Porto is shortlisted as an European city where startups will transform into unicorns

Porto was shortlisted among the 13 European cities to produce unicorns, in the coming years, according to the findings of the Startup Cities Alliance (SCALE) report. The Invicta is pinpointed By the SCALE report as one of the cities in Europe where unicorns are building up; that is, a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion.

Porto is part of an entrepreneurship network that features already 54 ventures that are considered unicorns; however, the report by the tech company from Holland, Dealroom.co shows that these figures are expected to shoot up. Their study enhances that seven out of the ten most valuable software companies in Europe are based in the cities that are part of the SCALE, In addition to Porto these are Amsterdam, Antwerp, Barcelona, Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, Helsinki, Lisboa, Munich, Roma, Stockholm and Vienna.

There will be a high of 130 unicorns in the near future, and according to this document, this network of cities will surpass the world competitors, even getting closer to the first place, occupied by the USA and China.

Moreover, SCALE put up an organised map that shows that this European alliance is the fifth unicorn’s nursery at global level, and that startups founded in these cities, since the year 2000, are worth 350 billion euros, and have collected circa 27 billion in venture capital funding and have created around 300 thousand jobs, a figure constantly increasing.

Portugal already has three unicorns - OutSystems, Farfetch, located in Porto, at the Boavista Office Center, Talkdesk, with offices near Campo 24 de Agosto – and there are currently at least two companies with the potencial to become a unicorn: Sword Health, which is recruiting, and Platforme.

It should be highlighted that Porto is the Best Start-up Friendly City of Europe 2018. The award was granted on 19 February, during the World Excellence Awards, in Istanbul, known as an investment hub in the Middle East.