Why London businesses are moving to Lisbon

One of the side effects of last weeks  very successful Web Summit is attention Lisbon has got  in the media. You can’t find a newspaper, magazine, blog, TV Station or radio that hasn’t covered the event.

But the Web Summit did something else. The way the city was ‘used’ to host the >50,000 tech crowd (hotels, infrastructure, entertainment, venues, catering) showed the world about Lisbon’s potential so effectively that the organizers increased the tickets for Web Summit 2017 to 80,000. We can easily handle that 🙂

   

Just last week, 50,000 people attended the annual Web Summit, the biggest digital conference in Europe. The event always used to take place in Dublin but for the first time it happened somewhere else: Lisbon. This is a sign of how the tectonic plates are shifting towards the Portuguese capital, the most exciting creative scene in mainland Europe right now. That’s why London businesses are moving to Lisbon, including my company Second Home, which is opening a work space there next month. Rohan Silva for The Evening Standard 15. November 2016: Lisbon is giving London a lesson in driving the creative economy

 

For a whole week Lisbon was one big melting pot of interesting project and people.

I do not know what the participants expected before Summit. But I know that all of them were positively surprised about the experience. Not only the whole Web Summit program and the way it was executed.  But also to witness the growing local start-up / entrepreneurial environment that wasn’t part of the official program (the tickets a very expensive)  but used the occasion to present themselves all over town.   [caption id="attachment_14369" align="aligncenter" width="750"] Last week Lisbon was one big fair of interesting projects presented by interesting people. We used the occasion to join  the new entrepreneurial community  NewCo  Lisbon where more than 40 entrepreneurs, star-ups and related business invited fellow start-upper sto their offices for inspirational presentations and networking. [/caption]   After this inspirational boost it must be a bit scary returning home… like it was for Rohan Silva from Second  Home who just wrote about his experience in The Evening Standard. I don’t know if it was the Summit that convinced him to move his company from London to Lisbon. But I’m sure the experience convinced him that his decision to move is right. Thomas  ]]>