Is Portugal now focusing on launching startups instead of ships? I don’t think we have to wait a few hundred years to see some great success stories from the Portuguese startup scene. Here are a few picks of my own in this yearly exercise of startup magic. Sorry for those who deserved to maintain last year nomination, but, you know, opportunities and so on. And for those who deserved to be here but didn’t make it because of criteria and so forth. To all, keep pushing, we need you!
AgroInsider: Starting at €1 per hectare per year, agricultures can now be monitored by satellite. That’s the business of AgroInsider, that also combines sensors and analytics for better and larger crops, recently got €50,000 for feasibility studies funded by Horizon 2020 and a second prize at AgroExpo 2017 in Spain.
Attentive: A sales intelligence agent that connects with the Web and integrates insights with your CRM? That’s what Attentive has developed that attracted several advisors to an early investment round and got the company selected to 2017 Techstars’ Acceleration Program.
DefinedCrowd: Consider Crowd-as-a-Service, add Machine Learning and take natural language processing to the next level, that’s DefinedCrowd recipe. Portugal Ventures, Amazon Alexa Fund, Sony Innovation Fund and Microsoft Ventures invest in the Portuguese company with bases in Lisbon and Seattle.
FarmCloud: Say you own a pig farm and you’re just wondering how to gather and manage production data, then FarmCloud comes to hand with FarmConnector. The equipment launched this year is a plug & play, real-time, data enabler device that integrates controllers from different manufacturers with a cloud based software, to be available in real time.
Infraspeak: The Porto based Facility Management Platform provides facility managers, either from hospitals, banks or hotels, with maintenance management tools. In 2016 Infraspeak participated in the Lisbon Challenge and 500 Startups programs and this year they are already looking for international expansion.
knok: Also dubbed “Uber for Doctors” and last years’ “most investable” startup according to the Global Investment Forum, knok healthcare developed a mobile platform where patients can get an appointment with a doctor based on current location, either immediately or by appointment. The Porto-based startup completed a £300k seed round with London’s Mustard Seed, to expand services in Portugal and other countries.
ProdSmart: Very Industry 4.0, Prodsmart provides real time, sensor based information from production lines and user inputs, transforming any factory in a digital smart factory. The subscription based Manufacturing Execution System won Startup Lisboa Boost and Caixa Empreender Award, securing €200k in financing, on top of being the winners of Microsoft’s sponsored Startup Challenge.
That’s all from Portugal, see you soon!