Portugal Startup Scene | June 2020

Pedro Almeida

4 min readJul 4, 2020

Originally published at https://www.pedroalmeidavc.com on July 4, 2020.

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Highlights

According to Startup Genome, Lisbon ranked in #12 among the emerging startup ecosystem
In a different study (European Commission’s Innovation Scoreboard report), Portugal is below the European average (96.7%). Not surprisingly the areas where Portugal lags the most are “Sales impact”, “Linkages” (between corporates/government and other companies), “Intellectual assets”, and “Finance and support”. On the contrary, Portugal scores highly in “Innovators” (adoption of innovation in business), “Innovation-friendly environment”, and “Attractive research systems”. For more details, check the report here.
Initiatives such as the Infraspeak Sales Development camp are exactly what Portugal needs to fill in the gaps. Well done Felipe and Infraspeak team!
NOS revealed that Armilar Venture Partners will manage the NOS 10M€ fund dedicated to 5G. Unfortunately, there are not many Portuguese LPs. Is exciting to see some progress in this area!
One of the gaps in Portugal’s startup ecosystem is gender diversity. Shifted interviewed several female leaders in Portugal. All had great ideas on how to improve gender diversity in startups!
Portugal Ventures seems to have instructions to accelerate investments — which is a good thing for entrepreneurs! In June, it was the most active investor with 3 investments and it seems is looking to do other 40 over the next weeks
VCs are increasingly approaching Iberia as a single market. Several Iberian Venture Capital funds are now offering office hours for non-portfolio companies based in this region. You can book it here.
Bynd Week was an interesting event and fully remote. In case you missed it, you can still watch it in youtube
Every year João updates the Fintech report — a must-read for everyone keen in Fintech. Check out the 2019 edition.
Web Summit, one of the largest tech conferences in the world, will still be held in Portugal but will be in a hybrid format. Not yet clear how it is going to play out, but it is happening in December (not conflicting with American elections this time…)!
If you are keen on knowing more about Porto startup scene and can’t go due to COVID19, a good start is this report
From Porto, are both João and Francisco from Replai — my most recent investment. It is great to see some leading entrepreneurs such as Humberto (Dashdash), Vasco and João (Unbabel), investing back in the ecosystem alongside Bright Pixel and Ideias Glaciares
To conclude this month’s highlights, I leave you with the opinion of João Trigo da Roza, APBA’s President, and with the opinion of some entrepreneurs that feel that Portugal state is not supporting startups. We are leaving challenging periods and a lot of opportunities will arise. Imagine how Portugal would be if we were to dedicate the same public investment to fuel innovation as TAP and Efacec!

Accelerator, pitch competition and events

Pedro Almeida’s stuff

Last month I wrote a post about International Venture Capital firms interested in Portugal. I have written in the past about top venture capital and business angels syndicates in Portugal and one exclusively on business angels in Portugal that can also be interesting for entreprenerus
I am also running a survey aiming to understand more about the investors’ landscape. The first insights are very interesting. I aim to share some results after having more results. As such, if you are an entrepreneur, please fill in this survey
Apply for investment

Funding round

Startup: Barkyn (https://www.barkyn.com/)

Amount: 5M€

TAGs: B2C, E-Commerce, Internet, Subscription

Investors: Indico Capital, All Iron Ventures, Portugal Ventures, 200M

Startup: Replai (https://www.replai.io/)

Amount: 1.1M€

TAGs: B2B, Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, Broadcasting, eSports, Video, Video Games, Gaming, Video Streaming

Investors: Bright Pixel, Pedro Almeida, Ideias Glaciares, Clever Advertising, Vasco Pedro, João Graça, Wolfgang Allisat

Startup: Climber (https://climberrms.com/)

Amount: 430k€

TAGs: B2B, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Hospitality, SaaS, Software, Travel, Machine Learning

Investors: LC Ventures, Olisipo Way

Startup: Advert.io (https://advertio.com/)

Amount: 365k€

TAGs: B2B, Advertising, Machine Learning, Artificial intelligence

Investors: Startup Braga, Olisipo Way

Startup: Chemitek (https://chemitek.pt/)

Amount: 365k€

TAGs: B2B, Chemical, Energy

Investors: Portugal Ventures

Startup: Kiss My Score (https://www.kissmyscore.com/)

Amount: 150k€

TAGs: B2C, Apps, Gaming, Internet of Things, iOS, Mobile, Sports

Investors: Core Angels, LC Ventures

Startup: Noocity (https://www.noocity.com)

Amount: 150k€

TAGs: B2C, Food Processing, Organic Food, Retail, e-commerce, marketplace

Investors: Core Angels, LC Ventures

Startup: EatTasty (https://eattasty.pt/home)

Amount: Unknown

TAGs: B2C, Communities, E-Commerce, Food and Beverage, Food Delivery

Investors: Shilling Capital, Olisipo Way

Startup: Sheerme (https://sheerme.com/)

Amount: Unknown

TAGs: B2C, Beauty, Fitness, Wellness, Apps, Mobile

Investors: Olisipo Way

International funding rounds participated by Portuguese investors

Big Start Ventures invested in Elucidate

Originally published at https://www.pedroalmeidabusinessangel.com on July 4, 2020.