Sistema Inteligente para Recomendação de Exits para Investidores em Startups Early Stage
According to the “Report on Venture Capital Activity — 2023”, from the Securities Market Commission (CMVM), the venture capital market in Portugal shows high growth (29% in 2023, reaching 9254 million euros in assets). However, it faces a critical challenge: the structural difficulty in guaranteeing efficient exits for investors. In 2023, exits totaled just 748 operations, with a value of R$840 million, lower than the previous year. The Startup Genome 2024 report places Portugal in 29th position worldwide, registering a drop of three places compared to the previous year. The criterion with the lowest score is Economic Performance, which measures the valuation of startups and the returns obtained by founders and investors. To improve this indicator, it is crucial to reinforce the international visibility of Portuguese startups and attract foreign investors who boost the volume and value of exits. These liquidity and valuation challenges are not exclusive to Portugal, but reflect a transversal trend across the European ecosystem. Exits are essential for renewing capital and attracting more private investment for innovation. While in the USA business angels achieve exits in 3-4 years, in Europe the average term is 9-10 years, increasing risks for early-stage investors and limiting the flow of capital to reinvest in new projects. This EXITS project appears to help overcome this weakness in the Portuguese and European venture capital market. EXITS consists of the research and development of an intelligent system for recommending exits for investors in early-stage startups, by connecting early-stage investors to potential buyers (venture capital and private equity funds, funds specialized in secondary operations and companies interested in acquisitions). The resulting platform will combine data analytics and automation to identify ideal buyers, assigning scores based on automatically constructed dense profiles. The platform will generate lists of potential buyers, detailed analyses, key contacts and comparisons with similar operations, as well as prepare personalized one-pagers. As a SaaS platform, it will be possible to increase the international visibility of Portuguese and European startups, increase the number of exits, reduce deadlines and improve liquidity for early-stage investors.