Portugal in the fight for the place of world unicorn
“Portugal has five unicorns and we probably know the sixth one.” This is how the Secretary of State for Digital Transition, André Azevedo, congratulates DefinedCrowd, winner of the Portuguese final of KPMG Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator. The company, which works with artificial intelligence in a very specific aspect – using machines to read and speak – will represent Portugal in the world competition, whose winner will be announced in November, at the Web Summit. “There are very valid ideas here that can lead to sex for the Portuguese unicorn”, said André Azevedo, related that getting there would take the country to a level of even greater prominence. This is because, as the secretary of state states, when the unicorn per million population is calculated, “Portugal is far ahead of countries like France or Germany.”
We are coming out of a pandemic period and entering a relative normalization, in terms of public health and dynamic dynamics, where the entrepreneurship ecosystem will have an important role, in particular as startups, a sector that will, to a large extent, be the engine development of this recovery, in a logic that this is where the most interesting ideas are born. This is the opinion of André Azevedo, who reaffirms to us “a real hotbed of ideas”. What was proved by the countercycle of the sector. The explanation, says the governor, is the agility and flexibility of startups that “is extremely relevant to the economic model we want to promote”. Alongside, of course, “the differentiation, far above the average, of human resources”, as well as the “technology incorporation, which makes business models much more competitive than our normal business fabric”.
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On the other hand, it is important not to forget the special moment that Portuguese entrepreneurship is experiencing, with the raising of the bar and the level of professionalization of the entire ecosystem. Which meets the goals defined by the government to double the main indicators, the number of startups, as well as the number of jobs. Alongside, of course, the ability to attract investment. And the finalist candidates are “good examples”. What is certain is that this year, despite the pandemic, “we have already broken all records in attracting investment for this ecosystem”.
The secretary of State took the opportunity to announce that the government is in the process of launching a new National Entrepreneurship Strategy, which “intends to build on all the work that is behind us – and which we do not place internationally as a reference country in the matter – but we want more, take the lead and be seen as a startup nation.”
We are entering a new cycle of entrepreneurship that, in André Azevedo’s opinion, is aligned with a European convergence – the policy for the importance of this sector. And the measures taken during the Portuguese presidency of the European Union are the result of this, namely the agreement by 27 that defines a priority for entrepreneurship and the attraction to Lisbon of the Startup Nations Alliance, which makes Lisbon “a new seat of entrepreneurship” . The government’s bet is seen in the amount allocated to the sector: 125 million.
DefinedCrowd to win the world award
The Portuguese company founded in 2015 and with presence in Tokyo and Seattle aims to help machines to read and speak. A service with huge market and usage potential. This was the opinion of the jury of the technology titans, based on some data provided by Francisco Spain, general manager of DefinedCrowd.
Nowadays almost everyone has a smartphone. And many people already do research by voice – in the US the value is around 25%. Research that still has a whole set of conditions, from the outset the accent that makes the system not understand the question well. It is certain that there is a lot of room to evolve and create a business.
Artificial intelligence can be used in more than research. Francisco Espanha recalls the issue of purchases and voice actions that people already do while they are driving. There is a whole range of “productivity opportunities on the go”, said the general manager of DefinedCrowd.
Asked about the scalability of the España Revelation platform, which is worked by machine learning, but in case of ambiguity, the issue is resolved with human intervention. “We have a network of over half a million people around the world who help us resolve ambiguities,” he says, and exemplifies intonation and context, which give different meanings to a sentence. Which requires human work.
The “easy” part is still training the machine. The secret, a problem, which differentiates this solution from others, revealed by Francisco Spain, is the data collected by the company. It all starts and ends with data quality.