Bernardo Hernandez

Why organisations work with Bernardo Hernandez

• Operator credibility on both sides of the Atlantic: a senior Google product role through the Zagat acquisition, then running Flickr at Yahoo, then founding and selling Verse to Block. Few European speakers have lived that arc.
• Investor pattern recognition across a portfolio that includes Wallapop, Glovo, Fever, Paack, Citibox and Stripe. He talks about scaling consumer tech from inside the cap table, not from the outside.
• A working view of what AI is doing to product organisations through Pensero AI, his current company, which applies AI to engineering performance and management.
• Direct experience of the moves that matter to corporates: M&A integration at Google, platform repositioning at Yahoo and fintech exit to a US strategic acquirer.

Biography highlights

• Co-founder of Idealista, Spain’s leading real estate platform.
• Director of Product Management at Google, 2005 to 2013; led the Zagat acquisition and team.
• Head of Flickr and Senior Vice President of Product at Yahoo, 2013 to 2015.
• Founder and CEO of Verse, the European payments app acquired by Block (Square) in 2020.
• Co-founder and Co-CEO of Pensero AI in New York.
• Board of Directors, Mapfre USA; trustee, Fundacion Princesa de Girona; jury member, Princess of Asturias Awards for Science and Technology.
• Recipient of Spain’s National Innovation and Design Award (2023, Ministry of Science).

Biography

Idealista was a small Madrid property site when Bernardo Hernandez co-founded it in 2000. Today it is the dominant real estate platform in southern Europe. That first venture set the template for a career spent building consumer internet businesses, then teaching incumbents how to think about the same problem.

After five years as a portfolio manager at Fidelity, BBVA and Putnam, he joined Google in 2005 as Director of Product Management. He spent eight years inside the company, including leading the Zagat acquisition and integration. He then ran Flickr at Yahoo as Senior Vice President of Product before founding Verse, the European payments app that Block acquired in 2020.

The operator track is matched by an investor track. He has backed Wallapop, Glovo, Fever, Paack, Citibox and Stripe, among others, and was an early investor in Tuenti before its sale to Telefonica. He sits on the board of Mapfre USA and is a trustee of the Fundacion Princesa de Girona under the Spanish Royal House. In 2023 he received Spain’s National Innovation and Design Award from the Ministry of Science.

His current company, Pensero AI, applies AI to engineering management, giving him a live operating view of what generative AI is doing to product organisations rather than a theorist’s view. For corporate audiences this matters: he is currently building inside the technology shift he is invited to speak about.

Key speaking topics

• Entrepreneurship and the scale-up playbook
• Digital business models and platform economics
• Consumer fintech and mobile payments
• AI in product and engineering organisations
• Corporate venturing, M&A and integration
• Innovation portfolios and angel investing
• Building between Europe and the United States

Ideal for

• CEOs and board directors weighing build, buy or back decisions on new digital businesses.
• Chief Strategy, Chief Innovation and Corporate Development leaders running venture and M&A activity.
• Banks, insurers and retailers facing fintech and platform challengers.
• Leadership groups at European corporates with US ambitions, or US groups expanding into Europe.

Audience outcomes

• A clearer sense of how founders make speed and capital decisions that corporate processes typically slow down.
• A working framework for evaluating new business models against existing P&L economics.
• Concrete reference points from Idealista, Google, Flickr, Verse and the current Pensero AI build.
• A sharper read on where AI is creating leverage inside product and engineering teams right now.