Portugal announces 25 million Euro plan to support start-ups during Covid-19

published on 29 April 2020 | reading time approx. 1 minute

The Portuguese Government has unveiled plans to ensure start-ups companies receive enough investment to remain afloat during the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. It should be noted that the Portuguese entrepreneurial ecosystem represented 1.1 per cent of the Portuguese gross domestic product in the year of 2018.

  
After weeks of talks with the pop-up movement #tech4covid19 — which represents founders, accelerators and investors — the government has produced a new package of measures to support enterprise innovation in a number of ways.
 
The set of five new measures, with a global value of over 25 million Euro, could represent an average of 10,000 Euro of potential support for each start-up. The actions announced by the Government are as follows:

1. Financial support through an incentive. The value will be equivalent to minimum wage per employee (up to a maximum of 10 employees per start-up);
2. Three month extension of the Start-up Voucher scheme (2,075 Euro per entrepreneur job);
3. Support for start-ups with less than five years of business activity, through the contracting of incubation services based on an incentive of 1,500 Euro, non-refundable;
4. A loan convertible into social capital (supplies), after 12 months, applying a discount rate that allows start-ups to avoid a dilution of investors’ equity. Average investment ticket between 50,000 Euro and 100,000 Euro per start-up;
5. Launch of the “Covid-19 — Portugal Ventures instrument”: launch of the Ventures Portugal Notice (Portugal) for investments in start-ups, with tickets starting at 50,000 Euro.