Lisbon mayor promises to set up unicorn factory for tech startups in city next year
"The Lisbon Unicorn Factory will be the place where we teach the details and the process so that young people can transform their ideas into great businesses," the mayor of Lisbon explained.
The Mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas, on Monday promised to establish the Lisbon Unicorn Factory next year and called on the tech startups attending the Web Summit to “come and stay” in the Portuguese capital.
Carlos Moedas was speaking at the opening of Web Summit, the technology summit that kicked off Monday in Lisbon.
“I think the great thing about Web Summit is that this is the place where people who love details come together,” the new Lisbon mayor stressed.
“We have to be able to go beyond the Web Summit, we have to make you and companies stay in Lisbon” because they see “the opportunity”, the former European commissioner stressed.
“The Lisbon Unicorn Factory will be the place where we teach the details and the process so that young people can transform their ideas into great businesses, create jobs and change the world and have a purpose”, reinforced Carlos Moedas.
And he left a message for Web Summit participants: “Whatever you do in life, whatever your project is, dream big, go deep into the details”.
Because “that is what can change the world, and if you do that I can only tell you one thing: Lisbon is the right place to do it”, he stressed.
This is because the Portuguese capital “is the only city” that connects “details with dreams”, he pointed out.
Therefore, “come and stay in Lisbon, it is a city open to you”, he concluded.
The Web Summit takes place between November 1 and 4 in Lisbon, in face-to-face mode, after the last edition was ‘online’. The organisation expects around 40,000 participants, according to Paddy Cosgrave, executive chairman of the summit.
Comedian Amy Poehler, Microsoft president Brad Smith, European commissioner Margrethe Vestager and football player Gerard Pique will join more than 1,000 speakers, about 1,250 startups, 1,500 journalists and more than 700 investors, in a summit in which topics such as technology and society, among others, will be discussed, according to the organisation.
