Three disruptive startups from Portugal

Over the past few years, Portugal has made concerted efforts in both the public and private sectors to cultivate an economy that is welcoming and beneficial to startup companies. In 2018, the annual Web Summit conference moved from Dublin to Lisbon, and the 100,000 sq ft startup incubator, the Hub Criativo Beato, will begin accepting occupants by the end of 2019, according to a report by Portuguese technology journal, Dinheiro Vivo.

Here are three of the most disruptive startups currently operating in Portugal, according to a list by The Next Web.

Zaask is the developer and operator of an online service hiring platform that connects professionals to people and businesses. Users can find professionals with expertise in everything from gardening, wedding planning, and dog walking, to web design and foreign language lessons. Zaask was founded in 2012 by Kiruba Shankar Eswaran and Luis Pedro Martins and is currently the leading hiring platform in Portugal and Spain, with over 460,000 monthly users and almost 100,000 registered professionals.

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Landing.Jobs is a candidate-driven careers platform with offices in Lisbon, Porto, London and Barcelona. The system, rather than operating like an agency, functions like a digital marketplace where tech talent can find careers based on skills, requirements, and company culture. The company’s revenue has doubled each year since its founding in 2013 by José Paiva, and Pedro Oliveira. According to the company, Landing.Jobs’ “mission is to build nothing less than the top destination for tech professionals who want to advance their careers. We not only want to make tech recruitment a less painful process, we want to make it worth your while.”

Unbabel provides customer service teams with a high-quality, high-speed translation service on a subscription service. Aimed at businesses looking to scale internationally, Unbabel offers 28 language combinations and cal be integrated with Zendesk, Salesforce and Freshdesk. The company employs over 150 people across its offices in Lisbon, New York, San Francisco and London, and recently closed its Series B funding round, securing an additional US$23mn in capital.