It seems like just yesterday (er, seven years ago!) that I started honing in on the rapid growth of Portugal’s burgeoning startup and investment scene. I updated my article in 2021, only to find an explosion of new companies and investors.
Today comes further proof that Portugal is spreading its wings as one of Europe’s freshest and hungriest tech ecosystems: Entrepreneur Shilling has launched a €50m fund to support growth-stage start-ups in its own portfolio and also — mainly — to invest in start-ups anywhere else.
The VC arm of Portuguese private equity firm Draycott SCR, Shilling is best known as an early-stage investor in startups such as Talka, Unbabel, Bizay, Uniplaces and Best Tables (acquired by TripAdvisor in 2015).
Shilling’s newest fund, the Opportunity Fund, will give it additional firepower to support early-stage startups for longer, with investments of up to €5 million for Series A and beyond. According to the firm, over 90% of the fund’s target was raised at first close and the fund has already invested in shilling portfolio company Coverflex.
Despite having a vibrant startup ecosystem, Portugal has one of the lowest VC investment to GDP ratios in Europe — five times lower than the European average; according at Atomico.
This has created a funding gap for growth-stage startups. Shilling’s Opportunity Fund will be a welcome bridge across this gap.
“We want to be one of the players that will follow our startups throughout their journey, hence this new fund,” Ricardo Jacinto, managing partner at Shilling, told me. “Obviously, we want to keep an eye on new opportunities. This is the position of this fund. […] We don’t want to limit ourselves to just holding companies.”
“As the market recovers from post-pandemic stabilization, our new fund will support growth-stage companies as they scale,” said Hugo Gonçalves Pereira, founding partner at Shilling.
Norberto Guimarães, co-founder and CEO of Talka, added: “Shilling is inevitable in the Portuguese early-stage startup scene. They quickly supported Talka, connecting me to the community after traveling for 12 years in the Bay Area.”
Backing technology founders early on was key to Shilling’s growth as a company. In 2021, that launched a €55 million ($35.6 million) early-stage fund called the Shilling Founders Fund, which was backed by just over 35 successful tech founders, as well as European VC Atomico.
Shilling was founded in 2011 by Pereira, a real estate investor and proptech founder. António Casanova, CEO of Unilever FIMA. Diogo da Silveira, chairman & NED in listed and funded European companies. João Coelho Borges, leading PE investor and founding partner at Draycott; and executives Juan Alvarez and Pedro Rutkowski.
Later, the team was joined by entrepreneurs and founders, including Miguel Santo Amaro (co-founder of Uniplaces and Coverflex), Ricardo Jacinto, Pedro Ramalho Carlos and Maria Villas-Boas.
Shilling is not the only Portuguese venture firm that has grown in recent years. In 2022, Lisbon-based venture capital firm Indico Capital Partners launched a €50 million climate technology fund, called the Indico Blue Fund. Other top VC firms in the country include; Faber, Armilar Venture Partners, Dare and Portugal Ventures.
