25 of the best Portuguese Startups to watch ahead of Web Summit

With Web Summit just around the corner here is a great guest post by Emil Abirascid from Startupbusiness.IT about the top Portuguese startups to watch. Title image from pixabay here.

It is important to scaleup  your busines, and to understand what works and what doesn’t. At the Scale Up Port Entrepreneurship and Innovation week at the Palacio della Bolsa, the findings by EIT Digital and the Portuguese Building Builder Global Innovators (BGI) accelerator were presented.

The main data emerging from the analysis – which we publish below in its entirety, show that  25 Portuguese scaleups have raised a total of 142 million dollars , largely funded by international funds, though 32% of them borrowed exclusively from Portuguese lenders including business angel, vc and BGI. Portugal has the largest value in proportion to equity financing, whether compared with the US, compared to other European countries, and that the scale-ups operating in the ITC and the consumer & web record the largest capital gains .

See  PORTUGAL SCALE UP REPORT for more details.

Scaleup Portugal, best 25

Gonçalo Amorim , executive director of BGI, explains, in the introduction to the research that Portugal has been the protagonist of a strong acceleration in terms of enterprise innovation over the last seven years and that already major international funds such as True Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Cisco Capital, Version Ventures, Octopus Ventures, Index Ventures, Accel Partners are already operating with Portuguese startup and scaleup. This acceleration has allowed the creation of the scales that are the subject of the research and which sees VeniamWorks top in terms of capital spending with nearly $ 30 million collected and 360Imprimir , which millions have harvested about 5, record the highest turnover levels. The25 Portuguese scaleup already have a global presence with branches and branches in most parts of the globe, they are funded by 80% of international funds, this is especially true for those who have raised over $ 20 million, such as VeniamWorks, UniPlaces   and TalkDesk . It should be noted that these three scales that are at the top of the ranking for the amount of capital raised have already moved their headquarters outside Portugal, particularly Veniam and TalkDesk have gone to USA and UniPlaces in the UK , plus two more scales of this list of 25 are out of Portugal, it is Asap54  which has raised more than $ 8 million and is based in UK and TTR  that raised $ 1.36 million and is based in Spain. Another element to be taken into account when reading this report is the 25 year-old scalability year: the most dated dates back to 2011 ( Aptoide, B-Parts, iM3dical, Musikki, TalkDesk, TTR ), while the latest ones are 2014 ( Gleam , GuestU, Passworks, Tradition, Xchockware ).

As mentioned, 360Imprimir records the most consistent revenue , followed by TalkDesk, TTR, Baboom, UniPlaces.

In total, the 25 startups provide employment for almost 1200 people, 51.61% have a B2B model and 48.39% have B2C.

More active investors

Among the most active investors by number of deals, the Portuguese Portugal Ventures, Faber Ventures, and Shilling Capital Partners are winning the podium, while among the internationals are the UK’s Change Capital Partners and E.ventures.

Considering the total capital invested in the 25 scaleup, 82% is venture capital, 16% by business angel and the remaining 2% by accelerators and incubators.

The report is completed with an analysis of the international scenario that compares Portugal with other economies (Italy is the country with the worst rate in terms of business execution ease) and with the descriptive charts of the 25 scaleup outlets into account.

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