Lisbon, July 7, 2026 (Lusa) - Portugal needs to create a community similar to the one in the San Francisco Bay Area, where entrepreneurs rub shoulders on a daily basis, said João Günther Amaral, CEO of venture capital company, Bright Pixel.
“I think this country has enormous potential and has shown an unrivalled ability to attract talent,” said Amaral.
The CEO described the atmosphere in the Bay Area as a community where entrepreneurs meet up every day to have coffee or share a meal.
“When you go to San Francisco and the Bay Area, there’s a huge community of people who know one another and who bump into each other when they go for a swim, when they go to the gym, when they go to a café, when they have breakfast, or when they drop their children off at school,” said João Günther Amaral, adding that there “you find people from all companies, from all sectors, and they interact with one another on a day-to-day basis”.
According to the head of Bright Pixel, Portugal is still at the stage of creating spaces to facilitate these encounters between people from different business sectors, with the aim of stimulating entrepreneurship.
“We are still at the stage where we need to create Portugal’s start-ups, the unicorn factories, the UPTECs (University of Porto Science and Technology Park) – all these communities so that these people can come together,” he said.
The CEO noted, however, that Portugal is home to a large number of entrepreneurs from all over the world, whose companies are run from Portugal.
“Portugal currently has a large number of founders, of start-up founders on a global scale, whether they are American, South American or European – people who have moved here, live in Portugal and run their teams and companies from here,” he said.
“It’s impressive how many people are here,” he added.
He also stated that he believes the community of investors and founders of crypto-asset companies in Portugal is one of the largest in the world.
“The crypto community in Lisbon (…) is the largest in the world, or one of the largest in the world,” revealed the CEO, although he admitted he was not intimately familiar with this situation.
“I think there is talent; our universities are excellent and, from my perspective, there is a huge opportunity in Portugal,” he said.
“There is a disruption taking place right now,” he said, referring to the impact of artificial intelligence on young graduates “looking for their first job”, whom he considered to be “the group most affected initially by the capabilities that artificial intelligence offers today”.
“These are highly qualified young people staying in Portugal, becoming entrepreneurs and setting up their own businesses, and also making Portugal a place that can play a much more active role in the technological disruption taking place worldwide" .
AJR/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa
