I take a casual stroll up and down the narrow streets, plastered on top of hills that seem to never end, and I am in awe of the sheer aesthetic beauty of the city. I notice people sitting outside of cafes and restaurants that refuse to open before dusk as I catch my breath between every other footstep. This is Lisbon. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the colorful and vibrant capital of Portugal refused to shy away from its boastful proclamation as a city that bleeds cutting-edge tech and startup ventures. In the short amount of time that I was there, it was extremely easy to become plugged in and involved with entrepreneurs — people who leverage the present to build for the future. As a growing tech ecosystem, Lisbon revealed plenty of examples that demonstrate how it competes with many of the heavy weight startup cities around the world. As one of the entrepreneurs I had the pleasure to meet puts it, “Lisbon easily is punching above its weight,” through what seems to me to be a collective effort and agenda.
A Sense of Community
The collective effort starts with community, and the agenda is set at events. During any given week, multiple networking events are packed full of attendees eager to collaborate and promote their ideas and innovations. I had the opportunity to participate in a few of the activities at one event that is pretty popular within the global tech community — Techstar’s Startup Weekend. For those of you are unfamiliar with Startup Weekend, here is the basic gist of it:
- Intensive weekend (Friday through Sunday) that is meant to take an idea from concept to prototype/functional MVP (minimal viable product) with promise of becoming a successful business.
- During the first day, attendees pitch original ideas that have yet to be worked on and form teams around the top selected ideas, on which they work on or the entirety of the weekend. There is a final pitch competition that takes place on that Sunday.
- Attendees background roughly are split between 50% technical (developers, coders, designers) and 50% business (marketing, finance, law).
Notable companies have come out of Startup Weekend events around the world, including Zapier (US based), Swipes (Bulgaria), and Easy Taxi (Brazil) just to name a few. Over 23,000 teams have been formed in 150+ countries, culminating to almost 3,000 events.
This particular weekend was showered with serial entrepreneurs and digital nomads hailing from cities and countries around the globe. Issues ranging from public speaking impediments to climate change. Amidst the diversity in talent and ideas, one thing was made certain, Lisbon seemed to be the perfect place to collaborate with people from different walks of life looking to build something impactful in this world.
But the collaborative effort does not end at in-person, face-to-face events. For someone like me, who would only spend a short amount of time in the city, it was imperative to use my time efficiently and connect with as many innovators as possible — and you can only attend so many events in one month. This is where Made of Lisboa came into play, and I started to admire the accessibility of Lisbon’s startup community. Made of Lisboa is a social platform mapping out and connecting the entire innovation ecosystem in Lisbon. The site is made up of easy-to-use tools ranging from a directory of entrepreneurs and companies to an up-to-date calendar of events and locations. These resources were extremely useful for me as I made an account on the platform within the first few days of touching down in Lisbon. The day after my account was approved (they vet all profiles and companies that seek to join the community) I was immediately connected with two companies who had a strong influence in shaping my opinion of Lisbon’s entrepreneurial scene.
Fostering Personal Connections
The first company I had the pleasure of connecting with was Build Up Labs, a company whose vision and mission aligns well with ours at Rokk3r Labs. Build Up Labs is contributing to the ecosystem in its own way as they incubate ideas and build digitally based companies and products. Additionally, they host and run events welcoming all members and newcomers of the Lisbon tech community at their spacious headquarters ten minutes outside of the city center. The space is oddly but fittingly decked out with pictures and references to shoes, reminding their team to “always put yourself in the user’s shoes.” As a fellow venture builder, Build Up Labs believes that everything is worth disruption and leverages their cross-disciplinary team in order to repeatedly ideate, build and grow several startups.
Speaking of disruption, the second company with which I got to speak at length is transforming the renewable energy market by coupling their own proprietary software with drones. Known as a solution to making wind energy more affordable, Pro-Drone is on a mission to play a significant role in making renewable energy competitive with fossil fuels. As part of our Global Entrepreneurship Series, Andre Croft de Moura, founder and CEO of Pro-Drone, not only discusses the economic, political, and social implications behind their tech, but also expands on why Lisbon as a startup city punches well above it’s weight and will continue to do so.
I would argue that a key component to entrepreneurship is the ability to make connections. No one person can build a business or impact the world on their own. As I have tried to illustrate, Lisbon does a great job of fostering opportunities to create and build connections. The entrepreneurship community welcomes people and ideas from around the world and you can’t help but to feel supported and surrounded by like-minded people. It’s a city that I personally wish to go back to at some point and witness how some of the nascent startups which I came across grow into some of the world’s biggest tech giants.
For the Global Entrepreneurship Series, Rokk3r Labs’ Jide Adebayo is on a journey across the world digging deeper into entrepreneurs’ stories, understanding the universal investor mindset, and connecting the global collective genius.
We are excited for you to follow the journey, engage with the stories and share your experiences from the region. You can also read Jide’s personal anecdotes and connect with him over at jideadebayo.com.
More from the Rokk3r Labs Global Entrepreneurship Series:
- Prague: Cultivating a Promising Market
- Serbia: From Outsourcing to Entrepreneurship
- Thailand: Carving out a Space on the Entrepreneurial Map
- Cambodia: Kingdom of Mystery
- Vietnam: Resisting and Reinventing
- Kuala Lumpur: A Melting Pot of Culture, A Recipe for Ideas
- Kuala Lumpur
Rokk3r Labs is a venture builder and the world’s first ‘cobuilding’ platform for entrepreneurs, corporations and investors to create exponential startups. In 2017, Rokk3r Labs launched Rokk3r Fuel EXO, its first global venture capital fund. As a partner, Rokk3r Labs increases value, mitigates risk and helps to remain at the edge of innovation. With a focus on leveraging exponential technologies (e.g., the blockchain, artificial intelligence, and Internet of Things) and implementing new-age methods of raising capital, Rokk3r Labs is harnessing the global collective genius to cobuild companies that change the world. Currently, the Rokk3r Labs portfolio includes over 40 ventures. Visit www.rokk3rlabs.com.
