ISCTE/MIT Venture Competition releases newsletter issue #12. This month we talk about the 3rd edition launch, startups Move Mile and Actual Sun and Paulo Trezentos from Caixa Mágica, is our guest for the opinion article. Don't miss it, there is a lot more to read about!

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Newsletter #12, 19th March, 2012
Musikki is the 2nd ed. Grand Finalist!
The 3rd Edition is on!
In a packed auditorium of 500 technology
The submission period for the 3rd ed. just
enthusiasts, judges, keynote speakers
and alumni, Gonçalo Amorim welcomed all
opened! Go online and send your
present. application, deadline - 1st May.
After the 4 finalists deck pitches, the audience Who are we looking for? Start-ups &
was called upon to vote on the highest potential Spin-outs (<5y) and entrepreneurs
start-up, using BIPS solution, developed dedicated to the development of tech-
by Around Knowledge, 1st ed. Grand Finalist. based opportunities for global markets.
The Award Partner, represented by Walter Why should you apply? 80,0% of semi-
Palma, announced the Grand Finalist – Musikki. finalists succeed in launching a start-up
The founder, João Afonso introduced for the first and 69,0% raise funding.
time, live their brand new Facebook app!!
What do I need to apply? Send us a 2-
page Executive Summary and a 12-slide
PPT OR a 3min. video describing the
opportunity.
Be the next one to succeed, apply now!
For more info, go online, and read the Rules & Regulations.
Carlos Oliveira, Deputy Minister for Innovation
and Entrepreneurship, convinied the closing __________________________________________
speech to which followed a networking and poster
session. The 1st Alumni meeting closed the
ceremony. Visit the photo gallery
The New Portuguese Start-ups Profile
Actual Sun - blasting off By Paulo Trezentos
Actual Sun, a 2nd ed. Go-to-Market Plan Wizard,
is currently in the US at SURGE Accelerator Caixa Mágica, Technical Director
focused on customer and product development.
Off to a great start!
There are some very basic, yet undeniable, facts in the economic crisis we
live today. First, if consumer spending and public sector demand in
Portugal is slowing down at a fast pace, our companies should turn the
With a new member onboard, the start-up has focus to external markets. Secondly, if you want to target international
acquired a new Spanish customer and is
targeting at least 3 others. The co-founders are markets you should have a strong offer of tradable goods. Electricity
making the most from the US DOE SunShot production, construction and civil engineering, property brokerage or
Program as a way to part finance their insurance services are traditional sectors of any developed economy but,
development of a prototype into a final product.
other than a few exceptions, such sectors offer low potential of having real
impact in exports. Thirdly, you must be competitive and know your
Move Mile a step towards internationalization customers well. There's work to be done now.
Move, the electric driverless vehicle develop by Entrepreneurs have different visions and various motivations but they all
Move Mile 1st ed. semi-finalist, is currently in use
share the same goal: to have success and build solid solutions to problems.
at a central hospital in Coimbra (Portugal). It was
recently visited by representatives of the Argelian
Government that showed interested in the

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product. Put yourself in the ISCTE MIT-Portugal Entrepreneurship Initiative Winners'
shoes. What would be the profile that you would look for in your start-up?
There is not, of course, only one profile that fits all startups and I will focus
in the technological ones. As a prouder founder of two technological
companies created with a gap of almost ten years between them, I
discovered that we live in amazing times. And that's a unique, real
opportunity.
The visit was part of a technology roadshow that
the Argelian entourage made in Portugal last
month. Caixa Mágica was born as a project for Linux distribution in Portugal, in
2000 and in ISCTE-IUL. At the time it was only me together with two other
Are you a semi-finalist looking for extra enthusiastic colleagues. Back that time, the concept of entrepreneurship,
funding? incubating and startup acceleration was not spread. Of course, we had role
Start-ups having raised VC money and looking for
models of entrepreneurs that reached the success with international
extra funding to boost developments in their companies such as Cray, Sun Microsystems or HP.
products and sales, are encouraged to apply for
public financing incentives – QREN. A majority of In 2004, with two other partners we have created our first product: Caixa
semi-finalists do manage to successfully closed
QREN funding. Go online to find out more and Mágica Software. As a startup solely dedicated to that purpose, Caixa
check the new deadlines for submissions. Mágica Software aimed at two different market segments: i) Linux
distribution for personal use, companies and public administration and ii)
Silicon Valley Bootcamp @ ISCTE-IUL consultancy in Open Source technologies. The break-even was reached in
outcomes 2007 and since then we have been profitable.
ISCTE-IUL and Leadership Business Consulting
offices of San Francisco hosted a bootcamp last 7 Looking back, there was no venture capital or accelerators. Our key points
& 8th March in Lisbon. 7 starts-ups had the to success were i) focusing (“the open source specialists”), ii) building a
chance to work on their pitches and networking great team – we are now over 30 - and iii) balancing our offer between
techniques with the organizing team – Torben
Rankine and Henrique Gomes (Leadership BC), products and services. On the other hand, the participation in European
two entrepreneurship expert Professors from the research projects was very useful to drive our mindset to innovation and
University of San Francisco and Gonçalo Amorim creativity. Our ambition is growing continually ever since. To date we
(ISCTE-IUL), joined forces in helping future maintain the leadership as “the open source company” in the Portuguese
entrepreneurs getting off the ground.
market. Now we are looking beyond our frontiers. The stakes couldn't be
higher.
João Martins from Much Beta, “this was an
inspiring event that gave me a new perspective Aptoide is Caixa Mágica's first ever spin-out, founded in 2011 with the
on how to make business.” vision of providing the largest independent Marketplace of Android
applications. Competing with Google Android Market, we envision that there
CEV to run field trials is space and opportunity (and fun to be had) to offer an Android App Store
that is driven by the community. With our Linux expertise – Android is Linux,
ISA's spin-out CEV, Biotecnologia das Plantas,
S.A. has signed a distribution and development by the way – and the research background in software package installation,
agreement with FMC Corporation a patented we started very early the development of the concept. It is not by chance
fungicide, which has a new mode of action. FMC that Aptoide team is distributed between Lisbon and San Francisco, CA /
will develop and market the fungicide in the
USA. It's just a consequence of our global offering, where competition
United States and Canada as Problad Plus™ for
all crop and non-crop uses. Know more. couldn't be tougher. But it wouldn't be fun if it were otherwise, right?
Do you have a great idea? In the process of building new co's, our experience has taught us that
Lisbon is the perfect place to have a sound technical team. Good
Energia de Portugal is an entrepreneurship engineers, reasonable wages, nice weather, great lifestyle. San Francisco /
initiative looking for entrepreneurs with or
Silicon Valley is important to reach out to partners, to shape the product
without fresh ideas. It aims at organising 50
teams of 4 individuals around an idea and and to finance and scale up your venture, i.e. meet with Venture Capital
provide promoters the right tools for lean firms and close deals.

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business development.
Having reached 60.000 unique users / day of our Android native app and
450.000 page views / day of our mobile site, Silicon Valley is important in
the continuous process of the product definition (“shaping”). Who are our
clients? How do we make money? What features are critical?
In the Valley, time goes fast, very fast. You watch your competition working
Interest? Deadline for applications 31th March.
hard and that makes you work even harder. You drink coffee with someone
Check our latest Job Offers here
that pitches you the concept of his startup, and two weeks later you heard
that it was sold to Google. There is also a downside. There are so many
Save the Dates – update your calendar now: ideas, so many startups, that sometimes it is difficult to be heard and be
listening in the middle of so much “noise”.
21 & 27.03.2012 Masschallenge info session
27.03.2012 Knowledge Intensive Services
(KIS) AS DRIVERS OF EUROPEAN The first years of Caixa Mágica, back then in the previous decade, and now
SMES COMPETITIVENESS Aptoide are different not only because they address different markets. They
27 & 29.03.2012 Product Development and the are different because the “playfield” has changed. In the beginning of Caixa
(extra sessions in Innovation Process for Researchers
April) Mágica, we posted in USENET newsgroups to spread the word and the
31.03.2012 Energia de Portugal – Deadline for news about the company appeared in sites. Today, Aptoide is growing
applications. through the social networks as Twitter and news, such as the
19-20.04.2012 European Seminar: European
Contract Practice for R&D Projects announcement of new versions, appear first in Aptoide's Facebook page.
24-26.04.2012 HANNOVER MESSE 2012 Flying to London is cheaper and faster than drive by car to Braga, for
26.04.2012 Annual In-NOW-vation Tech instance. We do more Skype conferences calls than physical meetings. The
Showcase and Celebration
01.05.2012 3rd ed. ISCTE/MIT VC - Deadline for
world has become a village. So don't think you are safe just because your
Applications competitors are sitting thousands of miles away. I guess that's a challenge
for us Portuguese. But in the 15th century, it wasn't.
More events around Europe? Here
The ISCTE-IUL MIT-Portugal entrepreneurship initiative together with other
Follow us on groups such as Leadership Consulting and Beta-i are shaping the future of
Portugal. Together they are doing an amazing job at changing one of the
most critical variables of Startup creation: the mindset. We have material
bodies and, in a certain time, we belong to a certain place. But our mindset
is immaterial and maybe everywhere. Must be everywhere. Must be global.
The world is our home.
This means that our clients maybe in China or Singapore. Our partner
maybe in San Francisco. Our Venture capital funding may be in London...
We should live each day looking for new solutions for our challenges and
opportunities that maybe thousand miles away. One should not be cheap
and take calculated risks. If the largest industry gathering is a congress in
Barcelona, it is better to travel there for three days and have 16 hours days
with meetings, coffees and pitches, than spending two months doing typical
meetings in our city.
And that is the real profile of a new breed of Startup companies and
Portuguese entrepreneurs. As in the beginning of times, the ambition is the
sky. But we use the five continents to reach it.
The Organization wishes to thank Paulo Trezentos for his contribution to the current
Newsletter issue with this opinion article.

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