The Startup Hunter Diary — A Month Long Trip Around Europe — Episode 21

Portuguese hospitality

Rise up!

Well I lied… It took me a few days again to post my article.

So we arrived in Lisbon without knowing anything or anyone in the city, but we got ourselves busy.

We started the day meeting with Limor, an entrepreneur who arrived in Lisbon 10 years ago. He is the founder of Robosavvy a robotic solutions distributor. It was great to have the view of an international entrepreneur who has been there for so long. According to him, Lisbon is great to work from if your business is somewhere else, but it’s on the rise.

Kindly, Limor dropped us to our next meeting. This was probably the one we expected the most, even though everything has been amazing in Lisbon, not kidding. We were about to meet with Beta-i. They are the biggest accelerator in Portugal, but also one of the biggest in Europe.

They crafted us a neat program: meeting with the founder and the team to learn more about their programs, then meeting with some of the start-ups, and finally a tour of the space.

Beta-i is very international, if you hang out with them you’ll be surrounded by founders coming from the 4 corners of Europe. They produce great start-ups too, like Lisbon actually. Indeed few of them got accepted into YC to expand further. And that’s kind of big deal.

One more visit and Helene will have to head back to Paris. So we went to BGI at ISCTE, one of the top universities in Lisbon. The BGI program is partnering with the MIT to join forces in R&D. They welcomed us very warmly even if we dropped by unexpectedly. Their program provides a lot of values to both the entrepreneurs and the students. That’s how we like it!

Time for Helene to go, otherwise she’ll miss her flight. As for me there was one last stop I wanted to do. So I headed toward La Fabrica de Startup. It is part of the best incubators in Lisbon. They were quite busy when I stopped by, but I still got to talk with some team members and tour the space. I can’t wait to have more time to chat with them again.

I wasn’t leaving Lisbon until the next day, but I found out that Wednesday was a holiday. So I got the day for me before taking my flight…

We loved Lisbon, and we really think they are up to something. We’ll go back there to keep checking the pulse of the city.

Next week is already the last stop of the Start-up Hunt. And we will be in Stockholm. So if you are there and want to meet up, please drop us a line. And as always if you have any recommendations to help us make our trip even better, do not hesitate, we love it.

Hop on the train of the most exciting start-up trip ever made, and travel with us! It shall be fun.

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