The 8th Gala Montepio Acredita Portugal Entrepreneurship Contest is coming back to Lisbon on May 30 with a startup pitch competition and prizes.
The Montepio Acredita Portugal Entrepreneurship Contest aims to reward the best projects and help all Portuguese entrepreneurs develop their ideas.
The competition takes place May 30 at the Centro de Congressos de Lisboa and tickets to the event are free and available here.
Besides being a kind of live “Shark Tank,” according to the organizers, the gala is a unique opportunity for the participants to meet representatives of a vast network of partners and advisers, and some of the most interesting startups in Portugal.
In this award ceremony, Portuguese entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to get to know and interact with the entire ecosystem, from Montepio Acredita’s partners, advisers, jury members, and investors.
The Montepio Acredita Portugal Jury is made up of personalities who stand out in their field and whose feedback can really make a difference in the projects of the participants.
Although the jury members have not yet confirmed, you can see below a list of some personalities who have served on the jury in the past:
- Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa – Professor Universitário
- João Vasconcelos – Executive Director Startup Lisboa
- Isabel Neves – Business Angels Club Lisboa e Shark Tank
- Marco Galinha – Grupo Bel e Shark Tank
- João Pereira – Portugal Ventures
- Francisco Ferreira Pinto – Busy Angels
- Luís Paulo Tenente – Banif Capital
The Montepio Acredita Portugal Entrepreneurship Contest was created to respond to the association’s mission of fostering a culture of possibility to free the entrepreneurial potential of the Portuguese people.
It is intended to be a training space in entrepreneurship, which supports:
- Generating new ideas
- Structuring ideas in projects
- Testing concepts
- Elaborating business plans
- Presenting projects to investors
While the full list of prizes for this year’s edition is not disclosed, prizes in the past have included:
- €50,000 Investment (investment proposal to be delivered to one of the finalists or winners)
- InterRail double ticket (to be delivered to the most “applauded” team at the Awards Gala)
In April, the 21 finalists for the eighth edition of Montepio Acredita Portugal were announced at the Microsoft Portugal headquarters in Lisbon.
Read More: Meet the 21 Montepio Acredita Portugal finalists
All finalists will now go through a pre-acceleration period of five weeks, during which the teams meet with various entities with the aim of acquiring skills for the development and implementation of their projects.
The finalists of the Montepio Acredita Portugal were divided into seven categories for the contest:
- Social Entrepreneurship
- Education
- New Products
- Web Platforms
- New Technologies
- 2018 Mobility Brisa Award
- K.Tech Award
In total, Montepio Acredita Portugal received 11,477 applications. The largest number of submitted projects were related to social entrepreneurship (2,050 applications), followed by Commerce (898), restoration (645) and industry (635).
The awards ceremony takes place on May 30, 2018 at the Centro de Congressos de Lisboa. The contest counts, among others, with partners such as Caixa Economic Montepio Geral, Brisa, KCS IT, Creative Minds, Say U Consulting, Microsoft, Sage, 360 Print, and DNS.pt.