by Carolina Santos | Apr 13, 2018 | Featured, Startups
This third edition is even more ambitious than the previous ones. The goal still continues to be the contribution of startups and their innovative ideas to a better, smarter and more efficient city. But this year you can count with new verticals and a “SOL Lab”. The program keeps its power to link partners, corporates and startups to face the challenges of smart cities, it’s only perfected.
According to Duarte Cordeiro, Vice President of Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, “the Smart Open Lisboa is a project that fits the innovation strategy that the City Hall has designed for Lisbon, adding the fact that we can transform the city into a true Open Innovation Lab. We learned a lot from the first two editions and that’s why we’ve made some changes. For instance we created several smaller verticals dedicated to specific areas instead of having the whole program focused on different areas”.
So the program starts focused on Mobility and during Summer is having a vertical focused on Housing. Also “SOL Lab” makes its debut, the goal of this lab is to help these new ideas to be introduced in the city.
The program is promoted by Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, with collaboration of Sharing Cities, with Axians, Cisco, Daimler, NOS, Santa Casa da Misericórdia and TOMI as associated partners. Carris, Metropolitano de Lisboa, EMEL, Brisa and Ferrovial will help with the startups’ pilots. Infraestruturas de Portugal and CP will have data available.
Applications are open until June 12.
by holiveira | Apr 9, 2018 | Featured, Startups
This year’s edition of the Lisbon Challenge, an ambitious 3 month international acceleration program for tech based startups, is launched today, with 8 startups stepping into the final stage of the program, that already includes investment.
In the applications stage, the program attracted 209 startups, from 45 different countries. In fact, 82% were from out of Portugal, a fact that goes to show you how international Lisbon Challenge is.
The selected startups , for this final stage, are Honest Make (SaaS platform that allows retailers to show and sell their products via conversations with their customers), Predict Churn (Analytics platform to anticipate the possibility of cancellation of a subscription service), SCUBIC (Energy management decision support platform for water utilities), Shareacar (a peer to peer car rental community, kind of the Airbnb for cars), Social Grid (a marketplace that helps brands and agencies finding and managing the right digital influencers, at scale), Triad Health AI (a platform for exercise, health monitoring and daily life activities for Parkinson patients), Wall-i (a web solution to help marketing managers launch digital out-of-home advertising campaigns with real audience and context metrics) and Gofact (Invoicing, Expenses and Bank Accounts, on a single platform).
The program will take place in the next 10 weeks, and is divided in 4 stages: Validation, Product, Growth and Investment. After today’s launch, these are the next milestones:
27 April – Tech Day, powered by Bright Pixel
30 April – Ai Sessions powered by Google
4 May – Product Demo Day powered by CML
6 June – Investors Pitch, at the Lisbon Investment Summit
15 June – Program Finale, powered by Microsoft
“This year, the focus is much more deep tech, since we have a more mature batch of candidates, that allows us to look at more complex and relevant questions, like artificial intelligence. The program migrated from a non-equity format, without any participation or investment, to a fund-driven accelerator, and that also informs our selection strategy”, says Pedro Rocha Vieira, CEO at Beta-i.
The selected startups get 10.000 euros from the start, in exchange for 1,5% of their capital. This money is guaranteed by LC Ventures, that manages over 11 million euros (spread in 2 separate investment vehicles and a risk capital fund), that is co-financed in 3 million euros by Fundo de Capital and Quase Capital, from the COMPETE 2020 e POR Lisboa programs, both linked to the Portugal 2020 initiative, and the European Union, via FEDER.
The other Investment Partners are Red Angels and SONAE/Bright Pixel, but the program also relies heavily on the support of the Lisbon City Hall, Turismo de Portugal, Microsoft and Google, who act as Acceleration Partners.
Lisbon Challenge was first launched in 2013, and in total, more than 200 startups, from 28 countries, have been involved with the program. Our alumni have raised over 65 million euros, and 40% of them got invested.
by ricardomarvao | Dec 14, 2017 | Featured, Startups
The first 20 years of our lives, we pretty much spend our time learning. First the basics (sleeping, eating, walking), than at school & university. It shapes who we are and what we will become and has a profound impact in our future. For something that important, the education area hasn’t changed that much over the last 100 years.
We believe this is so important that we decided to create a new education area that focuses on improving, for people from 7 to 77 years old, the learning experience. But above all, an area that has the vision to change education as a whole.
About 10 years ago I met Peter Diamandis when he was my teacher at the Space Studies Program (a 10-week project-based learning program with 150 people from 50 nationalities). That was the first time I heard about this new project that was being designed called the Singularity University.
Ever since, I’ve been following the approach and growth of the project worldwide and was excited to see last year the birth of a new initiative to create Country Partnerships from Singularity around the world.
This initiative led me to investigate the topic and understand it to the point of going to Singularity this Summer and decide that this was a project worth pursuing on a bigger scale. So after returning, I began building a strong team by partnering with Cascais Municipality and NovaSBE to bring this home.
The first step starts today, with the launch of the Portugal Global Impact Challenge and the announcement of the SingularityU Portugal Summit in Cascais on October 2018.
But this is just the first step…
Ricardo Marvão
Co-Founder and Chief Education Officer, Beta-i
by tombento | Nov 21, 2017 | Corporates, Featured, Investors, Startups
When Jason Calacanis, “arguably the world’s greatest angel investor”, is asked whether you must be located in Silicon Valley to be a successful angel investor, his answer is an emphatic “yes!” According to him, if you’re not it’s ridiculously hard to get any meaningful investments under your belt.
Now, Jason is a straight-maths kind of guy (he’s known for figuring out how much money startups have left in the bank by asking a few simple questions). He knows what he’s talking about. For now, more than half of the world’s unicorns are in the United States (54%), so it stands to reason that if you want to have a go at angel investing, that’s where you should take your shot.
But we also know that this is not contextually true (e.g. two of the three most valuable startups in the world are Chinese) as the time for maturing incumbent markets is upon us. And Lisbon is clearly on that list.
If you think you’ve seen Lisbon at its best, we’re here to assure you that we’re just getting started. That’s why, in 2018, we’re going all in with our newest edition of the Lisbon Investment Summit. You may ask, why you should join us on June 6 and 7? I can think of at least 3 reasons:
Reason One – Emerging Startup Power
Just this year we’ve witnessed new strong investments in the ecosystem, with Farfetch getting a €397 million investment, Feedzai raising a €50 million Series C and Veniam raising a 22€ Million Series B. And there are many more startups coming out blazing that you should keep an eye on. If you want to meet them, #LIS is the place to be.
Reason Two – A Crazy Talent Magnet
When companies like Mercedes Daimler, Zalando, Pipedrive, Amazon and Uber are betting heavily on new offices, digital innovation hubs and operation centers in Lisbon, that’s what we call “validation”. These moves signal a straightforward proof that our sunny city is joining the big dogs. If you’re curious about understanding why it’s a sound bet and how it can be done, guess where you should be during those two fateful days?
Reason Three – Early Stage Startup Gold
In our 2017 edition we brought over 700 startups to Lisbon, with 50% of them looking for early stage seed investments. And 150 investors answered the call. It helps that according to Allianz Kulturstiftung, Lisbon ranks as the fifth-best-performing startup community in Europe, ahead of other powerhouses like Stockholm and Dublin. So if you’re looking for your next investment or if you’re looking to raise money for your startup, you should definitely check us out. We’ll even help you out with the matchmaking.
If this gets your blood pumping, you should know Early Bird Tickets are out.
See you in June?
by nlopes | Mar 30, 2016 | Featured
Yesterday was the first day of the Lisbon Challenge Spring’16 edition which is testing out a smaller batch number in the quest to concentrate on quality. As all the founders sat in the auditorium listening to Pedro Rocha Vieira welcoming them to the 6th edition of the main accelerator of Beta-I, one would hope that most were internalizing their plan for the 10 weeks they will get to work hard, play hard and relax – the benefits of being in Lisboa.
You Are in Control
Accelerator programs don’t guarantee any kind of success instead provide the platform and tools for your startup to evolve – how much is really up to you. That’s why it’s essential that as a CEO you clearly define your path, create milestones and aggressively pursue them to ensure the final outcome is superior to what you initially envisaged.
It’s all about setting realistic expectations and understanding that the Lisbon Challenge accelerator provides you with mentorship, expert advice, networking and a structured program but it’s in the quality of questions that you’ll find the quality answers and solutions. Ask smart questions, chase people up and use their expertise to help you progress.
Though you will have access to investors at several stages of the accelerator, culminating in the demo days, you need to ensure that your product, team and pitch is first class – obsess over the details but don’t forget your product.
Your Product
Do you have customers that love your product? Airbnb’s co-founder and CEO, Brian Chesky recalls the advice Paul Graham gave him whilst at Y-Combinator – if you have people that love your product, you don’t have to worry about the viral growth thing – it will take care of itself.
Some startups focus too much on the investment and even though we realize how important that is when your runway is short, overly focusing on this can become a distraction for the founders taking too much time away from further developing your product.
For every main aspect of building your startup, there will be a mentor or expert on hand to help you in finding solutions. Though access to these professionals is extremely valuable, don’t underestimate the relationships that you will be able to develop with your program peers and Beta-I team. The capacity to bounce ideas off other founders that have as many similar as diverse experiences as you, is invaluable – a network that will outlive the time you spend in Lisboa.
Accelerator Advice
You will be exposed to many people who share their views openly, often giving you conflicting advice but despite all the support and great advice you get, you are still expected to think for yourselves. This is your startup and it’s your future. Lisbon Challenge will provide you access to data and informed opinions but you need to process them with caution. Part of the learning process is handling conflicting feedback from the many mentors and experts. They are not wrong, just in context to each and everyone’s experience and vision of business. Be courteous and above all check your egos at the door – be open minded and respectful then take the decision that is right for you.
Increasing Your Odds of Success
Mark Suster wrote this week the post “How to decrease the odds that your startup fails” with some very useful insights that you should take the time to read:
- Building for Yourself Instead of a Market
- Lack of Any Market Validation
- One-Sided Competitive “Analysis”
- No Route to Customers
- Claiming False Competitive Advantages
- Winging the 60-Second Pitch
- Ignoring Your Faults
Mark ends with:
“Plan. Think. Study. Test. Validate data. Validate firmly held positions. Know your planned sources of differentiation and adjust as you learn. Read plenty of “what went wrong” eulogies by founders and see what you can learn. But also understand that the lens from which they tell you the answer is both imperfect and has a narrative bias.“
There’s also that old saying “the harder I work the luckier I get.” Those who tend to outperform when they graduate from Lisbon Challenge accelerator program really made the most out of the program and probably had a little luck too. So good luck and stay tuned to our blog as we follow your progress and post useful insights to help you along the way.
by ggomes | Mar 29, 2016 | Featured
There’s no doubt a Mentor can have a crucial role on a Startup’s way to success. Within the strong Lisbon Challenge network, there are three Core Mentors that will help and guide every single team from day one to the final pitch, covering these main areas: growth, product, tech and investment.
“It’s tempting to be focusing only on building your product/company during the program, but you should also focus on learning as much as possible, and try new things. Also, accept that many of the things you hold for true are actually hypothesis that you need to validate, and LC is the best place to do it. Lastly, be focus, be constant and show up, keep the involvement high.
My role is to push the teams to break the ice with their users and potential users, to help them go and talk with people, and build their own lean process for prototyping, testing and learning as efficiently as possible.” – Nicholas Mandelbaum.
Nicholas Mandelbaum – Former Entrepreneur and Development and Design Manager, Nicholas has more than 8 years in product design and management. He gathers a deep experience and a strong intuition into the right approach to deconstruct a problem and work on an effective user-centred strategy to solve it, always with a focus on UX/UI, innovative thinking and effective design.
Pedro Falcão – Currently Managing Partner of LC Ventures, the first global hands-on, accelerator investment vehicle based in Portugal. He counts with a solid background on managing funds and analyzing investment opportunities, that make him an expert in funding, pitching to investors and to what it takes for a startup to be investment-ready.
Fred Oliveira – Full Stack developer and UX designer, he was the first TechCrunch employee, a former 500 Startups mentor, Entrepreneur and now working at 1776, a global incubator based in Washington. As a Startup Advisor his focus areas are User Experience, Design, Development and Scaling.
“Mentors can help startups in many ways. On one hand many of the problems and struggles are common to many startups and mentors can surely help the startups address them in a better way.On the other hand, startups can lookup to mentors as someone with whom they can be totally open, being never afraid to say the wrong thing or to expose their weaknesses.” – Pedro Falcão
You can see who are the other mentors here.
