Farfetch, OutSystems and Talkdesk: Which Portuguese unicorns are these? Portugal has three companies valued at at least US$1 billion by investors as of this 0ct 03 2018.

Diogo Ferreira Nunes
DinheiroVivo.pt
October 03, 2018 • 16:07

Portugal has three companies valued at at least US$1 billion by investors as of this Oct 03 2018.

After Farfetch and OutSystems, Talkdesk is the third technology with national DNA to gain unicorn status in the private market.

But which companies are these and how did they gain this status? Dinheiro Vivo summarizes the path of each of these brands, which are helping to put Portugal on the investors’ route, especially in the technological area.

Farfetch, the unicorn of luxury:

Farfetch’s business idea was born as a child, but it was not until 2007 that José Neves’ dream began to come true. From Guimarães and London, this designer created a platform to sell luxury fashion all over the world from the Internet, at a time when these purchases were practically all made from the boutiques on the street.
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But as the model was not enough, the Portuguese began to think about creating technology for these spaces, such as the store in the future, or the luxury clothing delivery service in just 90 minutes.

Unicorn status was obtained in early March 2015 after Farfetch completed an investment round of $86 million. After reinforcing its focus on the Asian market and opening more offices in Portugal and other countries, José Neves’ company debuted in September this year on the New York Stock Exchange. The IPO of the platform with national DNA made José Neves one of the new Portuguese millionaires.

You can read more about Farfetch at: Farfetc h . It’s a billion dollar Portuguese company, baby!

OutSystems, the unicorn that almost needs no code:

It started in a small office in Linda-a-Velha, in 2001, and already has clients in 52 countries. Based in Atlanta, United States, the magic of OutSystems was worth a valuation of over one billion euros and entry into the unicorn club in early July of this year. The technology company led by Paulo Rosado specializes in the development of low-code platforms – applications in which as little code as possible is used.

This was made possible by a USD 360 million investment round from the US investment fund KKR and the Goldman Sachs investment platform.

OutSystems is exclusively for business customers in 22 industries and employs around 800 people. In addition to the office in Linda-a-Velha, the technology company has facilities in Proença-a-Nova, Braga, Boston, Atlanta, Utrecht, London, Dubai, Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore.

The company changed its business model in 2011 and, instead of selling perpetual licenses, started offering subscriptions in order to attract more customers. With good results: in 2017, OutSystems’ revenues exceeded 100 million euros for the first time and have grown annually, on average, by 70%. Turnover should multiply in the coming years because this market has a potential value of 22 billion euros.

You can read more about OutSystems at: OutSystem s is the new unicorn with Portuguese DNA

Talkdesk, the fastest unicorn:

Tiago Paiva and Cristina Fonseca founded Talkdesk in 2011, a platform for companies to personalize customer service by phone. That year, Tiago Paiva wanted to win a MacBook computer, which was being offered during a competition for innovative ideas for a cloud communications platform based in San Francisco, California, United States. The two Portuguese won the competition and won their first investment there, of US$10,000, Expresso wrote in August.

The following year, in 2012, Talkdesk’s first international presentation took place. Tiago Paiva showed the platform with Portuguese DNA in New York, at an event for startups held by the technological portal TechCrunch, one of the most reputed in the sector.

It was from there that Talkdesk started to grow. In 2014, in an interview with DN, Cristina Fonseca said that the startup was “preparing to increase the team of 12 people”. The following year, the Portuguese platform closed the series A of investment, after raising US$15 million – this round would later increase to US$21 million. In 2016, Cristina Fonseca stopped participating in the daily management of the startup .

Read here: How a doer leaves the day-to-day of the startup he created

But the growth of the Portuguese platform is unstoppable. With offices in Portugal and the United States, Talkdesk wants to reach 1000 workers by 2020 and conquer more and more large companies as customers. The investment round of US$100 million announced this Wednesday will contribute to this, which gave it the status of the fastest Portuguese unicorn ever .