by cristina | Oct 4, 2019 | Corporates, Startups
We invite you to meet Corship, a consortium co-funded by European Union, that counts with 7 selected partners representing universities, corporates, startups and innovation networks – Beta-i amongst them.
Here is all you need to know about it.
Corship’s mission is to establish and improve the collaboration across Europe, between startups, corporates and universities, with education.
This joint language and collaboration is done by connecting these entities through 3 core results:
- A Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)
Currently preparing the field to a 2020 MOOC entirely dedicated to the collaboration process between these three entities, this will be the first MOOC on Corporate Entrepreneurship connecting and upskilling 1.500+ entrepreneurs, managers and students.
This course will be open for registration from December 2019 and will last up to six weeks. It will be the first core result of the project and open and free for everyone. Completely online, through the platform mooc.house.
After reading, watching videos, answering questions (multiple choice) and quizzes, besides taking part in discussions and work individually and in a group, participants will also have the chance to apply for the MicroCredential.
Corship presents the first MicroCredential (a modular, flexible format stemming from MOOCs) pilot world-wide on corporate entrepreneurship. This is a modular, flexible mini degree on very specific topics. After the MOOC, this is will be a dedicated high-level training offered to 10 entrepreneurs, 10 managers and 10 students.
It will last eight weeks and will include two face-to-face workshops and three online moments. Applications for the MicroCredential are done via the MOOC and open in April 2020.
A unique Corporate Entrepreneurship Toolbox with guidelines and tools to facilitate the collaboration between the 3 target groups. These guidelines will be complemented with a practical selection of popular, but also less-known, self-developed, hands-on entrepreneurial tools.
The first prototype is to be ready in January 2020!
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Get to know the latest research report that is part of the project’s background and follow Corship to get all the updates.
by fernandojardim | Sep 30, 2019 | Corporates, Startups, Uncategorized
The Unemployment Rate In Portugal Is 6.3%, But There Are Open Positions In Technology: How To Take Advantage Of Them?
Beta-I, Le Wagon, Landing Jobs and Humaniaks joined forces to discuss opportunities on how to begin or move your career to the digital universe from September, 30th.
According to the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the unemployment rate in Portugal is 6.3% at the moment. This number is mainly related to jobs and professions existing before digital transformation, which has brought new career opportunities: right now, there are hundreds of job openings offered by startups and technology companies, and one of the biggest business challenges lies in creating proper recruitment strategies and employer branding projects in order to attract the best talents.
To raise the awareness of the professions of the future, Beta-i , Le Wagon, Landing Jobs and Humaniaks have teamed up to create Career in Tech Week . The week of free events will take place between September 30th and October 3rd at Beta-i, starting at 19 PM , and will feature different speakers on a variety of topics. Registration is free.
On the first day, high-paid (or well-paid) jobs such as Developer , Data Scientist, Product Manager, etc. will be discussed. On the second day, Landing Jobs will present a detailed report on the Tech Professions. On the third day, there will be a workshop on the skills required to get a job in tech and, finally, on the last day, there will be a talk with different professionals who will share how they radically changed their careers for the tech sector. The talk will be moderated by Humaniaks, and followed by networking drinks.
This initiative is important since the data released by Startup Portugal in conjunction with IAPMEI and the Ministry of Economy show that Portuguese economy grew in the period from 2016 till 2018 with a significant amount of startups and entrepreneurs contributing to this growth. Also, the value of sales and provided services increased among startups, which in 2018 reached an average of € 553,000 per company; with value added per employee being around € 80,000 per year, highlighting the growing contribution of local talent to the economy.
Because of the scarce labor resources and an increasing demand, wages in this area are higher than the national average. To compare, Portuguese average salary for graduates from tertiary education was € 1,547 (base) in 2017. According to the report “ Tech Salaries in Portugal” by Landing Jobs, a startup specialized in technology recruitment, most positions available to professionals with less than 3 years of experience will start with an average salary of 22K € / year, which represents a monthly income of 1,800 € per month.
Open positions in technology
Technology companies have increased their presence in Portugal in the last three years. Google opened its technology center in Oeiras, creating 500 positions in technology, Volkswagen opened its first software development center outside Germany and aims to generate 300 jobs , as well as its competitor Mercedes Benz, which plans to hire 100 developers .
Despite a variety of opportunities, there is no labor available on the market. According to Niels Kowollik, CEO and Executive Director of Mercedes Portugal at a press conference in Lisbon , “The market for good developers is quite difficult in Portugal. There are not so many skilled workers to be available. Thus, we’re recruiting from abroad”. At the time of the statement, the company had only hired 30 out of 100 required developers.
According to João Figueirinhas, CEO of Humaniaks, a startup focused on recruiting technology professionals, “technology companies have a hard time recruiting. Generally, either the selection process is long, as it is difficult to find sufficiently skilled labor for the openings in question, or the hiring cycles are shorter, but companies are in charge of training their own hires to perform the required function ”.
The shortage of skilled labor is likely to become even more intense, as several other companies are planning to open more subsidiaries in Portugal in the near future, such as British company Revolut and American company Amazon , which already started relocating to Lisbon last year, and has just announced the opening of its CloudFront division in the country.
These companies are attracted by two factors: government incentives (such as startup visa, national network of incubators etc.) and the increased amount of investment in the sector.
According to LC Ventures’ investment report in partnership with Beta-i and the National Federation of Business Angels Associations , the amount of 47MM € (Venture Capital deals ) and 11MM €( Business Angels Deals) was invested in startups in 2008 . Just in the first half of 2019, startup investments were 69MM € and 13MM € in both categories respectively. Due to the rise of venture capital funds, Pedro Falcão, Managing Partner of LC Ventures adds: “I believe Portugal will have more unicorns in the coming years”.
by Alisson Avila | Sep 18, 2019 | Corporates, Investors, Startups
Also AWS Chief Evangelist, he praised Feedzai and many other startups while sharing his vision on cloud computing
On September 11, we had the pleasure of hosting Jeff Barr, VP and Chief Evangelist from Amazon Web Services (AWS), at Beta-i headquarters. Our hub was the place for a special AWS Lisbon User Group talk led by Barr, and also open to our clients, about the major transformations of digital business brought about by cloud solutions.
This was an opportunity for Beta-i customers and the community to enjoy a moment of knowledge exchange and interaction with one of the leading corporate names in the digital economy, right at the moment that AWS invests in Portugal through a support office and a new Amazon CloudFront location. Owner of a very active blog, Barr gave this exclusive interview to Beta-i via email as he continued his ongoing worldwide sessions.
Your talk here in Lisbon summarizes the “double shift” of digital transformation provided by cloud computing: “from simply centralized computing and storage, operated on an on-demand, pay-as-you-go basis, to the industry-wide locus of innovation, host to a multitude of services”. What is AWS’s vision and ambition to take the lead in this gigantic universe?
Our vision is always the same: focus on customers and innovate on their behalf. To date, AWS has millions of active customers every month and the reasons why customers are turning to AWS is because it has a lot more functionality, the largest and most vibrant community of customers and partners, the most proven operational and security expertise, and the business is innovating at a faster clip – especially in new areas such as Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, and Serverless Computing.
That being said, there is another reason why customers are choosing AWS: customers have come to really appreciate that the AWS culture is really different. If a startup, enterprise, or government agency is going to partner with a cloud provider, it’s typically a long-term decision they’re making, and they really want to understand what’s unique about the culture, or the partner that they are choosing. As a matter of fact, 90% of what we build is driven by what customers tell us matters, and the other 10% are things we hear from customers where they may not articulate exactly what they want, but we try to read between the lines and invent on their behalf.
We’re also trying to build relationships and a business that lasts longer than all of us in this room. And you do that by doing right by customers over a long period of time. An example that ties this all together is a capability in our support function called AWS Trusted Advisor. We’ll look at customers’ utilization of our resources, and if they’re low or idle, we’ll reach out to them and say, maybe you don’t want to spend this money right now. Over the last couple of years, we’ve used AWS Trusted Advisor to tell customers how to spend less money with us, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in savings for our customers every year.
In your experience, does physical proximity still increase the number of business leads and connections? For how long?
We look at physical proximity as a way for our teams to better help our customers and support them in their cloud journey. In fact, our decision to invest in Portugal last year by opening an AWS office in Lisbon is in direct response to our Portuguese customers’ requests and our determination to support them in an even better way. It also follows many years of supporting a growing customer base in the country with their cloud adoption. AWS counts some of Portugal’s fastest-growing and most well-known businesses as customers including, Energias de Portugal, Feedzai, Federação Portuguesa de Futebol, Globalvia, Grupo Impresa, Jumia, Lusiaves, Miniclip, Prodsmart, OutSystems, Unbabel, and Uniplaces, as well as Public Sector organisations such as the City of Cascais and the City of Porto. We have seen there is a real appetite from organisations across Portugal looking to get started with AWS in order to innovate, lower their IT costs, and grow their organisations around the world.
More recently on September 5, 2019, we continued our investment in the country by launching a new Amazon CloudFront location. This new Edge location will offer all organizations in the country faster content delivery and added cybersecurity protection. Located in Lisbon, the new Edge location brings the full suite of services provided by Amazon CloudFront, including integration with computing, networking, and security services like AWS Lambda@Edge, Amazon Route53, Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration, AWS Shield, and AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF).
We look forward to fostering the country’s pioneering spirit alongside our customers and helping them accelerate their digital transformation and deliver innovative new products and services.
Is it possible to assess the first repercussions of AWS CloudFront Point of Presence (PoP) set up in Portugal, or is it still too early?
AWS is committed to investing in Portugal and similar to our office opening, the launch of the first Amazon CloudFront location in Portugal follows feedback of our customers, so reception is very positive. Adding this Amazon CloudFront Edge location will help Portuguese organizations achieve lower latency while delivering the same levels of security that they have come to expect from AWS Cloud, ultimately resulting in a better overall experience for their end-users.
How would you describe AWS’s relationship with startups today? Which preferred model does Amazon use to connect to new external solutions?
Startups in Portugal and around the globe turn to AWS so they can innovate faster. They can focus their highly valuable resources on developing and marketing applications that differentiate their business and transform customer experiences instead of the undifferentiated heavy lifting of managing infrastructure and data centres. Because startups can very quickly develop and roll out new applications, it means they can experiment and innovate more quickly and frequently and if an experiment fails, they can always de-provision those resources without risk.
You only need to look at the number of successful startups from Portugal, such as Miniclip, Feedzai, Unibabel, Uniplaces, and Prodsmart who have launched their businesses globally. These customers are using AWS to drive innovation, accelerate time to market, and expand their businesses. For many years AWS has been supporting the Portuguese startup and technology community by bringing programs like AWS Activate to the country. AWS Activate provides startups with the resources they need to get started on AWS – including up to $100,000 (USD) in credits, training, support, as well as contact with incubators, accelerators and venture capital firms, such as Beta-i. Tens of thousands of startups take advantage of these benefits each year. In 2018, more than $500 million in AWS credits were given to help startups accelerate their growth and development as they build their businesses.
Which startups / new projects have caught your attention recently, and why?
One particular startup in Portugal that caught my eye is Feedzai. Feedzai is a Lisbon-based startup that detects financial fraud at scale. The company uses real-time machine learning & artificial intelligence AWS’s services such as Amazon Sagemaker to analyze transactions data through deep historical and behavioural analysis to identify fraudulent payment transactions and minimize risk in the financial industry. With more than 5 billion dollars of transactions processed daily, Feedzai enables major financial institutions worldwide (such as Lloyd’s Bank) to fight fraud effectively.
Earlier this week I was in Barcelona and was able to spend time with several fast-growing startups including Letgo, an online marketplace. They have been using AWS for over four years to support their rapid growth. I was impressed by their microservices architecture, and their ability to make use of a very wide variety of AWS services, including Amazon SageMaker and other machine learning services. One thing that I find interesting about this and other startups in the area is that the AWS cloud helps them to address global markets, regardless of the physical location of the company.
AWS’s re/Start project is a welcome and win-win solution for people, the market, and AWS itself. Are there any concrete plans to bring this initiative to Portugal in the coming years?
Portugal is an important country for us and we will continue to grow our presence and programmes as we grow our customer base. We are strong believers in the power of education and do our best to support training and up-skilling for everyone, regardless of who they are or where they are.
Your career span from working in one of the first retail computer stores in the world to your current position at AWS, not to mention startups and other big corporates experiences. From your personal perspective, but without considering points such as “agility and simplicity in startups” or “budget and structure on corporates”, what were the differentiating features or culture that most seduced you along with these experiences?
I would have to say that it is the first Amazon Leadership Principle, Customer Obsession. I have always done my best to understand and meet the needs of my contacts and customers, and this principle resonated with me right away. Another Leadership Principle, Dive Deep, reinforces my desire to always know as much as I can about the topics and technologies that I write and speak about.
by cristina | Sep 13, 2019 | Corporates, Investors, Startups
About to complete its third edition, the program will kick off the Module 3 on September 16, in Lisbon – welcome to all the participants!
Free Electrons is the first global energy startup accelerator program created to connect the world’s most promising energy startups with leading utility companies.
Free Electrons is a unique opportunity to bring global perspectives to local challenges via real, meaningful, face to face interactions.
The Module 3 will be the peak of the interactions that have been developing since the 19 edition has started.
During their days in Lisbon, the 15 startups and 10 utilities will meet to align and define the next steps of their possible commercial agreements, once the program is concluded. They will also deep dive into the work that has been performed over the program between participant startups and the partner utilities, the pilots.
By the end of Module 3, the startup winner is to be announced and awarded with the Free Electrons 19 World’s Best Energy Startup worth 200,000$.
The Shin Akimoto Award, initiated in 2017 in memory of Mr. Shin Akimoto, will also be handled to the candidate that best impersonates the values of this award:
- is a Free Electrons Ambassador (has got the Free Electrons Spirit and pushes the program to succeed);
- is proactive and innovative (presents an anticipatory, change-oriented and self-initiated behaviour and embraces change and whether there is continuous improvement and innovation throughout the business);
- is people driven (always ready to help and collaborate with others, lifts everyone’s spirit up and brings good energy to the group).
As a truly global program, focused on deal facilitation and pilot driven, the program has been addressing and solving real problems, namely generating business, investment and disruption within the energy sector.
In fact 2019 edition has originated a pipeline of 58 pilot projects so far, among the 15 startup finalists and the 10 partner utilities – all utilities have found several innovative solutions that can be adopted and integrated into their businesses.
Setting the grand finale in places like Maat and Academia das Ciências, the Free Electrons welcomes all the participants to Lisbon, and couldn’t be prouder of what the program has been accomplishing.
Free Electrons Module 3: 16 – 19 September 2019
Lisbon
by joanamilhomens | Sep 9, 2019 | Corporates, Startups
I confess that as a young girl I truly believed that by the time I turned 40 teletransportation will be a common way to avoid traffic jams. As the date is fast-approaching, and although teletransportation is still a mirage, I believe that we are evolving fast enough that transportation will no longer be a pain and, something that a young Joana never worried but now keeps me up at night, better for the environment.
As environment goes electric transportation is allowing us to keep moving without polluting the air with tons of CO2 per mile. Some Governments seem more committed than others in providing the conditions for the expansion of electric vehicles: Amsterdam has pledged to ban all gasoline and diesel powered cars by 2030 and is now offering charging stations to those moving to e-vehicles.
You know that e-cars are getting the hype when even the hard core collectors of vintage models are now adapting them with super eco-friendly Tesla motors.
Shared mobility is another big trend. As an epic road rager, I am a fan of not owning a car and only drive when I really, really must, using car sharing services and being a fan of uber. However, at Beta-i we always like to verify what customers really want of each product and in Japan Orix found out that youngsters are using shared cars as a place to crash and spend the night almost as much as they use them for moving around.
Finally, a trend I am most fan of: all the tricks and knowledge on how to get from point A to point B as seamlessly and fastest as possible. That is why I am a huge fan of Meep, one of the startups that participated in the first edition of SOL Mobility, and that allows me to choose the fastest, cheaper or more environmentally friendly way of moving around.
It’s not teletransportation, but sounds good enough for me!
by Alisson Avila | Sep 5, 2019 | Corporates, Investors, Startups, Uncategorized
While visiting Lisbon to (among other things) talk to the Beta-i team, Lara gave this quick interview to share a little more context about her new project, which can be seen in detail (and receive your input about how to get involved) at www.boma.global.
After being Executive Director of Women’s March Global, Founder and former Director of TEDx and the TED Prize and MD of Global for Singularity University, South African Lara Stein has a brand new project of her own: BOMA, which in the coming days launches its own editorial platform.
The roots of the word “Boma” originate from Africa and are present in the languages spoken in the Great Lakes of Africa. The Boma was a circular venue for the community and its elders to gather together: a space for community meetings, meaningful discussions, and decision-making to define actions. It was this concept that Lara brought to the fore to position her new project as “a community without borders, identifying new ideas, innovations, and systems to design a more intelligent, intentional, and sustainable future.”
Here’s how our conversation with Lara went:
What motivated you to migrate from previous experiences like TEDx and Singularity to a new project?
The understanding that we live in complicated times. Of social and political changes, which amplify the context of change. I have spent the last two years making global moves to drive change, and I realized that many countries have common challenges and desires, while sharing a will to maximize results while still having a wider impact. And that’s exactly what we want to maximize with the BOMA project: creating value impact from a human-centred approach.
Having worked in three major networks, I was looking for a model that would not divide the world, but rather add up. Something decentralized and collaborative, with a network of people who share the same vision. That’s why I think my obligation to BOMA is to bring these people together and make a model that works overtime – and that’s more intentional and intelligent about the future and the actions that this future requires us to take. I believe in a global system with local partners.
Can you comment a bit more on the idea of “being intentional about the future”?
I feel that the general mindset still focuses on ‘survival of fittest‘. We do not want to maximize this; we want to leverage collaboration, being a movement where people come together and get organized to help and act on concrete things. Doing so, we want to help design leaders able to answer the unavoidable ethical questions that lie before us. I believe people want these principles: to exchange experiences and knowledge for the world we want to have.
It seems that BOMA has more to do with the consequences of technology than the pursuit of technological innovation as a way to thrive. Does it make sense?
Tech is a key drive, everything is around that. But the complexity lies in its transformation: technology alone is not the point of action, but rather the good use of technology, how it is being applied to increase shareholder value and the consequences of it. These are very complicated questions to be pursued by ethics: the consequences of our actions in the name of a “good outcome”.
What are the main goals to be achieved by the platform in this first phase?
In the coming days, we’ll launch our editorial platform on the BOMA website, with bottom-up change and empowering communities content. We are only 6 months old and always revisiting our KPIs, but I would like to have up to 15 or 20 country partners in the coming years, with bottom-up community events and projects associated with our lines of work that can gradually be developed by the partners themselves in each country. This is a long-term project because talking and acting on systemic change takes time.
Thank you so much for the visit, Lara!
