Here are the 5 hottest startups in Portugal

It might be everyone’s dream to move to Portugal. Beautiful beaches, amazing food, and weather. Its vibrant startup scene is now another reason to add to the list. Like in neighboring Spain, the country was hit hard with a headache-inducing unemployment rate that was concentrated primarily on Portugal’s youth.

Instead of plunging the country into a deeper recession, this moment inspired an entrepreneurial zeitgeist that hurled Portugal headfirst into a technological renaissance. The government is taking this opportunity and running with it, offering benefits to startups like a €200 million venture capital matching fund open to all startups headquartered in Portugal and the StartUP voucher which gives 400 entrepreneurs a grant every year to develop their startup idea.

The international tech scene has already caught on to the country’s potential with a number of startups relocating or opening secondary offices there. Perhaps the most well-known relocation was the annual Web Summit’s move from Dublin to Lisbon in 2016. These transplants will only add to Portugal’s now unstoppable startup ecosystem.

Selecting the hottest young scale-ups from Europe

Together with Adyen we set out to search for the hottest young scale-ups based on their performance, growth, and potential. The top-5 of each country will join the Tech5, a community of the hottest young tech companies in Europe and Israel.

Today we highlight Portugal. We did our research, consulted with our advisory consortium of 100 investors, influencers, entrepreneurs and experts across Europe and selected the five hottest young Portuguese scale-ups. These companies are selected to join the Tech5 and come together at the exclusive Founders Day (May 8) and TNW Conference (May 9-10) in Amsterdam.

The hottest young scale-ups from Portugal:

Huub

Zaask

Landing.jobs

Unbabel

YouClap

YouClap has created an app that allows you to send virtual challenges to friends. Recipients can then either accept your virtual challenge or simply leave a small “clap”. The cool thing is that you can even send a challenge to your favorite brands. And they provide the proper tools to interact with these challenges, something that’s been missing on other social media platforms. Just a week after they launched in May 2018 they reached first place on the Trending Social Apps list of the Google Play Store and fourth place on the App Store. By the end of 2018, they already reached 20k users and were voted by Google as one of 2018’s best-hidden gems on the Brazilian Play Store. Needless to say, they deserve to be on the list representing Portugal this year!

 

Are you ready to take your company to the next level? Come and meet potential clients, connect with relevant investors, and learn from fellow startups at TNW2019.

 

By Andrea Niño Bonilla and Andrea Hak