On November 14th we hosted our first Seedcamp in Lisbon. It was a busy week for Lisbon with the premiere of the Startup Kids documentary and the Silicon Valley comes to Lisbon conference also taking place. We were in great company with the 20 startups coming to Seedcamp – there was a strong Portuguese representation, proving it’s a great location for early stage tech companies and a region with lots of potential and talent.
We had mentors from all over Europe joining us for a day of pitches, masterclass and mentoring. In the morning, we had the honor to be greeted by Carlos Oliveira, the Portuguese Secretary of State, who himself has successfully built and exited a startup. It was fantastic to hear him talk with lots of excitement about startups and technology. Portugal is aware of its potential to build international businesses at the highest level.
After Seedcamp was over, we spent a few more days at the Silicon Valley comes to Lisbon conference, organised by our Event Partners Beta-i. The team around Pedro and Ricardo is doing an amazing job in putting together events, initiatives, even their own accelerator program, and more. We are pleased to be able to work with such engaged partners around the world to make Seedcamp what it is.
Within the space of two months we are happy to announce that we have gone from zero to now four investments originating from Portugal. Simpletax joined us post Seedcamp Week and now we’re happy to extend the Seedcamp Family by three more portuguese startups and one from our hometurf London:
- CrowdProcess, Portugal: Crowdprocess uses computing capacity in users’ browsers around the world to build a truly distributed supercomputer.
- Hole19, Portugal: A suite of mobile & online products for the golf industry making golfers happy by enabling performance analytics, connecting them with instructors and golf courses.
- Qamine, Portugal: A Software testing as a service platform which helps developers save time and errors by identifying bugs which are repeated throughout the codebase.
- Home on Demand, London: Home on Demand joined us after Seedcamp Week in September – a dedicated team working on improving the relationship between landlords and tenant, allowing everybody to find the home they love.
We are excited about working with these teams and helping them reach their full potential.
Finally we want to thank our Event Sponsors for their contribution to the event making it all possible; Caixa Ceral de Depositos, Softlayer, Vodafone and Yammer. It’s great to see these brands taking initiatives and supporting the European startup scene with such passion and dedication to nurturing innovation and entrepreneurial talent.