Currencies promises to found Lisbon’s Unicorn Factory next year
The mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas, promised this Monday to found the Fábrica de Unicórnios in Lisbon next year and appealed to the technologies present at the Web Summit to “come and stay” in the Portuguese capital.
Carlos Moedas was speaking at the opening of the Web Summit, a technological summit that arrived this Monday in Lisbon.
“I think the great thing about Web Summit is that this is where people who love details come together,” points out Lisbon’s new mayor.
“If you think about innovation – I told everyone, my dream is that Lisbon is the innovation capital of the world, but what are the details for me to be able to do that”, he said.
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“We have to be able to go beyond the Web Summit, we have to make you and as companies stay in Lisbon” because you see “the opportunity”, emphasizes the former European commissioner.
“For this reason, I promise that next year we will found, with the help of Web Summit and many of you, what I call a dream – the Fábrica de Unicórnios de Lisboa”, he assured.
This factory “will be a place where you will use the details and the process so that young people can transform their ideas into big businesses, create jobs and change the world and have a purpose, that’s what Fábrica de Unicórnios will be”, reinforced Carlos Moedas.
And he left a message for Web Summit attendees: “Whatever you do in life, whatever your project, dream big, go deep into the details.”
Because “this is what can change the world, and if you do that I can only tell you one thing: Lisbon is the right place to do it”, he stressed.
This is because the Portuguese capital “is the only city” that links “details with dreams”, he pointed out.
Therefore, “come and stay in Lisbon, it is a city open to you”, he concluded.
The Web Summit takes place between November 1st and 4th in Lisbon, in person, after the last edition was ‘online’ and the organization expects around 40 thousand participants, as revealed in Paddy Cosgrave, executive president of the summit.
Comedian Amy Poehler, Microsoft President Brad Smith, European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager and footballer Gerard Pique will join more than 1,000 speakers, around 1,250 startups, 1,500 journalists and more than 700 investors, at a summit where topics such as technology and society, among others, will be discussed, according to the organization.
Despite the expected number of visitors this year to be around 30,000 less than in the last in-person edition, in 2019, the authorities consider that this is the “largest event of 2021” to take place in Lisbon.