Featured

A look at what happened in the Portuguese Startup Scene in 2014

Avatar

Inês Silva

Dec 22, 2014

newspaper

2014 was a great year for the Portuguese Startup Scene. For us that have been around for some years, we can really see the difference and how much our startup scene has matured. We still are far away from being an established startup ecosystem, but we are an emerging one with lots of great news to celebrate. Here is a selection of some, organised by month:

March

  • Unbabel was the first Portuguese startup accepted at Y Combinator (More info: 1, 2 and 3).
  • Orankl selected for the 2014 Spring batch at Y Combinator (More info).

April

  • Liquid, a one-stop shop mobile analytics and personalisation platform, closed a $1 million seed round, with investment coming from Faber Ventures and Portugal Ventures (More info).

May

  • Farfetch, the global e-commerce site for independent boutiques, closed a $66 million series D (More info: 1 and 2).
  • Passworks, a platform for brands and retailers to create, manage, and distribute marketing campaigns across Apple’s Passbook, Google Wallet and Windows Phone Wallet, secured a $1 million seed investment from Portugal Ventures and Faber Ventures (More info).

June

  • Two Porto-based startups, TOP Docs and Songvice, were selected to join the Rockstart Accelerator in Amsterdam (More info: 1 and 2).
  • Lisbon won the prize for Most Entrepreneurial City in Europe, from the European Union (More info).
  • Chic by Choice, a one-of-a-kind hire destination that allows women to access the most breathtaking designer dresses, secured an undisclosed sum of funding from Portugal Ventures and Faber Ventures (More info).

July

  • Unbabel Raises $1.5 million in funding from investors such as Jared Fliesler of Matrix Partners and Kevin Rose of Google Ventures, among others. (More info)

August

  • The hardware startup Findster successfully raised more than $90.000 on their Indiegogo campaign (More info).
  • Impraise, a Lisbon-based startup that makes Workplace Performance Reviews Less Painful got investment from Y Combinator. (More info)

September

  • Talkdesk, a “call center in the browser”, raised $3.15 million in a new round of funding (More info).

October

  • Uniplaces, an online booking platform focused on student accommodation, raised a $3.5 million Series A funding led by prior investor Octopus Investments (More info).
  • AnubisNetworks, a Porto-based startup operating in the Internet Security Industry, was acquired by BitSight Technologies (More info).
  • Musikki, which calls itself the ‘IMDB of music’, has secured €330,000 in funding from Smart Equity, a business angel investment vehicle in London (More info).
  • Hottinger Baldwin Messtechnik GmbH (HBM) acquires FiberSensing – Sistemas Avançados de Monitorizacao S.A., a Porto-based startup (More info).
  • European Space Agency opens a Business Incubation Center in Portugal with 8 Million Euros to invest in 30 startups over the next five years. IPN, UPTEC and DNA Cascais joined hands to make it possible (More info).
  • Seedrs acquired Junction Investments, which is based in California, and operates in a similar market space (More info).

November

  • Codacy, a Portugal-based startup with offices in Lisbon, London and San Francisco, won the Beta category pitch competition in the Web Summit (More info).
  • UKADEMICS won the European competition Big App 2014 (More info).
  • UPTEC – highlighted as an example by the European Commission (More info).

December

  • Veniam, a Portuguese startup that delivers advanced networking technology that connects infrastructure, people and moving things to each other and to the Internet, raised $4.9M in Series A from True Ventures, Union Square Ventures , Cane Investments and private investors (More info).
  • PharmAssistant, a Lisbon-based startup is working closely with Bayer to test a new smart pill box in Germany (More info).
  • The University of Aveiro Business Incubator (IEUA) won the “Best Science Based Incubator” award in the “Return on Investment” category organized by the Technopolicy Network and the Centre for Strategy and Evaluation Services (More info).

I’m sure we are missing some. Send them our way and we are happy to add them to the list.

share