A taste of Portugal – Entrepreneurship emerging – Lisbon Challenge

There is plenty of great establishments in Portugal and if you remember in Part 1 I talked about entrepreneurship in Porto, Portugal. Now is time to go to the capital.

Let’s start with the dining options – as you might suggest the food in Lisbon is great. Just kidding, of course, it is great but I won’t talk about it now. Disclaimer: yes, I am biased about this country. 🙂

When you go to Lisbon, entrepreneurship starts and ends with Lisbon Challenge. It is a 3-month acceleration program organized by Beta-i and attracting a crowd of tech startups. The numbers speak for themselves: alumni consists of 140+ startups, capital raised goes over 50 million euros and many companies went on to YCombinator, Seedcamp, Tech stars. Least but not last they claim that 40% of alumni got invested. These numbers are valid as of writing this article (late summer 2015). Knowing the team and especially @Pedro and @Ricardo this does not come as a surprise. I am glad to have met these guys at the start of their endeavour and to have the chance to give my modest contribution during the mentorship sessions.

If you find this interesting – go and try the programme. If not, here is some more to get you excited: one of the extra cookies besides the many mentors and perks is the Investors Day in Lisbon. The best teams then go to a roadshow to London and San Francisco. In the past some also went to Brazil. Another one are the great places you can go on a weekend like Cascais, Evora and Beja just to recharge for another challenging week.

Apology in advance: If I missed or messed up something e.g. numbers, please just write me a message or post a comment. Thanks!

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Have a great week!