From the USA to Barcelona: How ESEI Helped Nick Build His Path into Startups and Innovation
When Nick looks back at the years that led him to graduating from ESEI in July 2025, he is the first to admit that the path was anything but straight. He grew up in the USA, near Washington D.C., where, as he puts it, “there was a lot of water there, so I was always outdoors, running around and having fun.” After finishing high school in 2020, he planned to attend university in the United States as a competitive swimmer, but Covid and a serious injury changed everything.
After a gap year spent trying to recover, he was injured again just before starting university in the U.S. and made the difficult decision not to attend. Rather than forcing himself into a plan that no longer felt right, he chose a different route and moved to St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands. There, he spent several months working on sailboats, in a taco shop and helping out in bars, gaining real-life experience and perspective. By the time he returned to the US, he knew he wanted to search for something different from a traditional university experience.
Why Nick Chose ESEI in Barcelona
It was during this search that he came across ESEI while looking for English-speaking business schools in Barcelona. What stood out to him was the structure of the programme and how easily it could be combined with work experience. He arrived in Barcelona in the fall of 2022, ready to learn through doing. As he recalls, the flexible schedule “seemed like it could have aligned super well with an internship or job opportunities.”
Combining Studies with Real Work Experience
Nick quickly became involved in the life of the school, starting with an internship in business development and marketing. “It was a great opportunity to get some real-world experience, shoot some emails, do some cold calls and see what it’s like behind the computer,” he explains. Not long after, he moved into restaurant work in Gràcia at Yesterday Restaurant, owned by the husband of Nelly, who was part of the ESEI team.
His daily routine was packed full of learning. “I’d wake up at six or seven, go work, then go straight to class from eleven to two, and then go back to Gràcia and close down the restaurant,” he says. In the afternoons, he was often “mainly washing dishes, honestly.” But instead of burning him out, that rhythm gave him something he had been missing. “This second half was awesome. It gave me so much structure,” he says, adding that without Nelly and the school, “I would have left Spain, honestly.”
The ESEI Community and Personal Support
For Nick, this level of personal support is what truly sets ESEI apart. “The staff, the admissions, they really do care about every single person that they come in contact with,” he says. Whether it was solving paperwork issues or answering questions, help was always close by. “If I needed something, Rima would pass me legal notes within the hour, and Simi always knows the answer,” he adds. The same applied to the professors, who, in his experience, were always willing to open doors, whether that meant inviting students to events, bringing guest speakers to class or helping them find internships.
From Classroom Project to Real Startup
Academically, his first year was a period of exploration. He experienced both office work and the reality of restaurant life, and, as he puts it, went from “dressing up nice and being behind the laptop” to “getting cuts and calluses all over my hands and getting yelled at for messing up the lentejas.” That contrast helped him understand that he did not want to rush into a single path too quickly.
The real turning point came in the spring of 2023 in a class taught by Professor Martina Guzman. “She was like, ‘We’re going to create an online business in this class,’” he remembers. That was where the idea for his travel app was born, a project he would work on for the next two years and eventually launch on the App Store with a friend.
What made the experience special was that the startup became the backbone of his studies. “Every class, whether it was digital marketing, finance or law, I used that platform for all my projects,” he explains. He would go to his teachers and say, “Listen, this is my startup. Would it be possible to do this project based on this app?” In most cases, the answer was yes. By the time he reached his final year, he had, in his words, “loads and loads of pages” of business plans, marketing strategies and project documents built around something real.
Nick successfully completed his studies and graduated with his Bachelor in Business Administration in July 2025, marking the culmination of three years of immersive learning, real-world experience, and entrepreneurial exploration. He was ready to take the next step and apply what he had learned in a professional setting.
From ESEI to Innovation Consulting at Noba Ventures
That practical, project-based approach is exactly what led Nick to his current role at NOBA Ventures, where he works in business prototyping and innovation consulting. After spending so much of his degree building, testing and refining his own startup, moving into a role focused on creating new products for companies felt like a natural next step.
“When a company wants to launch a new product, we research it, design it and test it,” he explains. The work ranges across industries, from consumer goods to more complex services. “If you see a drink on the shelf, or a functional food, or even an insurance product, that might be something that we did.”
In practice, this means breaking ideas down to their fundamentals: understanding who the customer is, what problem the product is solving and how it should be positioned. “We look at the target audience, what they’re interested in, what benefits we can give them, and then we design it and launch it,” he says. It is fast-paced, highly collaborative work that mirrors the way he learned at ESEI.
Today, Nick is based at Norrsken, a well-known co-working and innovation hub by the beach near the W Hotel in Barcelona. Surrounded by startups, founders and investors, he finds himself in an environment that feels like a continuation of his studies, just at a different scale. “Every conversation is a learning piece,” he says, pointing out that much like at ESEI, the value is not only in the projects themselves, but in the people around them.
Looking back, he sees a clear link between the way he was taught and the way he now works. “I went to a project-based school, and now I work on projects,” he says. “It kind of rounds it all out.”
Learning from Professors with Real-World Experience
One of the strongest lessons Nick took from his time at ESEI is that university is not really about the content alone. As he puts it, “the person teaching this content has twenty or thirty years in the industry.” Learning from people who have spent decades working in their fields, he believes, is far more valuable than any single assignment.
When he talks about the professors who had the biggest impact on him, one name comes up immediately: Albert Pallarès. “He cuts out the fluff,” Nick says. “If you’re taking too long to explain something, he’ll stop you. At first I thought he wasn’t listening to me, but then I realised I just needed to be more concise.”
Albert’s classes were demanding in the best possible way. They were less about memorising frameworks and more about learning how to structure ideas, communicate them clearly and justify decisions. Nick explains that the lessons he learned in Albert’s classroom still shape how he works today. “I get positive performance reviews now for being concise in meetings,” he says.
He is equally appreciative of other professors such as Martina Guzman, Yolanda and Arie Elbelman, who all brought strong professional experience into the classroom and consistently pushed students to connect what they were learning with the real world.
Advice for Current ESEI Students in Barcelona
For current ESEI students, Nick’s advice is both simple and practical. Barcelona, he says, is far too rich in opportunities to stay stuck in the same routines. “Get out in the city and meet as many people as you can,” he says. “Go explore, even outside Barcelona. Learn a little bit of Catalan and connect to the culture.”
On the academic side, his message is just as direct. “Talk to your teachers. Tell them what you’re interested in. If you really use their experience, you get ten times more out of university.” And, as he puts it simply, “you get out what you put in.”
Explore ESEI’s Programmes
👉 If you’re considering starting your own journey in Barcelona, explore ESEI’s Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes and see how we can support you on your study abroad journey.
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