by Carolina Santos | May 23, 2018 | Investors
After last year’s giant success of the Investor’s Academy we decided to bring it back. The goal is to provide participants with the unique chance to learn best practices, first-hand experiences and receive concrete help on how to define their investment roadmap from seasoned players.
The winner of the Investors Academy wins a Scholarship Award to IE Business School for the Venture Capital course, just like last year. Jorge Batista and Rita Sousa were the winners and were accompanied by Isabel Salgueiro, at the time Lisbon Challenge Program Director.
I asked Isabel how was the experience and she told me “it was a great experience, not only to learn with real professionals but we also built a small network of highly interesting people that were taking the course at the same time”.
Adding that “during 3 days, we were exposed to great teachers that actually work in the venture capital area, and taught based on real examples of the past. I highly recommend this scholarship to whoever wants to learn more about the VC world”.
Maybe that was the beginning of Isabel’s change in career, the fact is that now she’s no longer with us and she’s working at a venture capital. This year the participants have the opportunity to win the same Scholarship again, so buy your Ultimate Investor’s Ticket here, before it’s too late.
by Carolina Santos | May 16, 2018 | Corporates, Investors, Startups
If you stop to think you’ll realize that life’s all about lists. You have the to-do lists, the supermarket lists, the pros and cons lists. Making lists make us feel we’re in control and that we are making the right decisions.
And because we know that, last week we gave you a list of 25 investors you couldn’t miss at Lisbon Investment Summit – or that maybe you’d like to reconnect with -, but the event has way more people and each one important on its own way.
So we decided to make an even bigger list focused, once again, on investors but dividing them according to their preferences when it comes to investment stages. Check their photos on the gallery, so you make sure you don’t reach out to the wrong person.
Institutional Investors
Patric Gresko – Head of Division – Innovation and Technology Investments at EIF
Angel Investors
Paola Bonomo – Non Executive Director & Angel Investor at Italian Angels for Growth
Pedro Bandeira – Founder CEO at Red Angels
Francisco Pinto – Executive Director at Busy Angel
Maurizio Calcopietro – Investor at Curitiba Angels
Early Stage Deep Tech
Gil Dibner – Founder Managing Partner at Angular Ventures
Stephan Morais – Managing General Partner at Indico Capital Partners
Ton van’t Noordende – Deeptech Investor & CEO at 01 Ventures
Liz Fleming – Principal at Adara Ventures
Pedro Ribeiro Santos – Partner at Armilar Venture Partners
Early Stage
Jaime Novoa – Investor at KFund
Pedro Falcão – Managing Partner at LC Ventures
Philipp Moehring – Venture Hacker at Angellist
Ben Marrel – Founding Partner at Breega
Laura Roguet – Associate at Korelya Capital
Pierre Yves Meerschman – Co-founder & investor at Daphni
Stephanie Hospital – Founder at OneRagtime
Andrew J Scott – Founding Partner at 7percent Ventures
Sean Seton-Rogers – Partner with PROfounders
Alexandre Flamant – Investor at Notion Capital
Prasad Vanga – Founder & CEO at Anthill Ventures
Joao Kepler Braga – Partner at Bossa Nova Investimentos
Daniel Ibri – Co-founder and Partner at Mindset Ventures
Javier Torremocha – Founding Partner – Kibo Ventures
Gonzalo Tradacete – CEO at Faraday Ventures Partners
Sector Specific
Alexandre Santos – Chief Investment Officer at SONAE IM
Maria Antonia Saldanha – Director of PAYFORWARD Innovation Program at SIBS
Richard Muirhead – Founding Partner at Fabric Ventures
José del Barrio – CEO and Founder Samaipata Ventures
Ellen Bark-Lindhout – Co founder at Collider
Celso Martinho – CEO and Founding Partner at Bright Pixel
Valentina Milanova – Venture Associate at Founder Factory
Ricardo Sequerra – Principal at Cherry Ventures
Roberto Saint-Malo – Managing Partner at BetaAngels
François-Xavier Dedde – Investment Manager at Omnes Capital
António Miguel – Managing Director at Maze Impact
Orson Stadler – Principal at Mustard Seed VC
Marco Fernandes– President at PME Investimentos
Henrique Gomes – Investment Analyst – Novabase capital
Walter Palma – Investment Direct at Caixa Capital
Later Stage Investors
Nicolas Debock – IDinvest
Felix Petersen – Managing Director Europe at Samsung Next
Tobias Schirmer – Managing Partner at Join Capital
Elliot O’Connor – Investor at Firstminute capital
Matthew Weigand – Principal at Accel Partners
Ashley Carroll – Partner at Social Capital
Make sure you get your ticket here.
by Carolina Santos | May 9, 2018 | Startups
The second edition of The Journey, a 5-month program for startups to pilot innovative solutions that can be applied in addressing travel and tourism players challenges. started this week, with the support of Turismo de Portugal in partnership with Grupo Barraqueiro, Geostar, Pestana Hotel Group, SATA Azores Airlines and NOS.
The program is focusing on four different areas:
- Personalize the Customer Journey – Leveraging Big Data sources and use of Predictive Analytics (Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing).
- Seamless Traveling Experience – Reducing points of friction (e.g. check-in) and the use of Blockchain for payments, loyalty, supply chain and contracts.
- Customer Care – Mobile strategy using multiplatform interactions to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Conscious Travel – Solutions to position The Journey partners as key actors for the sustainability of destinations.
According to Luís Araújo, President of Turismo de Portugal, “We want to turn Portugal into the center of innovation for tourism”. Pedro Rocha Vieira, Co-founder and CEO at Beta-i, says that “the tourism is one of the most important sectors in the Portuguese economy and the one that has been growing the most”, adding that “the goal is to achieve the 80 million stays a year until 2027, but for that to happen the industry has to be based on innovation processes”.
Applications are open until June 15, 2018, so if you have a solution regarding hospitality, travel (agency) services, tours & activities and air & ground transportation, go for it.
by Carolina Santos | May 9, 2018 | Startups
Beta-i is joining forces with Câmara Municipal de Lisboa to empower our Community with the best Lisbon Entrepreneurship Week ever. We’re opening the sessions to the community so every startup has a learning opportunity. So, from Monday May 14 until Friday May 18, everyone’s invited to join this entrepreneurship celebration.
The agenda is appealing but here’s only a few slots left for the workshops so be fast if you want to attend them. On Monday from 5pm to 6pm, at Beta-i’s 8th floor, there’s a workshop focused on Public Speaking. We know speaking in public can be frightening, there’s even a name for it, it’s called Glossophobia. Did you know that it’s one of the most common fears among humans?
This workshop given by Lerio Cunha, who has been traveling the World helping people overcome this fear and improve their communication skills, promises to help you face your demons and become a natural at speaking in public.
On Thursday from 5pm to 6pm also at Beta-i’s 8th floor there’s a workshop on “How to work your Customer Retention” given by Orlando Lopes, Co-founder at Eat Tasty. This workshop is for everyone who wants to raise their profit and increase their customer retention – the act of keeping current customers that you’ve already spent money acquiring. Did you know that it costs up to 30 times less to retain existing customers than to invest in new ones? Learn with Orlando how to do it, he strongly believes customer retention is key to success.
Also on Thursday Beta-i is hosting a mee tup alongside Startup Portugal focused on Blockchain at 6pm. How is it going to work? There’s going to be one host from Beta-i and another one from Think Tank and two invited speakers. The meet up will last between 30 to 45 minutes with more 30 minutes for Q&A. The meet up finishes with a TGIT (Thank God it’s Thursday) on Beta-i’s patio.
Friday is set to be a full day. From 2.30pm to 4pm, at Beta-i’s 8th floor, the workshop given by Elsa Ferreira, Lean-Agile Coach at Farfetch, is focused on Lean-Agile Principles, “Do it right the first time”. Get ready for a tip and tool session that will teach you the art of doing things that deliver higher value right on the first try with the least waste. Expect a hands-on approach with examples from Elsa’s professional experience – it’s 29 years of experience.
Daniel Araújo’s Talk, Co-founder and CEO of Attentive.us, follows from 4pm to 5pm and from 5pm to 6pm it will be time for the Data Pitch – Demonstration Day, an open pitch session. If you’re not familiar with Data Pitch, it’s a EU funded open innovation programme focused on Open Data and delivered by Beta-i, Open Data Institute, University of Southampton and Dawex. Don’t miss the chance to get to know the best European Technological Innovation, meet the startups and watch them pitch during the Open Pitch Sessions.
The week ends with a TGiLEW – Thank God it’s Lisbon Entrepreneurship Week (from 6pm to 9pm), hard to pronounce but perfect to network and celebrate the end of a great week with a beer or two.
Hope you can join us in this celebration because an entrepreneurship week would never exist without entrepreneurs.
by Carolina Santos | Apr 17, 2018 | Startups
The LIS Pitch Competition 2018 was announced alongside the rules and what the winner is taking home. The rules are simple: you have 3 minutes to pitch and 5 minutes of Q&A. The winner is taking home 1000€ (courtesy of Beta-i), two tickets for SingularityU Summit (courtesy of the José de Mello Group) and access to Grow by José de Mello Group (which includes a bunch of treats like access to a specialized mentors network, access to the Group’s companies and possible later stage funding).
Despite this being no small thing it’s important to say that pitching in front of startup-hungry investors comes with a whole lot of perks, like joining Techstars Paris, for example. Proof of that is Snapswap. They learned about the Pitch Competition when they were at SIBS Pay Forward and since they were actively exploring the Portuguese market at the time they thought it would be a great platform to showcase their solution.
Besides attracting a lot of interest during their pitch they also had a booth and ended up making valuable contacts with Portuguese financial institutions. According to Iaroslav Kovshikov, the Project Coordinator at Snapwap, “Denis (CEO) got challenging and smart questions during Q&A session”, what allowed them to explain well their solution and that happened because “the jury was well selected”.
Following that, Denis ended up having a series of meetings with Bertier Luyt, Managing Director at Techstar Paris – who’s going to be attending LIS again this year – the first one during Lisbon Investment Summit 17 and then things went from there.
When asked if LIS played an important role in the course of their startup’s life, Iaroslav said “definitely! Mainly because we were selected to Techstars Paris and also we obtained some prospects with whom we’re still discussing further cooperation with”.
Even though Snapswap is not attending this year’s summit due to a tight schedule, they say they “keep warm memories of LIS and Lisbon”, adding that they consider to come back in a few years to showcase their new products and meet other startups.
Applications close on April 30 and we’re waiting for yours. Like we’ll always be waiting for Snapswap return with open arms.
