing — his entire career is a sustained argument against that model and he'll disengage fast.

Make it yours