It feels like I was focusing on the quick growth of Portugal’s expanding startup and investment sector only yesterday—that is, seven years ago. In 2021, I revised my paper and discovered a boom in new businesses and investors.
More evidence of Portugal’s emergence as one of Europe’s newest and most vibrant tech ecosystems was released today: The venture capital firm Shilling has established a €50 million fund to assist growth-stage companies inside its own portfolio and, more importantly, to make investments in businesses across the globe.
The Portuguese private equity firm Draycott SCR, Shilling, is well-known for its venture capital division, which specializes in early-stage investments in firms like as Talka, Unbabel, Bizay, Uniplaces, and Best Tables (which TripAdvisor acquired in 2015).
With investments up to €5 million for Series A and beyond, Shilling’s newest fund, dubbed the “Opportunity Fund,” will offer it more horsepower to support early-stage firms for longer. Over 90% of the fund objective was raised at the first close, according to the firm, and the fund has already made an investment in Coverflex, a Shilling portfolio company.
According to Atomico, Portugal has one of the lowest VC investment-to-GDP ratios in Europe, five times lower than the norm for the continent, despite having a thriving startup ecosystem.
Growth-stage startups now have a funding gap as a result of this. The Opportunity Fund offered by Shilling will be a helpful link in that distance.
Managing partner at Shilling Ricardo Jacinto told me, “We want to be one of the players following our startups over their entire journey, which is why we’re launching this new fund.” It goes without saying that we wish to monitor any fresh chances. This fund’s premise is that. […] We wish to go beyond just portfolio firms.
Hugo Gonçalves Pereira, a founding partner at Shilling, said in a statement, “Our new fund will support growth-stage companies as they scale as the market recovers from post-pandemic stabilization.”
“In the Portuguese early-stage startup scene, shilling is an inevitable phenomenon,” stated Norberto Guimarães, CEO and co-founder of Talka. After I spent twelve years traveling throughout the Bay Area, they promptly helped Talka and included me into the community.
Early support of tech startups has been essential to Shilling’s business development. It established the €55 million ($35.6 million) Shilling Founders Fund in 2021 with the support of Atomico, a European venture capital firm, and slightly more than 35 accomplished tech entrepreneurs.
João Coelho Borges, a prominent PE investor and founding partner at Draycott, executives Juan Alvarez and Pedro Rutkowski, Diogo da Silveira, chair and NED in listed and fund-backed European companies, and real estate investor and proptech founder Pereira all founded Shilling in 2011.
Later, businessmen and founders including Ricardo Jacinto, Pedro Ramalho Carlos, Miguel Santo Amaro (co-founder of Uniplaces and Coverflex), and Maria Villas-Boas joined the group.
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