Partilho o artigo de André Marquet, engenheiro, empreendedor e host do primeiro TEDx em Portugal sobre os atractivos para o investimento de Business Angels. Agradeço a menção feita à Gesventure como parceira para o cruzamento estratégico entre o empreendedor e o investidor. Inspirem-se e…invistam!
“Strongly inspired on a similar text on Seeking Alpha I decided to adapt and adjust this text for the Portuguese reality as I am convinced Portugal has at least 10 top of mind reasons for BAs to invest here.
Portugal has a population of 10.7 million. The GDP is estimated to grow 1% in 2010 , from about $233.4B in 2009. Just a couple of decades ago, the economy of Portugal was primarily based on agriculture, clothing and other traditional industries, but, that is changing. Nowadays, Portugal features a diversified service-based economy and a experiences a strong growth of its knowledge based and high tech industries. Portugal has great infra-structure, is part of Eurozone and offers many excellent investment opportunities, from tourism to leading companies.
Why invest in Portuguese companies? There are lots of sound reasons. We’ve listed some that we like and that potential investors might want to consider when seeking attractive opportunities.
• Portugal is at the cutting edge of development in advanced technology in several important areas – software (Critical Software), telecommunications(EID), semiconductors(Critical Manufacturing), pharma (Bial) electric power equipment (Efacec), and alternative energy (specially wind, solar and waves power with industrial companies like Martifer).
• Portugal experienced the strongest growth in R&D investment, leading European statistics.
• Foreign companies have recognized the value of Portuguese companies and are active acquirers, providing lucrative exits for investors. Foreign acquirers of Portuguese companies in recent years include Microsoft (acquired Mobicomp), MIPS (acquired Chipidea), Cisco Systems (Paredes Valley), Oracle, among many others.
• Giant US, European and Japanese companies operate development and R&D facilities to take advantage of the high caliber workforce from leading Universities like IST, Nova, FEUP or Univ. do Minho. These firms include IBM, Nissan, Microsoft, Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, General Motors, Volkswagen, Nokia Siemens Networks, NEC among many others.
• The Portuguese Government and the European Union is a major supporter of Portuguese technology through a host of financial programs that encourage investment like INOV Capital, and Portugal is a member of the European Space Agency, and the high energy center for nuclear research CERN. There are also a number of private VCs in Portugal like Gesventure that can direct you to entrepreneurs looking for investment.
• Portuguese companies can take advantage of programs managed by bi-national foundations. These provide funding to cooperative projects between Portuguese firms and companies from other countries. The FLAD Foundation, for example, has supported joint projects between US and Portuguese companies, and granting hundreds of grants to leading US academic institutions like MIT, Chicago School of Economics, Harvard, among others.
• Portugal is a gateway at a geo-strategic vortex of the triangle between oil rich Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa like Angola and high growth economies in South America, like Brazil.
• Portugal is home to the third largest renewable energy power utility, in terms of installed capacity, EDP Renovaveis, which recently became one of the largest investor of this sector in the US, after the acquisition of Horizon Energy.
• In the past two decades, Portuguese entrepreneurs have started hundreds of companies, gaining invaluable managerial experience in all sectors, like Outsystems, Critical Software, Critical Links, WIT Software, IPbrick, Bluepharma, among many others. They are continuing to apply the lessons learned in new and upcoming areas.
• Portugal has world class academic institutions, producing highly qualified engineers and scientists, like IST (producing best-in class engineers in the fields of robotics, aerospace, chemistry and computer science), Nova (where they invented paper chips, and other exotic technologies), FEUP (top software engineers), FCTC (top computer scientists), and Univ. do Minho (home to the minds of Portugal’s most innovative portal www.sapo.pt).”
Artigo extraído de http://blog.tedxedges.com/
