A red boxing bag hanging in a recreation room could, at first glance, indicate that we are facing a potentially tense or stressful environment. Nothing could be more wrong. In the recreation and dining room on the floor 0 of the Taguspark Incubator, the atmosphere could not be more peaceful and inspiring. It is in this space, with meeting rooms, laboratories and scooters, that dozens of entrepreneurs work every day to develop their projects, in order to transpose their ideas from paper to the market. As a common denominator, entrepreneurs have the fact of working on projects of a scientific and technological nature.
Startups have already passed through here and they have proven themselves to be successful nationally and worldwide. It is recalled that Talkdesk, considered a unicorn (name given to companies that reach an evaluation higher than one billion dollars), took its first steps in Taguspark. It was here that Cristina Fonseca and Tiago Paiva, former students of the Instituto Superior Técnico, began to develop the call centre service through the cloud, available to any type of company, which made Talkdesk a worldwide phenomenon. Digisfere – a photography technology company that was bought in 2015 by Google – was also incubated at these facilities.
One million euros invested in the revitalisation of the incubator
Currently, the Taguspark Incubator welcomes more than 20 companies and is preparing to receive between five and six new companies soon, following the last call that ended on 15 December. Later this year, this incubation space in the municipality of Oeiras will receive newer startups. The CEO of Taguspark, Eduardo Baptista Correia, assures this: “We are already preparing a new call that should happen in May or June. We decided to go ahead with a new call. There are new projects wanting to enter our incubator”.
To the Oeiras Valley website, the CEO of Taguspark also explained the investments that were made recently in the revitalisation of the Incubator. “We regenerated the interior architecture of the incubator, creating a contemporary environment. We extended the space to double its size. With this we managed to launch new calls, to attract more startups, we improved the quality of the daily lives of those who work here and introduced new services, as was the case with the external consultancy service”, explains.
In total, Taguspark invested around one million euros in this process. “We must ensure that we provide the necessary conditions – both from the point of view of physical infrastructures, but also with regard to some management components, such as access to capital and know-how – so that these young entrepreneurs can convey their ideas and projects successfully”, assures Taguspark’s CEO.
But Taguspark’s focus on entrepreneurship does not stop there. There are more cards up its sleeve. The next step is to launch a business accelerator in the area of life sciences, focused on Medicine, which will allow entrepreneurs to access mentors and investors in the scientific areas.
“We want to actively support the capacity for entrepreneurship, responding to the desire of those looking to create and who can find the ideal environment here to test ideas, concepts, business models”, assures Eduardo Baptista Correia.
Main services of the Taguspark Incubator:
- General Services: Meeting rooms; Taguspark Congress Centre (Small Auditorium and/or Training Rooms, up to a maximum of two days per year); Mailbox; Cleaning; Security and electronic access control; Non-paid parking available and spaces reserved for visitors to the Incubator;
- Support in the definition of the most appropriate business model to be developed;
- Promotion of contact with investors, with promoters of support programmes for technology-based entrepreneurship;
- Promotion of initiatives to boost the Incubator community;
- Support in the preparation of applications for Investment Incentive Systems;
- Support in simplifying and streamlining markets by bringing supply and demand closer together;
- Facilitate contact with companies installed in the Park (potential suppliers, customers and/or business partners);
- Mentoring and coaching programme with external entities and with Taguspark companies;
- Consulting services, and business and commercial support.
Source: Taguspark Incubator Model, July 2018
