Portugal city focus

Lisbon startup directory

Hand-picked startups, investors, and ecosystem operators in Lisbon, with a custom city illustration in europe-startup-guide.com brand colors.

Origami-style Lisbon startup city illustration

58 entries.

Aptoide

Lisbon, Portugal · Startup

Independent alternative Android app store and distribution platform with 430M+ users and 1M+ apps, one of the largest Android stores globally, with an AppCoins crypto rewards layer. Founded 2009.

Armilar Venture Partners

Lisbon, Portugal · Venture Capital

Armilar Venture Partners is a Lisbon-based venture capital firm that spun out from Portugal's Novabase group in 2016, building on a venture investment track record dating back to 2001. The firm invests from seed through growth stage in deep tech, enterprise IT, and healthcare, with a focus on Portuguese and Iberian founders with global ambitions. Armilar manages over EUR 200M and has backed companies including Feedzai (AI fraud detection unicorn), Outsystems, Sword Health, and Codacy. The team provides strategic support in US market entry and international scaling.

Bandora

Lisbon, Portugal · Startup

Bandora is an AI-powered virtual facility manager that integrates with existing building management systems to optimize energy efficiency, reduce costs, and maintain comfort in commercial buildings. The startup has reported about USD 1M-1.5M in pre-seed/seed backing and won the CTA CEO Summit startup pitch in Lisbon, earning a complimentary exhibit space at CES 2026 in Las Vegas.

Beta-i / Lisbon Challenge

Lisbon, Portugal · Accelerator

Beta-i is a Lisbon-based innovation and acceleration organisation founded in 2009 that runs startup programmes, including its well-known Lisbon Challenge accelerator, and helps corporates innovate through open-innovation initiatives. With a presence spanning Lisbon, Brussels, Boston and Sao Paulo, it has supported thousands of startups across Europe and beyond.

BIO-Europe Spring 2026

Lisbon, Portugal · Event

Life sciences partnering conference in Lisbon built around structured 1:1 meetings between biotech startups, pharma companies, and investors. Registration costs about EUR 2800+. Covers drug discovery, clinical development, and licensing. Essential for biotech startups seeking licensing deals, co-development partnerships, and Series A+ funding from specialized life-science investors.

Bling Energy

Lisbon, Portugal · Startup

Residential solar company offering panels, batteries, EV chargers and backup systems via a no-upfront-cost subscription model, aiming to cut household electricity bills by up to 50%.

Bloop

Lisbon, Portugal · Startup

Bloop is a Lisbon-based social-commerce startup founded by Francisco Rodrigues (CEO) and João Neves (CTO), both alumni of companies including Amazon, Farfetch, Microsoft and Uber. Conceived in 2022 and formalised in 2024, it operates what it calls the world's first social shopping network — a platform that fuses a product marketplace with the mechanics of a social feed, turning ordinary consumers into paid recommenders. Users earn wallet credits of up to 10% of a purchase's value for publishing authentic recommendations, and up to 5% commission on referral sales, while sellers gain community-generated exposure instead of paid ads. At its July 2025 public beta the platform carried 200,000+ products from 150+ brands and reported a ~4.5% conversion rate. Bloop has raised about €1.5M in pre-seed capital co-led by Monarque Funds and Insure Broker, including one of Portugal's largest retail crowdfunding rounds, and targeted a €5M seed to expand into Spain and France.

Brisa Boost

Lisbon, Portugal · Accelerator

Brisa Boost is the corporate startup accelerator and open-innovation programme of Brisa, Portugal's largest motorway operator. It works with early-stage startups in mobility, smart infrastructure and sustainability, offering pilots on Brisa's road network, mentoring and access to its business units.

Bynd Venture Capital

Lisbon, Portugal · Accelerator

Founded in 2016, Bynd Venture Capital is a Lisbon-based early-stage VC managing over EUR 60M, investing EUR 0.5-2M at seed and Series A in digital transformation, consumer internet, and e-commerce startups across the Iberian Peninsula. Portfolio companies include Kitch (ghost kitchens), Sensei (autonomous retail), and Nutrium (nutrition SaaS). Bynd focuses on product-driven founders and leverages Lisbon's growing tech ecosystem to connect Portuguese startups with European and US investors.

Casa do Impacto (MAZE)

Lisbon, Portugal · Incubator

Casa do Impacto was founded in October 2018 in Lisbon's Convento de São Pedro de Alcântara under the umbrella of Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa, in partnership with Lisbon City Council, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and other institutions. It serves as Lisbon's main hub for social entrepreneurship, offering incubation, acceleration (including the Maze Impact program), coworking, and investment readiness support to startups working on social and environmental challenges. Within its first three years it had incubated 48 startups, supported over 190 projects, and established 30 national and international partnerships.

Class of Wonders

Lisbon, Portugal · Startup

Class of Wonders is an impact-focused edtech startup building gamified classroom tools and inclusive learning experiences, including language-learning adaptations for migrant children. Through Lisboa Innovation for All, the team presented MAGOS for All, and it has also participated in ecosystem initiatives such as Techstars Startup Weekend in Viseu.

Codacy

Lisbon, Portugal · Startup

Automated code-quality and security platform (static analysis, SAST, secret and dependency scanning, AI guardrails) supporting 40+ languages; used by 15,000+ organizations. Founded 2012.

Comudel

Lisbon, Portugal · Startup

Comudel develops a business operating system that automates workflows, legal contract handling, and AI-assisted financial operations for companies. Founded in 2022, it is associated with Unicorn Factory Lisboa and Instituto Pedro Nunes, operates from The Fintech House in Lisbon, and participated in the SPRINT accelerator focused on compliance and enterprise operations.

Coverflex

Lisbon, Portugal · Startup

Coverflex is a Portuguese startup that builds a compensation management platform bringing together every part of employee compensation beyond salary, including flexible benefits, insurance, meal allowance and exclusive discounts in a single product. Employees manage their benefits, meal allowance, insurance and discounts through the Coverflex app and card, and can direct part of their balance toward savings products. Founded in 2019, it operates across European markets including Portugal, Italy and Spain. In February 2023 it raised a €15 million Series A round to support its European expansion.

Cristina Fonseca

Lisbon, Portugal · Person

General Partner at Indico Capital Partners and co-founder of Talkdesk, the contact-centre software unicorn. A Forbes 30 Under 30 alumna and one of Portugal's best-known tech entrepreneurs, she invests in early-stage software and AI companies across Southern Europe.

DOJO AI

Lisbon, Portugal · Startup

Dojo AI is a Lisbon-based agentic marketing platform, founded in 2024 by Duarte Garrido (a marketing leader from Coca-Cola and Sky) and António Alegria (an AI architect from Portuguese unicorns Feedzai and OutSystems). Marketed as an Intelligent Marketing System, it uses multi-agent AI to autonomously monitor, analyse and act across marketing channels, built on a proprietary DOJO Graph that maintains a living digital twin of each customer's marketing operation. Its AI agents track paid and organic campaigns, audit SEO visibility, generate on-brand content and execute workflows in real time, positioning the product as a marketing operating system that consolidates many traditional tools. Serving challenger and enterprise brands primarily in the US and UK, Dojo AI has raised around $7M — a $1M pre-seed (2025) led by Berlin's Heartfelt VC and a $6M / €5.1M seed (2026) led by Lisbon's Armilar Venture Partners at a reported $30M valuation — with capital focused on US expansion.

EDP Ventures

Lisbon, Portugal · Accelerator

EDP Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of EDP — Energias de Portugal, one of Europe's largest energy utilities. Established in 2008 and headquartered in Lisbon, with investment teams in Madrid and São Paulo, it manages €150M and makes five to eight investments a year, writing €1–10M cheques from Seed through Series B with follow-on capacity. Its mandate is tightly aligned with EDP's decarbonisation strategy, targeting renewable energy, grid infrastructure, distributed energy resources, green hydrogen, storage and flexibility, electric mobility and energy-use decarbonisation, plus AI and digital. The fund has backed 40+ active companies across Europe and the Americas, including Portuguese AI unicorn Feedzai, battery-recycling firm Green Li-ion and grid-data platform Energyworx (acquired by Gridspertise in 2025); four portfolio companies featured in the 2024 Global Cleantech 100. By end-2023 EDP Ventures had deployed a cumulative €70M and generated over €115M in contract value for EDP group companies.

Ekiden

Lisbon, Portugal · Startup

Lisbon-based blockchain derivatives trading platform providing on-chain perpetual futures and options markets with institutional-grade execution infrastructure for algorithmic traders. Raised €1.7M seed at a €17M valuation in May 2026.

ETHGlobal

Lisbon, Portugal · Event Organisator

ETHGlobal is the leading organiser of Ethereum and Web3 hackathons and summits worldwide, running flagship in-person events and online hackathons that bring together developers, founders and protocol teams to ship onchain applications. Its Lisbon editions anchor Portugal's recurring Onchain Lisbon ecosystem week.

Faber Ventures

Lisbon, Portugal · Incubator

Faber is a Lisbon-based venture capital firm investing in early-stage deep-tech startups across Southern Europe and selectively across the wider continent. It concentrates on two theses, applied science and digital transformation, and climate and ocean tech, backing technical teams and supporting them through a dedicated network of expert advisors.

Faber Ventures

Lisbon, Portugal · Venture Capital

Faber is a Lisbon-based venture capital firm founded in 2012, investing in early-stage deep tech and climate technology companies at the intersection of science and technology in Southern Europe. The firm has backed notable startups including Unbabel, SWORD Health, Codacy, and Smartex, typically writing cheques of €100,000 to €2.5 million. Its latest fund, Faber Tech III, has a target size of €60 million and is anchored by the European Investment Fund and the NATO Innovation Fund.

FIZ

Lisbon, Portugal · Startup

FIZ is a Lisbon-based fintech building a mobile-first "neo accountant" for Portugal's self-employed professionals and small businesses. The platform pairs AT-certified invoicing with automated VAT and Social Security filings and an AI fiscal assistant, and backs declarations with an "Escudo Fiscal" guarantee that covers up to EUR 1,500 of penalties per declaration. It runs on a freemium model, offering a free invoicing tier alongside paid plans at EUR 9.99 and EUR 14.99 per month, and reports more than 15,000 users invoicing over EUR 8M through the platform each month. For the directory, FIZ illustrates how vertically integrated tax-automation tools are reaching independent workers in markets where compliance has traditionally required a human accountant.

Frederico Gonçalves

Lisbon, Portugal · Person

Managing Director at EDP Ventures, where he leads energy-transition and cleantech investments for the corporate VC arm of EDP across Europe and the Americas, working closely with portfolio companies to deploy their technology within EDP's operations.

French Tech Night (Web Summit week)

Lisbon, Portugal · Event

Networking night hosted during Web Summit week by the French Embassy and the French Tech community in Lisbon. Brings together French founders, international investors, and ecosystem partners for informal drinks and introductions. Valuable for French startups attending Web Summit and seeking warm connections with the Franco-Portuguese tech network.

Grow by Jose de Mello

Lisbon, Portugal · Accelerator

Launched 2017. Corporate venture program connecting startups with the Jose de Mello Group in healthcare, energy, and infrastructure. Support: pilot agreements, corporate guidance, and potential customer contracts. Scope: National.

Indico Capital Partners

Lisbon, Portugal · Venture Capital

Indico Capital Partners is Portugal's first and leading independent early-stage venture firm, founded in Lisbon in 2017 by Stephan Morais and Ricardo Torgal (both ex-Caixa Capital) and Cristina Fonseca (co-founder of Talkdesk). Since its first fund close in 2019 it has built a >€244M multi-fund platform spanning six vehicles, including VC Fund I (€54M), an Acceleration Fund, an Opportunity Fund, the €50M Indico Blue ocean-economy fund, VC Fund II, and the newly launched VC Fund III (€125M target with a €30M EIF anchor, 2025). The firm invests from pre-seed to Series B with €100K–€10M cheques, focused on Portugal, Spain and Italy and the Southern European diaspora, across enterprise SaaS, AI, deep tech, fintech, cybersecurity, spacetech and the blue economy. Backed by the European Investment Fund, Banco Português de Fomento and Draper Esprit (now Molten), Indico bridges Southern Europe's talent to global capital. Its portfolio includes unicorns Anchorage Digital, Sword Health, TIER Mobility and Remote, with exits including Unbabel (TransPerfect, 2025) and Cargofive (cargo.one, 2026).

Invisible Collector

Lisbon, Portugal · Startup

AI-powered debt-collection SaaS that automates accounts-receivable management, using machine learning to optimise the timing, tone and channel of debtor outreach for faster recovery.

Lisbon Tech Job Fair 2026

Lisbon, Portugal · Event

One-day hiring event in Lisbon connecting 2,000+ developers and product professionals with 50+ companies recruiting in Portugal, including major European scale-ups and locally established tech employers. Free for candidates. Useful for startups looking to hire in the Portuguese market and for understanding local salary benchmarks and talent supply.

Luís Castro Henriques

Lisbon, Portugal · Person

General Partner at EDP Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Portuguese energy group EDP. He leads investments in renewable energy, grid, storage and energy-transition technologies, aligning startup innovation with EDP's decarbonisation strategy.

Lyzer

Lisbon, Portugal · Startup

Lyzer is a Logistics-as-a-Service platform for retail and e-commerce operations, covering order management, warehouse picking optimization, and last-mile orchestration. In July 2025, the company announced a EUR 10M Series B and reported over EUR 160M in GMV plus more than 500,000 fulfilled orders across the Iberian peninsula.

Maze Impact

Lisbon, Portugal · Accelerator

Founded 2018 with backing from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Runs the Maze X 3-month accelerator for social impact startups, providing tailored mentoring, impact investor access, and a EUR 50K stipend. Notable alumni include Speak. Scope: International.

NFC Summit 2026

Lisbon, Portugal · Event

A Web3 and creative-economy summit bundling eight sub-events — including the Non Fungible Conference, Stablecoin Day, an agents-vs-agents hackathon, and Longevity Day — at Lisbon's Unicorn Factory. Useful for web3, AI, and creative-tech founders wanting exposure to major brand sponsors and the crypto-creative crossover.

Portugal Ventures

Lisbon, Portugal · Venture Capital

Portugal Ventures is Portugal's principal state-backed early-stage venture firm, established in 2012 through the merger of Inovcapital, AICEP Capital Global Ventures and Turismo Capital. Headquartered in Porto with a Lisbon office, it operates within the Banco Português de Fomento group and manages roughly €288M across 16+ funds. Its mandate is to stimulate Portuguese entrepreneurship with risk capital at pre-seed, seed and Series A, writing tickets of €50K–€1.5M across digital and technology, industry, healthcare and tourism. Since inception it has deployed over €230M into 256+ companies. Its portfolio has produced unicorns including BitSight (cybersecurity), Fever (live entertainment, exited 2026 at 15x) and Glovo, alongside exits in OutSystems and Farfetch (NYSE IPO, 2018). Other notable holdings include Feedzai, Aptoide, Codacy, JScrambler and Sword Health. New leadership for the 2025–2027 term is led by CEO Marco Neves.

Pragma Lisbon 2026

Lisbon, Portugal · Event

Pragma Lisbon is a curated single-track Web3 summit organised by ETHGlobal, featuring high-signal talks from industry leaders for founders and builders. Held the day before the ETHGlobal Lisbon hackathon as part of the Onchain Lisbon week, it focuses on protocol design, scaling and the future of onchain applications.

Productized Conference 2026

Lisbon, Portugal · Event

A two-day product conference — a workshops day plus a talks day — at the Museum of the Orient on Lisbon's riverfront, for product managers, designers, founders, and leaders. Practical, craft-focused content on building better products, teams, and strategy, strong for early-stage founders refining product discovery and delivery.

Remote

Lisbon, Portugal · Startup

Global employment platform offering Employer of Record (EOR), global payroll, contractor management and compliance across 100+ countries on owned infrastructure. Founded 2019 in Lisbon; a Portuguese unicorn.

SBC (Sports Betting Community)

Lisbon, Portugal · Event Organisator

SBC (Sports Betting Community) is a global media and events company organising large-scale gaming, betting and igaming-technology conferences. Its SBC Summit in Lisbon is one of Europe's biggest industry gatherings, bringing together operators, suppliers, payments and technology companies for exhibitions, conference tracks and networking.

SBC Summit Lisbon 2026

Lisbon, Portugal · Event

SBC Summit is Europe's largest gaming, igaming and sports-betting industry conference, hosted across the Feira Internacional de Lisboa and MEO Arena in Lisbon's Parque das Nações. It convenes thousands of operators, technology suppliers, payments providers and investors for exhibitions, conference tracks, a startup and investment angle, and large-scale networking.

Second Home Lisbon

Lisbon, Portugal · Innovation Hub

Second Home Lisbon is a design-forward coworking and community space located in the Time Out Market building at the Mercado da Ribeira in Lisbon's waterfront Cais do Sodre neighborhood. Part of the London-founded Second Home network, the Lisbon location opened in 2016 and provides workspace and community programming for startups, creatives, and remote tech workers in a distinctive plant-filled, architecturally acclaimed environment. Beyond desks, Second Home Lisbon hosts cultural events, startup workshops, speaker series, and cross-disciplinary programs bringing together founders from technology, design, and the arts. The space has become a gathering point for Lisbon's international startup community, particularly attracting founders from the UK, US, and Northern Europe who have relocated to Lisbon for its quality of life, timezone advantages, and growing tech ecosystem.

Semapa Next

Lisbon, Portugal · Accelerator

Semapa Next is the corporate venture capital arm of Semapa Group, one of Portugal's largest industrial conglomerates (pulp, paper, cement). Launched to invest in industrial tech, environmental solutions, mobility, and fintech, Semapa Next deploys EUR 1-5M at Series A in startups aligned with the group's strategic interests. The fund provides portfolio companies with access to Semapa's industrial operations for piloting and commercial partnerships, focusing on sustainability, circular economy, and digital transformation of traditional industries.

Shilling

Lisbon, Portugal · Incubator

Shilling (Shilling VC) is a Lisbon-based early-stage venture capital firm, running a fund of around 52 million euros that backs entrepreneurs from pre-seed and seed stages. Known for a founder-friendly model that shares fund profits with its portfolio founders, it invests primarily in Portuguese and Southern European technology startups and supports them as they scale internationally.

Startup Lisboa

Lisbon, Portugal · Incubator

Startup Lisboa is a key incubator in Portugal’s capital, established in 2012 as a public-private initiative to boost entrepreneurship in the city. Situated in downtown Lisbon’s Baixa district in renovated historic buildings, Startup Lisboa provides mentorship, workspace, and networking for early-stage startups across sectors. It was launched with backing from the Lisbon City Council, bank Montepio, and IAPMEI (the Portuguese SME agency), reflecting strong civic support. Over an incubation period of up to 3 years, startups receive guidance on refining their business model, access to strategic partners, and help connecting with investors. Office space is a big draw: Startup Lisboa offers subsidized offices and co-working spots to dozens of startups, easing a major burden in early stages. The incubator runs several vertical programs, including dedicated tracks for tourism, social innovation, and fintech in partnership with corporates. Lisbon’s booming tourism industry spurred Startup Lisboa to create initiatives for travel-tech and “Smart Tourism” – alumni in this space include Unbabel (AI translation for customer service, now a scaleup with $90M+ raised). Other success stories from Startup Lisboa’s portfolio are EatTasty (food delivery, expanded to Madrid) and Hole19 (a golf app with millions of users). Besides incubation, Startup Lisboa manages events like the Lisbon Challenge (an international acceleration program) and interfaces with Portugal’s Startup Visa program to attract foreign founders. They also collaborate with Web Summit (the major tech conference hosted in Lisbon) to showcase local talent. A distinctive project is the “Made of Lisboa” community brand, which Startup Lisboa spearheads to unite the city’s tech scene. The incubator has supported over 300 startups, which have created an estimated 3,000+ jobs. Startup Lisboa also played a role in rejuvenating Lisbon’s downtown, turning it into a lively startup hub. With Lisbon now on the map as a startup-friendly city (helped by initiatives like €200M VC fund of funds from the government), Startup Lisboa continues to be at the heart of it – fostering new companies in an open, founder-centric environment, and solidifying Lisbon’s reputation as a launchpad for international startups in Southern Europe.

Startup Lisboa

Lisbon, Portugal · Innovation Hub

Startup Lisboa is Lisbon's pioneering startup incubation and innovation hub, founded in 2012 as a public-private partnership between the Lisbon City Council, Banco Montepio, and several corporate sponsors. Operating from multiple buildings in the historic Baixa district and a dedicated food-tech hub, Startup Lisboa provides workspace, mentorship, and structured incubation programs to early-stage startups across technology, social innovation, food, and creative industries. The hub has supported over 600 startups since launch, with alumni including Uniplaces, Codacy, and Landing.jobs. Startup Lisboa offers programs ranging from 3 to 18 months, with access to a mentor network of 200+ experienced founders and executives, investor introductions, and internationalization support. It is a cornerstone institution in Lisbon's rise as one of Europe's most attractive startup destinations, alongside Web Summit's relocation to the city.

Stephan Morais

Lisbon, Portugal · Person

Managing General Partner and co-founder of Indico Capital Partners, Portugal's leading independent venture firm. Formerly an executive at Caixa Capital, he has built Indico into a >€244M multi-fund platform and is one of Southern Europe's most prominent early-stage investors, backing companies such as Sword Health and Anchorage Digital.

Unbabel

Lisbon, Portugal · Startup

AI-powered Language Operations (LangOps) platform combining machine translation with human editors for multilingual customer support and content. Founded 2013 in Lisbon; acquired by TransPerfect in August 2025.

Web Summit

Lisbon, Portugal · Event Organisator

Global conference organizer behind Web Summit, one of the world's largest annual tech gatherings held in Lisbon since 2016. Drawing over 70,000 attendees from 150+ countries, the event features the PITCH startup competition, investor matchmaking through Alpha and Beta programs, and has become a cornerstone of Lisbon's booming startup ecosystem.

Web Summit 2026

Lisbon, Portugal · Event

Major global tech conference in Lisbon attracting 70,000+ attendees, featuring one of the largest French national pavilions and a dedicated French Tech lounge. Covers AI, climate tech, fintech, and deep tech across multiple stages. Essential for European startups seeking global investor access, media coverage, and corporate partnership opportunities.