One of our favorite things at Lisbon Investment Summit is our #LIS Pitch Competition in which 12 up-and-coming startups pitch on stage to a crowd of top-tier international investors.
This year’s award, sponsored by GROW, went to Musiversal – a platform that helps music creators to record sessions in world-class studios with professional musicians.
André Miranda, founded Musiversal as a solo founder and has been growing his team ever since. During its early stage phase, Musiversal was in Beta-i’s acceleration program – Lisbon Challenge – where it was invested by LC Ventures and REDangels.
As Musiversal enters a high-growth phase, building momentum for a successful seed investment round, here is the advice André Mirada had for new startups entering new editions of Lisbon Challenge:
Bluetech Accelerator – Ports and Shipping 4.0 will have its Bootcamp phase between 24th-28th June. Bluetech is an ambitious and innovative program looking to create a new batch of ocean startups and attracted startups from all over the world.
The Bootcamp
The top startups were invited to join the one-week Bootcamp. In this week, they will benefit from learning about business model innovation, startup methodologies and tools, get additional product validation, define the value proposition and a business case to present to the Partners. The best startups will have the opportunity to work together with one or more Partners in developing a pilot.
The New Wave of Ocean Startups
The program received a total of 87 applications, from 29 different countries. Here are the startups joining the Bootcamp (click on the buttons to know more about them):
ECO WAVE POWER
Country: Israel Areas of Interest: Energy & Cleantech, Renewable Energy, Green Technology, Green Energy.
Eco Wave Power is an advanced and innovative international wave power developer headquartered in Israel.
Country: United Kingdom Areas of Interest: Logistics/Supply Chain, Shipping
ARX Maritime mission is to bring cutting-edge solutions and hardware to the forefront of your maritime operations. Our goal is to equip you with cost-effective solutions that give you more efficient operations and a safer and more secure environment to work in.
Country: Portugal Areas of Interest: Transportation, Logistics/Supply Chain, Data & Analytics, Shipping
eShip applies state-of-the-art ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) to the traditional chartering business model, generating significant value added to all market participants
Country: Portugal Areas of Interest: Transportation, Logistics/Supply Chain, Logistics Marketplace
Bizcargo is a Future Cargo Logistics solution, acting as a marketplace, to search and compare transport and logistics services with simple or multimodal door-to-door solutions
Country: Ireland Areas of Interest: Data & Analytics, Sensors, Environmental Compliance
TechWorks Marine is a provider of oceanographic equipment and world-class solutions to monitor the marine environment, working in the private and public sectors both in Ireland and overseas
Country: Estonia Areas of Interest: SaaS, API, Logistics
Shipitwise created a tool which is not only able to digitize any offline, analog world transportation company, but also provide a professional system for logistics firms to share with their business customers.
Country: United States Areas of Interest: Energy & Cleantech, Oil & Gas, Wind Energy
Apellix designs and builds aerial robots (drones) that autonomously perform work on elevated structures that is otherwise dangerous, expensive and time-consuming for humans to perform.
This is it! We wrapped up this year’s edition of Lisbon Investment Summit, and we couldn’t be prouder of it.
It was an action-packed event where we gathered over 1500 attendees for 2 days of knowledge sharing, provocative discussions and hundreds of one-on-one meetings between top-tier investors, daring startups and the most innovative corporates.
Humanity Will Fix the Future
We kicked off #LIS (bravely, as Andrew himself put it) with a talk by Andrew Keen on the unfulfilled promises of technology – the promise that it would bring equality, boost democracy and create bridges between people. While Andrew painted a hard picture on the challenges that digitalization brought upon us, he also showed us how to fix it: through regulation, innovation and citizen engagement. The “fixing” of the future does not rest on more technology – it rests solely on our shoulders.
Investment in Portugal
We’re proud of the many good things we have heard today – from investors, industry leaders and startups – about Lisbon and our ecosystem. And thanks to Pedro Falcão, Managing Partner of LC Ventures, we have a clear picture of Investment in Portugal. Don’t worry if you missed his panel – you’ll be able to download it soon on our blog!
The VC path is not for everyone
We started the second and last day of #LIS with a familiar face – Marvin Liao, partner at 500 Startups. Marvin pointed out that there are different paths of entrepreneurship – even if you choose to not get investment, there are other ways to be an entrepreneur – by choosing to be great instead of big. Entrepreneurship is not a science or an art – it’s a practice!
#LIS Pitch Competition
Lisbon Investment Summit would not be the same without our amazing pitch competition, sponsored by GROW, which was one of the highlights of these two days – 12 amazing startups pitched on stage but there can only be one winner. The prize went to Musiversal, represented by founder André Miranda (and a Lisbon Challenge alumnus).
Take a look at some highlights of this year’s edition of Lisbon Investment Summit:
〰️ "Events like #LIS19 are the perfect example of key moments to bring together ecosystem, to nurture a culture of collaboration, to consolidate bridges between entrepreneurs, innovators and investors from different places and to celebrate the joint successes we've achieved in the last years." 〰️ quoting Pedro Rocha Vieira, Beta-i's CEO and CoFounder 🙌 🦄 👏👏👏⠀🎬 Here's a glimpse of the day 1.⠀⠀⠀#lisboninvestmentsummit #betailisbon #startuplife #entrepreneur #investor
“There is no school for investors – the only way to learn it is usually by doing it”. It was with this in mind that Beta-i partnered up with IE Business School to create Investors’ Academy.
The Investors’ Academy is an immersive program on smart startup investment. In this one-day event, attendees get the unique chance to learn, first-hand, from a group of experienced and successful investors and venture capitalists.
Like Luís Roquette Geraldes explained to ReThink, it’s “important to teach investors’ about best practices, and what is fair,” so that they can offer the best opportunities to the founders’ they are investing in as well.
This event wins in its atmosphere – it’s a small, intimate gathering of top investors who want to share their knowledge and are open to discussion of ideas and looking to learn themselves about new opportunities.
Right before #LIS19 we have The Investors Academy – an immersive program on smart startup investment. It's a unique chance to learn, first-hand, from a group of experienced and successful investors and venture capitalists. 📈🦄+ info: https://investorsacademy.beta-i.pt/
Publicado por Beta-i em Sexta-feira, 7 de junho de 2019
Growth Bootcamp is a three-day event, happening on 3-5th of June, to help accelerate the growth of promising startups, by putting them together with partners enabling the environment for startups to succeed. In this invite-only event, startups between Seed and Series A investment and with high potential joined experienced entrepreneurs, seasoned investors and growth experts to build their path to exponential growth.
Helping Startups Scale
This startups are, essentially, in a crucial phase between having a product and clients, but really needing to scale the dimension of their business. It’s an important time, when founders must make decisions that might impact their business in the short and long run.
Realising this need to support founders at this stage of their journey, Beta-i created Growth Bootcamp – to help founders at this stage while keeping their focus on the bigger picture.
The 3 day program includes:S
Panel sessions with leading international entrepreneurs and experts on product, growth, marketing, channels and strategy, that are willing to share their knowledge and experience on startups’ growth.
One-on-one sessions mentoring sessions with kickass mentors with entrepreneurial and investing experience, to get feedback and guidance on the particulars of each founders’ journey.
Networking with peers, prospect clients and investors where they can enjoy an open conversation between equals.
On the last day of the program, founders will get access to Investors’ Academy – an immersive program on smart startup investment – where they get to network and ask for feedback from experienced corporate and angel investors, and get valuable insight on investment strategy.
Building a Stronger Innovation Ecosystem
The final goal of Growth Bootcamp is to create a stronger ecosystem. By connecting founders with mentors who have lived the same experiences and can bring valuable advice to their choices, we give them the opportunity to make better choices – fail less – and create stronger companies that can lead innovation in the years to come.
After pursuing her education in both Portugal and the U.S., Catarina became a legal advisor for social causes. She recently joined the startup world by becoming General Counsel at SWORD Health – a startup shaping the future of physical therapy, that recently raised a $9 Million round led by Koshla Ventures.
She’ll be joining Lisbon Investment Summit this week for a panel on Cross-border Investments – but she took the time to share with us her experience.
When raising investment, what are the more common mistakes founders make in the legal department?
Not properly listening to the General Counsel! (laughs) I’m kidding. I’m new in the business, but it appears to me that start-ups do not have an in-house legal team when this type of investment comes along. I might sound biased, but I’d advise all founders out there to have one or to have a good and close relationship with someone from the legal universe.
When we’re dealing with cross-border investments, the differences between legal orders might get easily overlooked. We’re dealing not only with different branches of law that must work harmoniously, but also with different national laws, and even with different legal systems. Take Sword, where we dealt with civil law v. common law. Another rookie mistake founders tend to make is to be lenient when it comes to choosing the law firm to work with them. In our case, we lost an entire month until we brought ML on board to help us make things go forward. Timing is very important when you deal with US investors: their pace is way faster than Europeans’, and we risked losing their interest because of how long things were taking.
What should founders take into consideration when building the legal structure of their business?
They should have a clear idea of what type of company they want to have, and to where they want to lead the project. It is very easy, and sometimes necessary, to make concessions that might work in the short-term, but bring problems for the long-haul. Investors and founders would be, ideally, aligned, but that isn’t often the case. It is important for founders not to lose track of what drove them to start the business. To keep that belief in your project is fundamental, from what I’ve learnt so far. I know I digressed from the legal point, but that has a reason. The legal structure and dynamic that ultimately rise are intimately related with the commitment that founders have with their original idea. Law is a tool, not a work-product.
What is, in your opinion, the steps founders must take in order to protect themselves and the company, when taking foreign investment?
I would point the following: 1) to know whether your company is ready to face an investment round; 2) to have a clear idea of what kind of investor you want to attract; 3) to discuss in depth with your GC the tax implications of taking foreign investment, both from an individual and from a company’s perspective; 4) to have the emotional stamina to face the process; 5) to keep your GC in the loop of all the steps you take in order to avoid unpleasant surprises that might sound great from the business perspective, but can be a thing from the legal perspective. I’m aware of the fame the legal teams have…we are the fun spoilers! (laughs)
