CEO of american company Cloudflare says Portugal ‘isn’t a serious country’ and threatens to cut investment
Cloudflare leader threatens to cut investment in the country due to unresolved bureaucratic difficulties. In October, the American giant had announced 500 more jobs in the country.
Portugal is not a ‘serious country’ and the conditions for investment have worsened over the last six years of Cloudflare’s presence in Portugal. ‘Every promise the government has made to reduce bureaucracy, making it easier to operate as a business and try to hire, has been broken,’ accuses Mathew Prince, CEO of the US giant, in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
‘Portugal has worsened significantly since we started investing in the country. If this trend continues, we will stop investing. And if you’re considering it as a technology company, you’d be crazy to do so without strong guarantees from the government,’ says the CEO on the social network.
‘We were promised a lot to hire a lot of people in Portugal. We hired a lot of people and the Portuguese government didn’t fulfil any of its promises,’ the manager accuses, describing the process as a “#clownshow”.
Conditions in general have worsened, but ‘especially immigration’, as well as ‘visas’ and a ‘suffocating’ bureaucracy. ‘I’m mostly tired of being told that things will get better if we invest more, only for the trends to keep getting worse.’
In comparison with other emerging markets in America, Portugal compares badly: ‘Colombia, Chile, and perhaps now Argentina. All more serious countries than Portugal,’ says Prince . But also with the Middle East. ‘Portugal promises more and delivers much, much less.’
Intention to hire up to 500 more people
In October last year, Cloudflare moved to new offices in Lisbon and announced its intention to hire between 400 and 500 people over the next four years. This project, if realised, would bring the company’s hub in Portugal up to 800 people, the same as the delegation in Austin, USA.
The Cloudflare CEO’s complaints about the difficulties of hiring professionals abroad and the long queues at the airport are not new. Back in 2018, when he visited Portugal to analyse the opening of an office in the country, he took to social media to voice his discontent.
‘[I landed] in Lisbon to investigate the possibility of opening a Cloudflare office here. The two-hour queue to get through immigration doesn’t make a good first impression,’ wrote the American entrepreneur, in a message accompanied by a photo of a long queue at Humberto Delgado Airport.