Portuguese Ecosystem
The following is my personal take on the Portuguese startup ecosystem, and probably is incomplete.
Universities with great track records in Computer Science. North through South:
- UM aka 'UMinho' in Braga.
- FEUP in Porto.
- FCUP in Porto.
- UA aka 'UAveiro' in Aveiro.
- IST aka 'Técnico' in Lisbon.
- Universidade Nova aka 'Nova' in Lisbon.
Companies with Series A by international investors:
- Aptoide
- Codacy
- dashdash (I'm a founder)
- Farfetch
- feedzai
- outsystems
- Seedrs
- SwordHealth
- talkdesk
- Unbabel
- uniplaces
- Veniam
Other interesting companies:
- AirCourts: sports booking app that won the PT market (I'm an angel investor)
- Blip: agency turned tech center for betting company Paddy Power Betfair
- sketchapp: co-founded by Emanuel Sá
- jscrambler: jscrambler
- LSTS: Lab with an open-source end-to-end toolchain for Autonomous Systems
- Mindera: agency spawn out of Blip
- Prozis: very successful online sports nutrition company (Private)
Local funds and VCs that go deep on technology:
- Armilar
- Ricardo Sequerra: at Point9
International funds that made early bets in PT startups before/ at Series A:
- Accel: dashdash (A)
- Advent: Farfetch (A)
- Atomico: uniplaces (A)
- Augmentum: Seedrs (A)
- Cherry: dashdash (Seed)
- Data Collective: feedzai (A)
- DFJ: talkdesk (A)
- EQT: Codacy (A)
- e-ventures: Aptoide (A)
- Founders Fund: Sword Health (A)
- Index: Farfetch (A)
- Khosla Ventures: Sword Health (A)
- Notion: Unbabel (A)
- Octopus: uniplaces (Seed)
- Saphire: feedzai (A)
- Salesforce: talkdesk (A)
- Storm talkdesk (Seed)
- True: Veniam (A)
- Woodford: Seedrs (A)