Built By: Paulo Melo of doDOC
Having obtained his undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Lisbon, Paulo got his first taste of the US when he attended MIT via the MIT Portugal Program, an initiative of the Portuguese government, in 2009. After the completion of the program, Melo decided to go back to Portugal before returning to the US for a PhD in 2014.
Paulo chose to become an engineer because he always loved seeing things come to life. While pursuing the PhD, he worked on side projects that aimed to help researchers improve their results via more meaningful data.
Aware that academia was not the right place for him, Paulo decided to turn his desire to build things into a career by starting doDOC. The company was created to solve an imminent problem in the pharmaceutical and medical industries: improving scientists’ productivity with an operating system that allows researchers to eliminate the ‘busy work’ of data entry.
Conceived during the time Paulo was pursuing his PhD, the company received its initial funding after entering a Portuguese competition called “Take a Risk.” It then won $100K from an MIT Portugal startup accelerator but decided to forego the funds and pursue an entry into TechStars Boston instead.
Paulo describes the interview process with the Boston chapter of the accelerator as “very unique” because partners seemed skeptical of the idea, but were very interested in meeting the team. Going back, he credits this very meeting with helping doDOC find product-market fit: the tool was originally developed for academia, but this experience caused them to pivot to the pharmaceutical and medical research industries. Fast-forward two years and doDOC, based in the US, has raised almost a million in funding and created 18 jobs (12 in Portugal and 6 in the US).
According to Paulo, the US is one of the best places to establish a company due to its bigger market and entrepreneurial culture. He adds that Boston specifically is a great place for doDOC because of the universities and the health care and life sciences industry cluster to which the city is a home.
Throughout his entrepreneurial journey Paulo has had the opportunity to work with multiple immigrant entrepreneurs. In addition to being a ‘graduate’ of the GEIR program*, he is also a part of an international founding team, which he credits for the company’s success. He believes that having a great team is incredibly important, and it’s essential that founders can rely on each other as well as their team members.
Paulo believes that entrepreneurship is “always a bet” and there’s “no safety net”, especially since it’s usually based on “just drive and resolution”. Being an immigrant entrepreneur adds a whole new set of challenges to that, including the uncertainty of obtaining a visa, but overall he thinks that entrepreneurship, just like immigration, is a matter of choice and perseverance.
*The GEIR program was pioneered by the Venture Development Center at UMass Boston in 2014 in order to help international entrepreneurs obtain cap-exempt H1B visas. To date the initiative has helped companies raise a total of $226M in funding and create 370+ jobs.
Written by: Leia Ruseva of The Ellis Project
