Co-Investing with US and European VCs

I’ve been investing in Portuguese technology companies since 2005, when I wrote my first check into OutSystems. Back then, there was no “Portuguese startup ecosystem” to speak of. There were a handful of ambitious founders, a small circle of angels, and an unshakeable conviction that world-class technology companies could be built from Lisbon.

What I didn’t fully appreciate at the time was how lonely that conviction would feel — and how transformative it would be when others started to share it.

The Sole Investor Years

In the early days of Portuguese venture capital, being the sole institutional investor in a company was not unusual — it was the norm. Rounds were small. Syndicates, when they existed, were informal groups of angels. The concept of a “lead investor” setting terms for a round that other funds would follow was largely imported from markets we read about but rarely participated in.

This created a particular kind of friction. As a sole investor, you carried the full burden of governance, follow-on capital, and strategic guidance. When things went wrong — and in venture, things always go wrong — there was no partner at the board table to share the weight of difficult decisions. You were the sounding board, the bridge lender, the crisis counselor, and the capital source, all at once.

It worked, sometimes. But it was fragile. And it limited the scale of ambition that companies could realistically pursue.

The Emergence of Portuguese VCs

The first structural shift came when dedicated Portuguese venture capital funds began to form. Funds like Caixa Capital, Portugal Ventures, and later Indico Capital and Armilar brought institutional discipline to a market that had been running on conviction and personal networks.

Suddenly, there were partners to co-invest with. Rounds could be larger. Companies could raise without their entire cap table being a single fund and a collection of angels. This was progress — real, meaningful progress — but the ecosystem was still largely self-referential. Portuguese VCs investing in Portuguese companies, with Portuguese LPs.

When the Americans and Europeans Arrived

The inflection point came when US and pan-European venture funds started writing checks into Portuguese companies. Not as a curiosity or an emerging market allocation — but because the companies were genuinely compelling.

Sapphire Ventures into Feedzai. When Sapphire led Feedzai’s growth round, it wasn’t a vote of confidence in Portugal — it was a vote of confidence in a world-class AI fraud detection platform that happened to have been built in Portugal. The signal it sent to the market was electric.

Octopus Ventures into Uniplaces. A London-based fund backing a Lisbon-founded student accommodation marketplace that was scaling across Europe. It validated that Portuguese founders could build pan-European businesses with international backing.

Storm Ventures into Talkdesk. A Silicon Valley fund investing in what would become one of Portugal’s most successful technology exports — a cloud contact center platform that grew to a multi-billion dollar valuation. Tiago Paiva built Talkdesk from Lisbon and proved that a Portuguese founder could win in one of the most competitive SaaS categories in the world.

The Power of Syndication

What changed when international VCs entered wasn’t just the size of the checks — it was the quality of the conversations around the board table.

When you co-invest with a fund that has backed 200 SaaS companies, they bring pattern recognition that no amount of local market knowledge can replicate. When a US growth fund joins your Series B, they bring relationships with potential customers, acquirers, and talent that open doors a Portuguese fund simply cannot.

I experienced this firsthand with companies like Aptoide, where we syndicated alongside international investors who brought deep expertise in mobile ecosystems and app distribution. The company benefited not just from more capital, but from fundamentally better strategic guidance.

With DefinedCrowd, our co-investment alongside US funds gave the company credibility in the American market that accelerated its go-to-market timeline by years. When a Seattle-based AI data company is backed by both Portuguese and American VCs, enterprise customers take notice.

“The best partnerships in venture capital aren’t formed in good times — they’re forged in shared adversity. When you’ve sat across the table from a co-investor during a down round or a pivot, you know whether they’re a partner or a passenger.” — Fernando Ferreira, Ventures.eu

What We Look For in Co-Investment Partners

After two decades of co-investing — sometimes brilliantly, sometimes painfully — I’ve developed a clear framework for evaluating potential syndicate partners:

Alignment on time horizon. The most destructive force in a venture syndicate is misaligned expectations about when and how to exit. We look for partners who share our patient, long-term orientation.

Complementary expertise. The best syndicates combine local knowledge with global reach, technical depth with commercial acumen, and operational experience with strategic vision.

Follow-on commitment. We want partners who will be there for the next round — especially the difficult ones. Fair-weather co-investors create more problems than they solve.

Founder alignment. Ultimately, the syndicate exists to serve the founder and the company. We look for partners who share our founder-first philosophy and who earn their board seats through genuine value creation.

The Opportunity Ahead

Portugal’s venture ecosystem has reached an inflection point. The companies being built today are more ambitious, more technically sophisticated, and more internationally oriented than anything we saw in 2005 or even 2015. The co-investment opportunities are correspondingly more compelling.

For international investors looking at European venture capital, Portugal offers something rare: a market where you can still access exceptional companies at reasonable valuations, with local partners who have been in the trenches for decades, and a founder community that has proven it can build at global scale.

The days of the sole investor are over. The future of Portuguese venture capital is syndicated, international, and — I believe — extraordinarily promising.