11th Annual Entrepreneurship Competition
The 11th edition of the Banco Montepio Acredita Portugal Entrepreneurship Competition kicks off with a call for innovative, sustainable ideas. This edition will be held digitally and is open to entrepreneurs outside Portugal. The initiative will also launch an “Ideas Bank” to address the current crisis.
Registration is now open for the 11th edition of the Banco Montepio Acredita Portugal Entrepreneurship Competition, organized by the Acredita Portugal association and Banco Montepio. This year, the initiative will take place entirely online, using technology platforms to connect candidates, mentors, and guest judges for the selection process of projects in the categories of social entrepreneurship (Social Entrepreneurship Award), mobility (Brisa Mobility Award 2021), technology (K.Tech Award), and water-related innovation (H2O Innovation Award by Águas de Gaia). Applications can be submitted free of charge until April 18, 2021, on the Acredita Portugal website at www.acreditaportugal.pt.
At the same time, Acredita Portugal is promoting an “Ideas Bank,” a platform for gathering solutions that address the current economic and social crisis. Founded as a platform to encourage entrepreneurship during the 2008 economic crisis, the Acredita Portugal association brings together experience, know-how, and a network built up over more than a decade. Now it aims to help chart a new course amid a climate of uncertainty, in which everyone’s commitment and contribution are essential.
Fernando Fraga, Director of Innovation at Acredita Portugal, explains the need to revamp the competition since “With the restrictions imposed by COVID-19, the complete digitization of the project was inevitable. While we initially considered that this might be detrimental to the contestants—since all human contact had ceased—on the other hand, the fact that part of the competition was already being held in a digital format simplified this transition. We now have more time for new capacity-building and training initiatives for entrepreneurs, with more hours of impact, larger-scale sessions, and better monitoring and development of the projects. We already noticed a significant difference in the quality of the projects in the last edition.” The role of Acredita Portugal in the current context is viewed as “A cornerstone of the country’s economic and social recovery, not only through the competition itself, but also through other events and initiatives that have been energizing the ecosystem and making a difference for entrepreneurs. We increasingly aim to position ourselves as a key tool for the development of the Portuguese entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
”We want to ensure that good ideas with business potential don’t get stuck waiting for the pandemic to end. On the contrary, we want to leverage them and, in doing so, create social impact, grow the economy, and combat unemployment. That is why Banco Montepio continues to stand by entrepreneurs and, for the fifth consecutive year, is supporting the Banco Montepio Acredita Portugal Contest.”, says Fernando Amaro, director of the Social Economy and Public Sector division at Banco Montepio.
Support for Entrepreneurs
The Banco Montepio Acredita Portugal Competition features an acceleration program, co-organized with Diogo Bhovan, CEO of Cron.Studio, which aims to equip entrepreneurs with the essential skills to continue their projects independently and efficiently—such as how to capture an investor’s attention, develop a business model, navigate the legal framework, manage accounting, and engage in digital marketing, among other topics. During this period, participants will have the unique opportunity to receive personalized mentoring, during which they can apply what they’ve learned in the acceleration program sessions and accelerate their project’s development before presenting it to the final jury.
The Banco Montepio "Acredita Portugal" Contest is open to anyone with a business idea, regardless of age, educational background, or location, and supports promising projects by providing specialized expertise to help develop and evaluate them.
This is Portugal’s largest entrepreneurship competition and the second largest in the world—having supported more than 100,000 projects over its 10 years of operation—and its goals are to identify, develop, reward, and foster the launch of innovative ideas.
Additional information at www.acreditaportugal.pt
About the Banco Montepio Acredita Portugal competition:
The Banco Montepio Acredita Portugal Competition is a non-profit initiative that organizes the largest annual entrepreneurship competition in Portugal, with more than 10,000 entrepreneurial projects every year and a total of 100,000 projects supported. Its partners help to boost companies or projects at an early stage, offering everything from mentoring and training to investment and numerous prizes.
The initiative is aimed at anyone who has a business idea but doesn't know how to implement it. Registration is free and prior training in entrepreneurship, gender or age are not relevant. The Banco Montepio Acredita Portugal competition aims to reward the best projects and help all Portuguese to develop their entrepreneurial ideas.