The topic has been on the agenda and is admittedly one of the areas where Europe wants to obtain the best results in the coming years: to prevent startups in the region from ending up exchanging their country of origin for the United States. Among other reasons, to be closer to investors and in a more “familiar” environment for these investment circuits and for the clients they want to reach.

The topic was addressed by Carlos Moedas at the Web Summit and in another session by Vasco Pedro, co-founder of Unbabel, who has already raised 91 million dollars with investors and who was born in Portugal but is based in the United States, with the person in charge anticipating important changes for short in this field.

The entrepreneur spoke on the panel about the challenges of scaling a startup from Portugal. He explained that in the first phase it was important for Unbabel to be in a country like Portugal, with quality talent, as the company started to grow, needed financing and fine-tuned the commercial offer, it had to make decisions.

With clients and investors mostly in the North American market, the responsible admits that it was necessary to change and relocate part of the operation to the US, in order to be closer and better know buyers and consumers. But Vasco Pedro admits that this reality may change soon and expect expectations.

“The place where they are as sources of financing will be less and less important to establish companies. The important thing is to have the conditions to get to know the customers well”, the executive in charge, and the pandemic came to show that this can be done in several ways. “The trajectory that we are pronouncing will no longer be necessary” for many companies, believes Vasco Pedro.

What does Europe need for a lead ecosystem of startups

This change will be good news for the plans of several European countries. There are more and more those who have committed themselves to a goal for this area, in an effort that is national, but which is also being made at the level of the region. Political initiatives in this regard are not lacking, some have actually passed through the Web Summit. The topic also set the tone for a conversation between António Dias Martins, executive director of Startup Portugal and Kat Borlongan, founder of Scale Up Europe at the Web Summit. The two responsible ​​agree that Europe already brings together most of the ingredients used to attract and make more tech-based startups successful, in a market with 450 million consumers.

Even at the level of funding, Kat Borlongan, who for three years headed La French Tech, a Macron management structure for entrepreneurship, recalls that Europe is less and less dependent on non-European VCs, giving the example of markets like France or Germany, where most of the investment raised by startups is local, he guarantees.

But even so, it is admitted that the path must be taken towards an open and global Europe, capable of attracting companies and investors from anywhere, as António Martins underlined, and committed to favoring the ecosystem, rather than the parts. In other words, “unicorns are important but for each unicorn there are many other companies with excellent valuations, on which we also have to focus”, said the Portuguese official.

The opinion was unanimous: unicorns are important but they are not everything and what matters is to create an ecosystem capable of creating value and employment. However, no presentation of “counting shotguns” with António Martins stressing that Portugal already has five unicorns, “five or six more” on the way and the panelist stressing that in France there are more than 20.

The debate also discussed metrics and criteria that should be evaluated to assess companies in the region, with António Martins acknowledging that investors are increasingly diversifying KPIs and considering the social impact of companies in the indicators they observe.

In his perspective, this is a framework that, as entities that are linked to the governments of each country in the area of ​​entrepreneurship (such as Startup Portugal), should emphasize and seek to make it more dynamic so that it is increasingly present in companies that are born and grow in the region. .