Cloudflare CEO ‘irritated’ with Portugal, but not alone in visa complaints

Portugal and Cloudflare are involved in a “new irritant”. Delays in granting visas and bureaucracy have led the CEO of the US cybersecurity technology company, Matthew Prince, to accuse Portugal of not being a “serious country” and threaten to cut investment in the country. But he’s not alone in his complaints about the slowness of visas.

“It’s a complaint that is repeated in our follow-up meetings”, says Vítor Ferreira, general manager of Startup Leiria.

“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 some strong guarantees from the government”, accused the CEO of Cloudflare, in a post on the social network X (formerly Twitter). “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”, he added.

The conditions for investing have worsened in various aspects, but “above all [in] immigration”, as well as visas and what he says is “suffocating” bureaucracy. “Above all, I’m tired of being told that things will get better if we invest more, only for the trends to keep getting worse”, he said.

The North American company’s CEO not only classifies the whole process as a “clownshow”, but also considers that Portugal compares badly with Latin American countries — “Colombia, Chile, and perhaps now Argentina. All more serious countries than Portugal” — or the Middle East, considering that, compared to this region, “Portugal promises more and delivers much, much less”.

Although not as sharply as the criticism voiced by the CEO of Cloudflare — who, according to information obtained by ECO, had an “incident” with his luggage on his way out of Portugal, on a private flight from Tires Aerodrome in Cascais — the delay in granting visas is a matter of concern for technology companies that want to hire talent from outside the European Union.

Startup Leiria’s incubator welcomes “dozens of teams” from Brazil, the United States, Ukraine and India, among other countries. “Time is one of the essential elements for a technology company. A national backlog that AIMA [Portuguese Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum] itself has admitted will be around 347,000 cases by the start of 2024 is not normal”, laments Vítor Ferreira, Startup Leiria’s general manager, in statements to ECO.

This situation has an impact on the day-to-day running of companies. “For teams of up to ten people, losing a senior engineer because the authorisation doesn’t come through on time is the business equivalent of Mike Tyson’s ‘punch in the face’: it disorganises roadmaps, scares off investors and undermines morale”, says the head of the Leiria incubator, a city that ranks third in the country in StartupBlink’s “Global Startup Ecosystem Index 2025”, the national ecosystem with the highest percentage growth (121%), climbing 156 places to the 450th place overall among the more than 1,000 cities worldwide analysed by StartupBlink. Only Lisbon and Porto were better placed.

The vice-president of the National Association of Young Entrepreneurs (ANJE) confirms that there is “generalised discontent with the slowness of some processes, especially in the area of immigration”. “There’s a recurring feeling that, over the years, we’ve been promised that ‘things will get better’, but without really significant or lasting progress”, says Filipa Pinto de Carvalho, co-founder of AGPC, which provides investment-related services, Here Partners and Red Bridge Lisboa.

“It is essential for the country’s credibility as a destination for innovation and investment that we are consistent with the promises we make and the image we promote as an open and competitive technological ecosystem”, she adds, hoping that this public alert will have beneficial consequences for the country, by providing public entities with the necessary means to speed up licensing.

Portuguese-Brazilian José Bouça, co-founder of Tonnie Talent, corroborates this lament. “On a daily basis, we hear recurring concerns from the companies we collaborate with: the uncertainty about the deadlines for legalising foreign professionals — which, in practice, often exceed 180 days — has a direct impact on projects and strategic decisions. Added to this is the growing difficulty in accessing housing, as a result of the pressure on rental prices”, says the co-founder of the startup, incubated in Leiria, which offers personalised mobility and integration services for companies hiring foreign talent.

“Portugal is currently going through a period of adjustment. After years of ‘open door’ policies, additional requirements and greater rigour in processes are now emerging. Via Verde has emerged as an interesting response, but it still has no visible practical application in our ecosystem — especially for startups and SMEs that don’t fit the established criteria. It’s undoubtedly a promising initiative, but it hasn’t yet had a direct impact”, says Tonnie’s co-founder when asked about the mechanism recently created by the government to speed up the hiring of immigrants.

The same goes for Vítor Ferreira. “So far, practically no”, says the director-general of Startup Leiria when asked if the incubatees were using Via Verde. “The reason is prosaic: the decree that created Via Verde (15 April) limited fast-track to companies with around 150 employees or associations with more than 30 members and a turnover of 200 million euros. None of the home-grown startups fulfil these thresholds, nor does Startup Leiria itself — which is a regional association. The Startup Statute partly solves this problem, with access to the IFICI [Tax Incentive for Scientific Research and Innovation], but as far as I know not to the ‘Via Verde’”, he points out.

“Portugal continues to have enviable attributes, but the patience of investors is finite. If we want to keep the phrase ‘Portugal is the California of Europe’ alive, the ‘Via Verde’ will have to stop being an exclusive lane for TIR lorries and become a fast lane for scooter-startups that pull the ecosystem along. Otherwise, we risk turning the country into a digital campsite: great for nomads who come to surf, not very interesting for those who want to generate unicorns”, notes Vítor Ferreira.

“It’s not an easy message in this anti-immigration context, but people don’t realise that even if the focus is on productivity, it comes from three things: capital (machines and technology), skills (qualified labour) and organisation (management, clusters). Well-integrated immigration improves all three — it brings skills that are lacking, justifies investment in capital and forces companies to process larger volumes, gaining the muscle to innovate”, he says.

“To think that we can increase productivity while keeping the domestic market anaemic and the workforce in decline is unrealistic. The Portuguese labour market is at full technical employment and there are now thousands of unfilled vacancies in qualified areas — not because the pay is low, but because there simply aren’t enough people available with the right profile. Demographics are unforgiving”, he continues.

The head of Startup Leiria is concerned about the impact that the criticism from the CEO of the US technology company could have on the country’s ability to attract investment.

“When an American CEO publicly compares Portugal to Colombia or Chile and says he’s going to put the brakes on, the damage isn’t just reputational — it’s noise for decision-makers. Venture capitalists look at talent arbitrage, in other words, if the programmer can’t make it, they go elsewhere”, he says.

“In the short term, we should expect delays in new engineering centres and greater salary pressure on existing talent; in the medium term, a possible drop in ranking in indices such as StartupBlink (where Leiria came 3rd nationally) or the Global Talent Competitiveness Index, which feed corporate expansion decisions”, he says.

In the latest StartupBlink ranking, Portugal held on to 29th place, after falling three places last year, the biggest drop in the top 30. “Portugal grew by over 15% — in line with its peers in 28th and 31st position, whose growth fluctuates between 15% and 17% — enough to maintain its position”, points out the “Global Startup Ecosystem Index 2025”. The country also holds 17th place in Europe.

Cloudflare still loses, but wins biggest contract ever in first quarter

Founded in 2009 and based in the US city of San Francisco, Cloudflare is a cybersecurity, application modernisation, compliance and data protection company using the cloud. To this end, it develops computer security programmes for employees and for companies’ own networks and infrastructures, as well as platforms for specialised programmers to create and implement applications without the need for servers. In practice, its technology both helps prevent hacker attacks and improves website performance.

Cloudflare’s clients in the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and in Portugal include companies such as Allianz, Banco de Portugal, Carrefour, Clever Advertising, DHL, Doctolib, L’Oréal, TAP, Porsche Informatik — Porsche’s IT subsidiary — and the Portuguese Football Federation. Other notable clients include Roche, Sage, WA Technology and Zalando. It is in these and other organisations that the company blocks “billions of threats” online every day.

In Portugal, the company began investing in 2016 with the expansion of its network to Lisbon. Three years later, it decided to open its first office in the capital and ended up growing from 14 workers in the country to more than 350. However, management complaints were already a constant.

In an interview with Diário de Notícias, the co-founder and CEO even said that he sent people to Madeira “to pick up documents, because there aren’t the bureaucratic problems” that he encountered on the mainland. What is certain is that, as part of a significant expansion plan in Lisbon, Cloudflare opened a new headquarters and technical centre in October 2024 to support operations in the EMEA region — along with offices in London, Paris, Munich and Dubai — and announced the aim of creating 500 more jobs.

“To hire more than 400 employees. But it would be the double of that with a competent government. I’ve been hearing talk of ‘more business-friendly’ for six years. A lot of talk. Nothing changes”, the manager denounced on Monday, adding that he has been alerting the government to the problems, but has not been listened to or found a solution in public policy. If this recruitment plan were to materialise, it would bring the company’s hub in Portugal to 800 people, the same size as at the time of the Austin office in the United States.

According to Cloudflare’s CEO, the intention was — or is — to make Lisbon the company’s headquarters in the European Union (EU). “We continue to invest in London, but we need a headquarters in the EU. We wanted it to be Lisbon”, he also wrote on the X social network.

The CEO has been responding to some internet users, particularly one who asked him for “patience” with Portugal, because “the country just went to elections”. Pragmatically, he replied: “Six years later, my patience has run out”. To another, who also tried to defend Portugal in this transatlantic acrimony, Matthew Prince even said that India’s bureaucracy is no worse than Portugal’s. He also expressed his indignation at Portugal.

Also indignant about the situation was Portuguese Henrique Cruz, from the company Rows: “If no one from the government has contacted [Cloudflare’s CEO] yet, someone isn’t doing their job”. In a post on the same social network, the head of growth at the Excel competitor says that “one of the best ways for a country like Portugal to grow economically is to convince the next 10 Cloudflares to open large offices” in Portugal.

Despite double-digit revenue growth, Cloudflare is still losing money. In the first quarter, net income worsened from negative 35.5 million, recorded until March 2024, to negative 38.5 million dollars (approximately 34 million euros). Of note was total revenue of $479.1 million (€421 million), which increased 27% year-on-year. The outlook is positive and has been revised upwards to revenue of $501 million in the second quarter.

“We are entering 2025 with confidence, momentum and solid results. In Q1, we closed the largest contract in Cloudflare’s history, a deal worth over $100 million [€88 million], powered by our Workers developer platform, and signed the longest-term SASE [Secure Access Service Edge] contract to date. We have the scale, technology and team to capture the enormous opportunity ahead,” said Matthew Prince in a statement released with the financial report.

ECO has reached out to Cloudflare, the Government and the American Chamber of Commerce in Portugal, but has so far been unable to obtain comment.