An exploration of portuguese entrepreneurial ecosystem : entrepreneurial support organizations and their role in New Projects’ Financing

This thesis had as the main purpose to expose and reflect ecosystems’ most important players and their key role. While the Portuguese press cites the lack of investment to be a concern of the Portuguese entrepreneurial ecosystem, this study unveils it to be among the least of its concerns. By having opportunity to analyse 27 Entrepreneurship Support Organizations we could identify some patterns, strengths and weaknesses. From 4 core Types of Organizations to Hybrid Organizations and 4 identified Levels of impact on financing, ESOs prove to have a substantial impact on entrepreneurs’ performance namely considering conditions to attract/raise investment. In 5 years, Portuguese ecosystem had an outstanding evolution and has now international leaders on specific areas such as incubation and acceleration. However, the average success rate of projects that are solid enough to be invested by BA’s and VC’s is still under 3%. At the same time, Portuguese BA’s and VC’s still have a capital surplus