Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and often come from high technology industries such as information technology (IT) or biotechnology.
The Instituto Superior Técnico is the school of engineering and technology of the University of Lisbon. It was founded as an autonomous school in 1911, and was integrated into the Technical University of Lisbon in 1930. IST is the largest school of engineering in Portugal by number of enrolled students, faculty size, scientific production and patents.
Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California which specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. As of 2022, the firm had approximately US$85 billion in assets under management.
OutSystems is a low-code development platform which provides tools for companies to develop, deploy and manage omnichannel enterprise applications.
Stephan Morais is a Portuguese British investor.
Lightspeed Venture Partners is a global venture capital firm focusing on seed stage, early stage investments and growth stage investments in the enterprise, fintech, consumer and healthcare sectors. Lightspeed has eleven offices globally and as of 2023 had approximately US$25 billion in assets under management.
Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) is a US-based venture capital investment firm focusing on fast-growing technology companies. IVP was founded in 1980, making it one of the first venture capital firms in Silicon Valley.
James W. Breyer is an American venture capitalist, founder and chief executive officer of Breyer Capital, an investment and venture philanthropy firm, and a former managing partner at Accel Partners, a venture capital firm. Breyer has invested in over 40 companies that have gone public or completed a merger, with some of these investments, including Facebook, earning over 100 times cost and many others over 25 times cost. On the Forbes 2021 list of the 400 richest Americans, he was ranked #389, with a net worth of US$2.9 billion.
AH Capital Management, LLC is an American privately held venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of April 2023, Andreessen Horowitz ranks first on the list of venture capital firms by assets under management, with $42 billion as of May 2024.
New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is an American-based venture capital firm. NEA focuses investment stages ranging from seed stage through growth stage across an array of industry sectors. With over $25 billion in committed capital, NEA is one of the world's largest venture capital firms.
Seedcamp is a European seed-stage venture capital fund, headquartered in London, launched in May 2007 by a group of 30 European investors. The fund's Managing Partners are Reshma Sohoni and Carlos Espinal.
In business, a unicorn is a startup company valued at over US$1 billion which is privately owned and not listed on a share market. The term was first published in 2013, coined by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, choosing the mythical animal to represent the statistical rarity of such successful ventures.
Aileen Lee is a U.S. venture capital angel investor and co-founder of Cowboy Ventures.
Sapphire Ventures is a venture capital firm with offices in Menlo Park, San Francisco, Austin, and London. The firm is considered one of the world's premier venture capital firms.
Unbabel is an artificial intelligence-powered human translation platform. The company has headquarters in Lisbon, Portugal, and San Francisco, California.
Initialized Capital is a venture capital fund founded in 2011 and headquartered in San Francisco. It was founded by Alexis Ohanian, Harjeet Taggar, and Garry Tan.
Yadin B. Kaufmann is an Israeli-American technology investor, social entrepreneur and writer.
Moritz Baier-Lentz is a German-American venture capitalist. He is a partner and the head of gaming at Lightspeed Venture Partners, leading the firm's investments in game studios, platforms, and technologies. Previously, Baier-Lentz was a vice president in the investment banking division of Goldman Sachs, where he founded and led the firm's global gaming practice. A former #1 ranked competitive player of Diablo II, he has invested over $100 million into entrepreneurs who have been leading the creation of video games like Fortnite, Call of Duty, League of Legends, Halo, Destiny, Overwatch, Valorant, Apex Legends, Sky, StarCraft II, and Warcraft III.
Robert (Rob) Kniaz is an American venture capitalist based in London. He is a founding partner of H-Tree Capital, a VC firm investing in deep tech and bio/healthcare, and was formerly a partner of Hoxton Ventures, an early-stage investment venture capital firm. Previously, he worked at Google as a product manager for AdSense.
Talkdesk is a software as a service company that provides cloud-based call center software. Based in San Francisco, the company was founded in Portugal in 2011 by Tiago Paiva, who is the current CEO, and Cristina Fonseca.
