We are one week away from Lisbon Investment Summit, the slightly unexpected startup conference that gathers the most daring innovators, corporate visionaries, and top-tier investors. We spoke with Daniela Seixas, CEO of TonicApp, and winner of last year’s competition, who will be joining Beta-i at #LIS again.
TonicApp, dedicated to the medical community, is an app that aggregates the most useful medical tools for doctors. It lets medical practitioners discuss clinical cases, check drug conversion tables and get informed on healthcare news – it even has a secure case discussion platform that connects doctors that can help each other in providing better care for patients.
Daniela, a medical doctor herself (neuroradiologist), felt the need to create a place for the community to convey and share. “It was a necessity I felt myself and all doctors as we see it. Today, doctors are overwhelmed with pressure from all sides – about costs, about time, and even legal situations in some markets like the United States. Besides that, the scientific knowledge is ever expanding and, nowadays, fragmented across the internet. So the idea was to create a go-to platform for all doctors that solves most of the problems they face daily.”
The startup has a connection with Beta-i from its early days – having participated in open-innovation programs like Techcare, backed by Novartis with whom TonicApp has partnered up -, so Lisbon Investment Summit made sense to them.
“We consider Lisbon Investment Summit to be one of the best events in entrepreneurship and investment in Portugal and Europe. At this time last year, we were starting our fundraising, and we specifically decided to start it at LIS, and we applied to pitch to have the exposure we needed. We’re closing the round now and even though we didn’t meet our investors at LIS, we definitely started the process there and communicated differently with each one, and it worked – we got the visibility we needed.”
The startup is not stopping anytime soon – they aim to be the ecosystem doctors need to thrive in all aspects of their profession, giving them the tools and information they need to keep thriving and providing the best care they can give to their patients.
“Tonic App has a lot of resources for doctors – some of them are clinical and some are not. This is our bet, we want to help doctors in their professional life, be it helping them diagnose and treat their patients or other areas.”
To create this, TonicApp is partnering up with other players and entities in a collaborative environment, to progress faster in a fast-paced innovative space.
“Building on an ecosystem idea, we want to work with all players in the ecosystem that have valuable resources for doctors, so we create partnerships with multinationals, like Randstad, or Medtronic or Novartis, but also with public entities, scientific organizations, and other startups like us, like Eventtia and SerFarma. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to develop software ourselves when it already exists – we work as a channel for doctors.”
TonicApp will be at this year’s edition of Lisbon Investment Summit, and Daniela will be speaking at one of the panels at Google Stage – at the Book Launch: “Ara the Star Engineer”. The book tells the story of a young girl who loves numbers and uses her smarts to solve a big problem, by creating an algorithm and encountering real-life women tech trailblazers of diverse backgrounds. It aims to inspire young girls to pursue STEM careers and bring gender equality to the table in the sector.
As a doctor and female founder, Daniela is no stranger to the quest, bringing their unique perspective as a woman, doctor and entrepreneur: “I didn’t feel discrimination much as a female founder. Actually, even though entrepreneurship is a male-dominated field, much more than medicine – which nowadays has a lot more women than men – it’s a much more equitable environment for gender. Founding my own company and becoming its CEO, depended solely on me and my work during this time. In medicine, reaching a leadership position would not depend on me or my accomplishments, but on the established institutions.”
Taking the first steps in the entrepreneurial ecosystem can be daunting – the lingo, the fast pace, the new technologies. But worry not, we have a handy guide for any non-entrepreneur about what they need to know to navigate #LIS and what can they take advantage of.
What is #LIS?
Lisbon Investment Summit is an a surprisingly informal and slightly unexpected startup conference. The motto of the event? #nobullshit. That means business. During these two days, #LIS will promote thought-provoking conversations, will join at the table the most disruptive innovators and the most seasoned investors, and completely change the way you think about your business.
Get to know the lingo
If you want to blend in, you need to dominate the lingo. This is important to make sure you understand where each other attendee is coming from – a startup in the seed stage or raising a series B are not in the same position – which means they also have different things they can offer and are looking for different things. It’s easier than it sounds – we made a little dictionary of what you need to know – find them here and here.
Inspiring Talks
At #LIS you will get access to thought-provoking keynotes, given by world-renowned speakers. That is the case of the #LIS headliner, Andrew Kween, best-selling author of “How To Fix the Future”, who will speak about the dangers of a digital world and how can we overcome them. Maybe some of the talks about disruption will be a bit scary – especially if they fit your sector – but take the chance to be open to learn what chances are taking place – and how to take advantage of them. Check out the agenda of talks here.
Workshops
The workshop stage powered by Google, is the perfect place for you to learn new ways of doing things, from tools to digitize your business, to identifying business opportunities – get your hands ”dirty” in innovation.
Pitch Competition
The pitch competition is where up-and-coming startups (previously selected by the LIS team) pitch on stage to a crowd of angel investors and corporate venture capitalists, looking for investment or new clients. Why should you watch the live pitches? Well, for one, any of these startups could be disrupting your business, so you should keep an eye on them. But also, their new technologies might bring incredible advantages to your business – and they will most likely be open to partnerships, so take the opportunity to get to know them.
Unexpected Side Events
One of the best things at #LIS are its side events. Sure there are spectacularly fun parties, but it’s the unexpected that makes it fun, like in Dinner With a Stranger – you just have to sign-up and get selected to meet a curated group of people in a fabulous Lisbon restaurant. You never know who could meet – maybe your next business partner, maybe someone who inspires you to venture into your own business idea. We promise you one thing – it will be memorable. Wait no more – get your tickets to #LIS19 here.
Last Friday, at our weekly TGIF (you should come!), I spent some time talking with Lisbon Challenge teams. We exchanged some feedback about the program, and at a certain point one of the founders mentioned it to me: “I feel like you really care”. And I thought about it for a minute and realized – we really do.
Lisbon Challenge is Beta-i’s flagship accelerator program, and one of the most recognized programs in Europe. It inherited Beta-i’s people-centric approach – we are “humaniacs” at heart and we convey our approach in Lisbon Challenge program as well.
Lisbon Challenge’s people-centric approach
The people-centric approach is not about just about caring about the founders (which we do!), is about how a human-centric perspective applies to their business in order for it to be the best it can be.
In the 10 weeks of the program, we contaminate the founders with this human-centric perspective and help them better understand and develop:
Who are you building a solution for
The starting point of a good startup is the will to solve a problem you identify – and also the will to know the people whose problem you’re solving. That means gaining a deeper knowledge of your audience through an ethnographic mindset in order to find a product/market fit.
Who are you building a solution with
The road is hard – but you won’t be doing it alone. The culture you build for your company will be determinant to the success of it. The core values you choose and the expected behaviors that embody them will be your guide to decision making, hiring people, dealing with users and other business partners, so building a culture from scratch is the foundation of a winning team.
Who you are as an entrepreneur
Having a startup is probably the toughest business there is. You’ll be constantly challenging your own assumptions, facing inconvenient truths and constant “no’s”. Our methodology is focused not only on growing your business but also in preparing you to transform difficulties into learnings and to see problems as opportunities. As your business grows, so will you – we’re here to get you ready to face the demands of different startup stages.
In the words of Eduardo Sette Câmara, our Head of Acceleration:
“The legacy we’re trying to build with Lisbon Challenge is to find and help founders that can build their companies while taking into consideration everyone that revolves around them.”
What does our people-centric approach mean? Here's what Eduardo Sette Camara, our Head of Acceleration had to say!
Publicado por Lisbon Challenge em Sexta-feira, 24 de maio de 2019
By the end of the video, Eduardo lets us know that as long as founders put in the work, we’ll always be here, doing our best to help them. And if you ask any other Lisbon Challenge alumni, you’ll realize it’s true.
We’re happy to share that Beta-i has been named one of the 25 Best Financial Innovation Labs, as part of The Innovators 2019, an annual initiative by Global Finance magazine.
As an ecosystem builder in Lisbon, we’re are proud of the achievement. In the words of Pedro Rocha Vieira, our CEO and founder:
It’s naturally rewarding to see Beta-i again on such a narrow and prestigious list, which validates the work we’ve done. We are helping to reconfigure the financial universe, via fintechs, setting up programs like Pay Forward, with SIBS, or Protechting, which involves partners like Fidelidade, Fosun and Hauck & Aufhäuser, a German investment bank. This is an area where we identify new market opportunities, and Portugal can serve as a ‘sandbox’ for new business models and concepts in the financial area – for example, Brexit allows us to glimpse new opportunities. Startups like Feedzai, James, or Keep Warranty, are also making their way into this arena, which creates a more relevant cultural environment.
He also reminded that Portugal has a lot of opportunities to act as an innovation lab on testing new solutions: “There is an opportunity for countries like Portugal to position themselves to allow controlled testing of these technologies, especially in the context of the digital transformation of banks and the financial system, and I believe that’s where the role of Beta-i is, as a result of its commitment to innovation. We are also well positioned to replicate this experience in other geographies, and integrating the newly created Cybersecurity Working Group also allows us not only access but also the ability to influence and support the development of good practices. “
In its seventh edition, The Innovators recognizes entities that regularly identify new paths and design new tools in finance – the full report will be published in June.
“Financial institutions and governments worldwide are creating new spaces and modes of collaboration to better execute on financial technology,” said Joseph D. Giarraputo, publisher and editorial director of Global Finance. “Hubs, labs, centers, whatever you call them, they support innovations that deliver benefits to banks, their clients and society at large, nurturing both upstarts and stalwarts that excel in breakthrough thinking.”
The 2019 Innovators honorees will be recognized at the Global Finance Digital Banks and Innovators Awards Dinner on October 30 in Hong Kong. Here is the full list of honorees:
FINANCIAL INNOVATION LABS
CITY
Alior Bank RBL
Warsaw
Barclays Accelerator
Multiple Locations
Beta-i
Lisbon
BNY Mellon Global Innovation Centers
Multiple Locations
boostLAB Powered by BTG Pactual
Sao Paulo
Capital One Labs
Multiple Locations
Citi Innovation Labs
Multiple Locations
Cyberport
HongKong
DBS Asia X (DAX)
Singapore
Deutsche Bank Innovation Labs
MultipleLocations
Fidelity Center for Applied Technology/Fidelity Labs
The 11th edition of Lisbon Challenge is advancing at full steam! The teams are in their third week of the program, and well into the validation phase. We’ve mentioned how intensive the program is, but do you want to know how much? Let’s go over the program overview!
A people-centric approach
Lisbon Challenge is Beta-i’s flagship accelerator program, and one of the most recognized programs in Europe. It’s a 10-week program designed to question the founders’ assumptions, help them find their product-market fit and prepare them for the road ahead – scaling and investment.
The program inherited Beta-i’s people-centric approach – but what does that mean?
It means that throughout the phases, founders will be challenged to take a people-centric approach:
On customers – the people they are solving the problem for;
The team – the people they are building the company with;
Themselves – who they are as entrepreneurs and how they need to evolve with the business.
Program Timeline
For 10 weeks, the 6 teams on this edition will go through an intense program, filled with enriching content, workshops and mentoring sessions. The goal is for them to be in perfect shape for Investment Day, the culmination of those 10 weeks on acceleration.
These are the phases:
Validation
The founders will start by validating their value proposition and gaining a better understanding of what could be their target audience and their potential needs.
Product And Tech
A deep-dive into the startups’ solutions and the technology behind them. They must discover and define how is their project solving the clients’ needs better than any other out there, and design a roadmap for product market fit.
Growth
Here the founders will learn how to talk with customers and make sure they don’t leave after trying the product. In a nutshell, it will be all about customer retention and which metrics should be analyzed in order to figure it out.
Investment
In this phase, it’s all about preparing for investment! Startups learn to understand investors, and what they are looking for. They also learn practical stuff – what to say (and not to say!), and to tell your story and get investors to listen to them. This is an important phase as it leads to investment day!
Investment Day
The 10 weeks of the program lead up to Investment Day – a day when the startups will pitch on stage and then meet investors and possible corporate partners. This batch will have the whole ecosystem cheering on them – as they will be pitching at Lisbon Investment Summit, happening on the 6th and 7th of June.
