Unlocking Exclusive Investors Opportunities with The Venture Builder Investors Club

In a fast-paced, ever-changing and challenging world of Investors, finding the right opportunity can be daunting but the results of your hard work can be fruitful. That’s where The Venture Builder Investors Club bridges the gap. We do the rigorous job of scouting the startups for you and make sure that we choose only the best startups that Portugal has to offer. To be part of this environment, you can register here!
But first, I will explain why Portugal is a great place for Investors.
“The essence of being Portuguese includes a broad, cosmopolitan identity, encompassing a wide range of cultural and global influences.” – Fernando Pessoa, poet.
What the Portuguese Ecosystem has to offer to you as an Investor
We have been operating directly into the Portuguese ecosystem for the past years and it’s now time to share our view on why Portugal is an amazing place to make your bets as an investor.
1- Portugal is becoming a Startup Nation
Let’s start with some relevant statistics of the ecosystem:
- Population: 10,5 million
- GDP per capita: $35k
- + 4,000 Startups, 169 Incubators, 54 VC Funds
- Portugal’s number of startups per capita, ranks among the top 20+ countries in Europe
- Portugal’s number of unicorns per capita – 7- tops the top 10 of the world
- Lisbon is home of the largest events in the European Startup scene: Web Summit, attracting 80,000 investors and entrepreneurs from all over the world
These figures state that a 10,5m people country is creating one of the most promising hubs in Europe by gathering all the right ingredients to become a reference hub in Europe: talent, high-quality education (with top universities worldwide), tax incentives, grants, funding, a national network of incubators, accelerators and co-working spaces spread across the country.
In addition, we see many foreign entrepreneurs coming to Portugal to install their startups. Our theory is that, in Portugal, they found an ecosystem to thrive, with several right ingredients, namely: climate, beautiful landscapes, great food, “feeling at home” spirit, an innovative ecosystem, a business-friendly environment with tax incentives and fundraising, and, last but not least, talent!
2.Public funding is key to help the VC/startup ecosystem develop over the coming years
Government support is one of the most important drivers when building a new tech ecosystem. Portugal has taken two effective different approaches:
– Direct Investors fund, Portugal Ventures, which invests tickets of €0.5m in 15–20 startups every year. Apart from direct investing, as many other European countries have done, Portugal has developed two different funds initiatives which are behind of some of the new funds being born:
i) 200M- a Matching Fund that aims to foster Co-Investors in startups in Portugal, with national or international private Co-investors, and
ii) EIF-sponsored programs for Portugal which has already backed tens of tech Investors firms in the country.
iii) SIFIDE Funds are Investors funds that benefit from tax credits for investing in startups that are recognized as innovative.
Also, the Portuguese government introduced a law which allows a 20 percent tax deduction on Investors of up to five million euros, following the approach of other European countries to foster BA activity.
3. Portuguese VC landscape is booming
In the last few years, with the (many) new money going into the big funds, the late-stage market has boomed and round sizes (and valuations) have gone up from Series A onwards, driven by an increased pressure to deploy larger fund size.
More and more local pre-seed funds and incubators are feeding the ecosystem with amazing quality startups but have limited fund sizes to lead pre-series A Investors. Therefore we believe that there are opportunities available at pre-seed and seed stages, since we have seen:
- Increase of international funds coming into the country, leading mega-rounds over the past years
- Number of VC-backed startups has increased at an 8% CAGR in the last 5 years and with a remarkable trend in the last 2 years.
- VC funding has increased 10x in the last 5 years, reaching an outstanding $839 m in 2022.
- VC landscape is observing new fund creation like the SIFIDE Funds, has helped to set the right atmosphere to allow the creation of world-changing businesses
4. Portuguese ecosystem is producing unicorns at outstanding speed
Portugal has managed to become in the past years a country which, given its size, concentrates a lot of tech-related value which has led to proof high entrepreneurial quality:
- Leading universities in engineering, mathematics and computer science are becoming incubators of gifted-minded entrepreneurs.
- In the past two years, leading tech companies are founding digital hubs across the country, increasing the demand for highly qualified engineers and software developers (e.g. Google, Amazon, Uber, etc).
- In the past decade, 7 unicorns were born in Portugal, per capita topping the top 10, with 5 soon reaching its status.
These will set precedent to success stories as more entrepreneurs successfully exit their businesses and foster the ecosystem with the creation of new world-changing ventures.
Do you think you have enough motives to start investing in Portuguese startups?
We have more to tell you, just contact us:
If your language is Portuguese, you should talk to Fernanda
If instead you rather speak in Spanish you should talk to Marlon
Are you an English speaker ? Then you should speak to Gagan