Global Startup Program

Global Startup Program
2016 Call

Open May 23 – July 17, 2020

The Global Startup Program began in 2013 with the mission to provide business development, soft-landing, incubation, and acceleration opportunities to Portuguese technology-based companies. Its purpose is to assist the success of Portuguese entrepreneurial endeavors in different phases of development:

  1. Early stage startup ventures: typically based on a technology that is under development, no sales, and ambitions to move to the United States to obtain funding, development, and commercialization roadmaps.
  2. More mature ventures, typically with sales in domestic markets, that desire to initiate the internationalization process in the United States and other international markets. In such cases, the IC² Institute team will work with company leaders to develop a commercialization plan and conduct business development activities with the goal of closing deals in the United States.

Doing business in Austin?
See our Life in Austin page.
 

Although Austin is the central doorway to the North American market, the IC² Institute makes use of its network to reach other points of market entry as appropriate to each company. The CEO, co-founders, and leaders of these ventures should have the capacity to support travel and accommodation in the United States for short term stays (typically 1 to 2 weeks long when needed) to work with the Global Startup Team. For companies that wish to have a constant presence in Austin — encouraged, but not mandatory — office space next to the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) is provided for free during the first year enrollment in the program.

This program builds on the experience from the past edition of US Connect in 2011 and 2013 that has produced excellent results for Portuguese startups such as Bioalvo, Feedzai, Technophage, Innovapotek, Tecla Colorida, Tuizzi, Omniflow, Auditmark, Abyssal, and Celfinet, both in terms of business development, incubation, and closure of deals.