Portugal reached one billion dollars of investment in `startups`
The Secretary of State was speaking before the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, in the former royal arena, next to the Belém Palace, in Lisbon, during a meeting with representatives of Portuguese startups who will participate in the Web Summit.
“We have an ambition to double all the main indicators: number of ‘startups’, number of jobs, capacity to attract investment”, related to André de Aragão Azevedo.
Then, the Secretary of State for Digital Transition considers that there are already “same reasons to celebrate” in terms of investment.
“This is very recent news: we have reached a level that we expected to reach further ahead, which has to do with the absolute investment value of our ‘startup’ ecosystem, which reached millions of dollars,” he said.
On the other hand, the number of startups valued at more than a billion dollars, called unicorns, stood out:” In terms of unicorns per capita, we are above France, above Germany. And we have in absolute number more than any other country in southern Europe”.
André Azevedo referred that the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) foresees “125 million euros specifically to bet on `startups` and innovative companies”.
According to the government official, Portugal should continue to “raise the bar” of investment and maintain the bet on companies with “more transformed human resources” and “business models more based on digital” in order to have “a much more competitive, much stronger economy ”
“We are in fact on the right path, I think there are reasons for us to be very demonstrated”, he considered.