Lisbon to have unicorns factory in 2022

Lisbon’s new mayor, Carlos Moedas, promised on Monday that the Portuguese capital would have a ‘unicorns factory’ next year and called on tech firms at Web Summit to move to Lisbon.

Carlos Moedas was speaking at the opening of the world’s largest technology fair. “I think the great thing about the Web Summit is that this is the place where people who adore details come together”.
“When thinking about innovation, and I say this to everyone, my dream is that Lisbon should be the world’s innovation capital, but what for me are the details to enable us to do this?” asked the mayor.
And answered: “We have to be capable of going beyond Web Summit, we have to ensure that you and your companies stay in Lisbon because we see an opportunity”, added the former EU commissioner for research, innovation and science.
The mayor then promised “in the coming year we will found, with the help of Web Summit and many of you, what I call the dream — the Lisbon Unicorn Factory”.
This factory “will be the place where we will teach details and processes so that young people can turn their ideas into big businesses, creating jobs, changing the world and having purpose, and this is what the Lisbon Unicorn Factory will be,” explained Carlos Moedas.
“Whatever you want to do in life, whatever the project, dream high and dive deep into the details”, he said.
The comedian Amy Poehler, the president of Microsoft Brad Smith, the EU commissioner Margrethe Vestager and the football player Gerard Pique join more than 1,000 speakers, around 1,250 startups, 1,500 journalists and over 700 investors at a summit in which technology and society among other topics will be debated.
Visitor numbers this year are down an estimated 30,000 on the last presential event in 2019. Nevertheless, Web Summit 2021 is the largest event to have taken place in Lisbon this year.