Lisbon’s startup scene rises as Portugal gears up
techcrunch.com
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I'm always like "WHAT!? How is this possible? Why didn't the bus/train/airline just declare bankruptcy, ending the jobs of 20,000 people at once, and do an IPO without unionized workers a year later!?"
and then I have to laugh it off because thats just so American of me. our unions just have people walking in a circle for up to a few months, in one city against a multinational corporation, and barely anything occurs except some inspiration for your new moon drum circle.
The individual nations in Europe are the size of individual American states, and can only be compared when talking about the European Single Market as a whole, which is new and filled with the vestiges of national companies that are just getting around to expanding into their neighboring countries.
The American experience has been removed from communities for a very long time that corporate apathy is the expected experience.
If the bus company did what you suggest a lot of European people would boycott the new one.
"Ah but in the US is not so complicated" yes but some other things make up for it (and some other things are more complicated in the US - but we usually see the downsides first)
> Sometimes dominant complain culture. Absolute shit quality of housing and public roads
Yes, agree. Insulation is getting better, though of course it's Portugal, it's not getting as cold as a more northern city.
The winter temperature inside an average Portuguese house is definitely way cooler than that in any house in any country North of Portugal.
The inside of living spaces in Northern Europe houses hardly ever go under 19 degrees C (usually a few degrees warmer I would guess). Even if it's like -30 C outside.
In Portugal it can easily be 5 - 15 C for weeks/months on end inside a house. There's really no comparison in comfort to be honest. I say this as someone who has lived in both Northern Europe and Portugal for multiple years.
And yes you definitely feel it comfort wise
I agree with the bureaucracy and government inefficiency, but public roads and shit housing quality? Much larger difference between our and rich? Compared to what? Certainly not the US...
And for healthcare, the public health system has many problems but if you have the money/insurance you can use the private one, as you would in the US.
Biggest cons of Portugal are: poor economy (when compared to the leading Western countries; this results in low salaries, lack of strong international companies, external dependency, lack of autonomy, fragility to crisis) and a big state (causes high taxes, big companies dependency on the state, corruption, brain drain...). Still probably one of the best countries to retire to in the world.
edit: and public roads too, I often describe half of the city as being effectively goat tracks. I like nice cars, which means low profile tires, hardly a year goes by where I don't damage a wheel or blow a shock absorber, the amount of roads not made of tar is stupid.
Portuguese housing market, like potentially every other market, is smaller than the richer countries, but that doesn't mean house quality is "shit". I looked at idealista a few weeks ago and there are luxury houses being sold for 1M+ in the north (probably even more in the South), mostly obviously targeted to rich foreigners.
The reality is that most of the modern real estate in Portugal is bought not rented. We could go into the reasons mostly around Tenant protection laws and landlord taxation but there is little incentive to rent a brand new property.
In practice most of Lisbon and Porto's rental market is pre-1950's or houses from the 1980's construction boom (i.e. low quality construction) with no renovations done.
You can certainly find high-end 1 bedroom apartments but it is a small offering and mostly around financial centre areas.
I'm not sure of the legal status of airBnB in Portugal, but it could be part of the problem.
My house supposedly has an A rating for thermal isolation, and yet I feel the indoor winter experience to be colder here than my experiences living in Illinois and Salzburg.
On the other hand, Portuguese winters are very humid, which makes it feels colder than it is.
Compared to Northern Europe certainly. Housing quality in Portugal is a joke. It's like going back in time a 100 years compared to Northern Europe: no heat insulation, high fire risk due to old electric infrastructure, single-layer walls, illegal structural "fixes" that make multi story buildings weaker, massive cracks in staircase structures that just get painted over, single layer glass windows that don't shut properly, no central heating or any heating at all (unless you are OK with electricity bills for heating that are the price of your rent), pests, large amounts of 100+ year old ruins rotting away in the city center during a housing crisis, illegal settlements/ghetto's, and possibly worse of all: the rental prices are close to what they are in the North for a brand new perfect place there. That tells me that the rich in Portugal (real estate owners) are leeching off the middle class and can get away with anything including letting buildings rot for no reason at all on prime real estate locations.
To give another anecdotal reference: the average houses of the Colombian/Mexican/Philippine middle class are of WAY better quality than those of the Portuguese middle class.
> And for healthcare, the public health system has many problems but if you have the money/insurance you can use the private one, as you would in the US.
This is not accurate as far as I've experienced in 2020. In Portugal the private generalist doctors will often just refer you to the public health system (which is dysfunctional) for more advanced diagnosis and things like surgery.
My personal experience: I wanted to get a polysomnography done to check my sleep apnea status. Waiting time to see a generalist doctor in Lisbon: 4 months. Not kidding. I waited those 4 months. 1 day before the appointment I got a call that it was cancelled due to corona virus overload. I paid a private generalist doctor to get referred to what I needed, their answer: oh, I'm sorry we can't do that, you'll have to go through the public system. Most things in Portugal kind of don't seem to work at all in this way. This is what people mean by "terrible bureaucracy": it's just plain impossible to get things done. From VISA's to setting up a business and getting permits, everything seems utterly broken, corrupted and dysfunctional in a way that it isn't in most of the rest of Western Europe.
> Biggest cons of Portugal are: poor economy (when compared to the leading Western countries; this results in low salaries, lack of strong international companies, external dependency, lack of autonomy, fragility to crisis) and a big state (causes high taxes, big companies dependency on the state, corruption, brain drain...). Still probably one of the best countries to retire to in the world.
I agree that it's still a really fun country to live in, despite all the downsides, assuming you are financially geo-independent. I mean, I still live in Portugal after years.
If I had the intention of setting up a serious startup or have a job however, I would not chose Portugal. The thought of the bureaucracy alone makes me anxious. Aside from the bureaucracy, there's almost no capital for investments in startups. Furthermore: if you're thinking about disrupting a Portuguese industry, just forget about it: you're fighting cartels that are strongly coupled to the government.
It all strikes me as if sadly Portugal was never really able to shake off the legacy of their recent totalitarian/corrupt history.
Hello from the UK, we definitely have the exact same issues in all UK cities, London included.
I am sorry you have such a bad experience in Portugal regarding housing but it is not reflective of reality.
The only thing that is clearly worse as I mentioned is the insulation, but as I mentioned in other comments that is in part consequence of the weather and countries in northern Europe have the opposite problem in the summer.
Don't confuse your inability to pay for good housing with the entire country having shit housing.
I agree the public health system sucks compared to all the other countries I have been to. Good private sector clinics work much better though. I can also give a personal example, a few years ago I had an ACL tear and waited 3 months to even have an MRI in the public system, I gave up and got it done in a few days in a private clinic, got an appointment with a top orthopaedic surgeon in a week and a proposal to do an ACL reconstruction the next week.
I agree on the bureaucracy/corruption part and that it is not a country to earn money, it is a country to spend it (there is a reason why I and so many other Portuguese work abroad).
The prices are without health insurance. Otherwise you obviously pay much less.
I once read that Portugal has the most expensive electricity in all Europe. My house has AC in almost every room and yet I shudder to use them!
Portuguese here, and a civil engineer to boot.
From your description, it sounds like the reason you found the houses you're commenting on to be reminiscent of going back in time 100 years is most likely because they were indeed over 100 years old, and/or illegal settlements that haven't received a inhabitability certificate ("certificado de habitação" for the portguese speakers among us).
The reference to the "illegal ghettos" sounds an awful lot like one of the still existing offshoots of the africa exodus, post-carnation revolution shanty towns that popped up during the 1970s during the massive influx of people from the newly independent former colonies. There are a few of those still standing, such as Lisbon's infamous Cova da Moura neighborhood, but a bunch of social housing neighborhoods were built to re-house similar shanty towns in the outskirts of Lisbon's and Porto's great metropolitan area since then, which are comprised of quick and cheap housing projects. Even though those houses are exceptionally cheap (you could purchase a 2-bedroom appartment in thr Quinta da Princesa neighborhood for around 20k€) they are also renowned for being extremely shoddy houses in extremely shoddy neighborhoods.
In particular they have some motorway innovations we should steal: A minimum speed limit, and a zone around junctions where overtaking is prohibited.
Also, who needs to drive anyway day-to-day when you live in a dense, walkable city with public transport?
Roads inside cities and villages are bad. Rough, broken or badly patched asphalt everywhere. No problem for driving cars and Portugues culture values having a car highly. But the road quality make biking and skating APITA.
I even have a neat anecdote:
A Portuguese lady was complaining that the supermarket cashier line took too long (this was pre-covid). So I told her that there were self-checkouts the isle over. Her answer was: "I don't like self-checkout either; I like to do things the way I'm used to".
Or don't conflate my complaints with a desire for solutions.
When I lived there, my costs were basically a 900€ for a rental 120m2 apartment + 300€ for groceries and eating out. Since the start of the pandemic I moved to my own place and now pay 400€ in mortgage.
The biggest challenge I see is the VC sector in continental Europe. While in the US, I see seed rounds of 0.5-1.5 Millions, the last 2 seed deals I've seen in Lisbon were of mere 50K€. A trifle.
I signed my wife up with Swapfiets. You rent a bike by the month with them. Basically you fill in a form online, enter your payments card details and they deliver a bike. You then get billed on a monthly subscription until you cancel. All good. Great service until.... we missed a payment because I forgot to move money onto the card in time. No worries I'll just move it across and let them try again.... except... no they don't try again they send emails instead. They sent 4 emails however due to some factors we never paid the bill manually (working full-time at home with a baby and a toddler during a pandemic some less important stuff can slip) so they sent it to the debt collection agency. A few days prior to them sending it to the debt collectors the next months payment became due and was successfully collected. Now if I owe a company x amount of money and then the next month y amount I expect my balance to be x + y and once I pay an amount I expect it to be deducted from the balance and the overdue payment date to be reset. In this case I would expect my due balance to be y. Not with swapfiets, my due balance was x. I raised this with them and they basically told me the system doesn't work like that (no acknowledgement that it should work like that and this is a mistake on their part), they send email reminders and basically fuck you. This sums up European attitudes and companies perfectly. To recap they made the following mistakes:
1: Their UX is broken in that every other subscription I use will try to take payment again before sending a reminder.
2: Their app is not coded according to industry standard billing processes.
3: They refuse to acknowledge any accountability on their side and basically tell me to do one.
This is European startups in a nutshell. We suck at customer service and it shows.
The thing is, by having a mortgage, you are effectively building equity in a good you can resell later (a house).
Cheap house means you can sell it for cheap and retire where it's cheap. Meanwhile, a property in a hot market where the mortgage is still the same fraction of your income can be resold for much more. Gives you freedom to retire where you want.
HR hates it lul
If your rent doubles from $1,000 to $2,000, but your salary doubled from $75,000 to $150,000, you incurred $12,000 more in expenses for $50,000 more in after tax income.
I don't get this knee-jerk reaction where, if you discuss money, then it immediately must be the only thing you care about. Why can't it just be one element of the equation, along with other usual stuff like weather, food, etc?
We should assume that most of the people that live in Portugal are not stupid or victims. They’re optimizing for something they prefer.
The GP is the one that reduced the choice of living in Portugal to wealth, not me.
The only constant is change, if you can adapt to anything, you're way better prepared than someone who know what they want today and can only have that.
Choosing to optimize for wealth is fine; but foisting that choice on everyone over everything else is silly.
I read your original reply and other replies and I think you're the one conflating the point. Many people prioritize wealth but still enjoy life...like myself. I don't regret anything and am very happy day to day.
I’m not sure how much further I can discuss this? If you’re happy optimizing for wealth, good for you. I’m not sure how that makes anyone short sighted and rigid? Short sighted and rigid for not choosing your optimization? Doesn’t that make you short sighted and rigid? Whatever, do your thing- but please don’t think the people of x country are stupid or whatever because they don’t choose what you do. Come on.
Not to challenge the great point you make about CoL, but there's so much cultural distortion around home ownership that it's almost a parody of fundamental economics.
it's only a bubble if it pops.
> there's so much cultural distortion around home ownership that it's almost a parody of fundamental economic
Again, it's only a distortion if it doesn't persist for so long to become a persistent ground truth.
A house is not a house is not a house because location, location, location. You can put the same exact dwelling structure in two different places and they can have two very different values because everything around the house matters too and if those things persist, they become as real as the house.
You can make a mathematical transformation to compare Renting with Owning.
O - R + R vs R + X
Own - Rent our your place + Rent somewhere else vs Renting and investing your principal some other way. So reducing you get:
O - R vs X
So owning and renting out a house vs all other investment opportunities, such as Bitcoin. Literally if you rented your house in the last two months and invested the principal into altcoins, you could then own 5 houses!
There's also nothing stopping you investing your excess income in other areas outside property.
The main problem I found was the housing stock is in pretty terrible shape. Flats have basically no insulation and often have bad problems with damp. No insulation means the flats are freezing in winter and you can hear the neighbors do everything.
While eating out is definitely significantly cheaper, many things are (much) more expensive than in London. Supermarkets, home internet, cell service (brutally expensive), utilities (I was paying 10x for utilities in winter compared to London, because of the complete lack of insulation - and Portugal has some of the highest electricity rates in Europe).
Overall I would not suggest moving to Lisbon if you are expecting an overall significantly lower cost of living than London. There are lots of other benefits though :).
The cold is really the buildings fault. It's hard to explain it you are used to northern European construction. It seems to be colder inside than out! It's quite a common and well talked about problem.
What is good: weather, people, interesting places to visit 30min-1hr away, food, etc. What you'd expect really.
Ok, go ahead with them?
I'm in a rental for this month, and I just woke up to this - noise of a baby playing with balls on the floor, above my bedroom.
I am surprised this is still a problem in the 21st century.
Market forces don't work for hidden features like this, so why would it ever change?
This is why people want to live in detached houses - after years of psychological torture from living in cheaply built or badly designed flats.
I agree thermal isolation is a bigger issue in Portugal though. Because really cold days are not that common, old constructions don't have proper isolation and rely on inneficient heating. In the UK however you have the opposite problem where almost no apartment is ready for warm days. A flat with air conditioning is a rarity. Last summer a friend of mine moved with his kids to a hotel for a week during the heat wave just because of this.
I do agree with you on air conditioning in the UK though, for sure.
https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/97007/3...
Compare that, and living costs don't matter that much.
In 10 years the difference is huge
But you can actually get paid more than that in IT positions, no problem (after-tax salary)
Nowadays the only people I am aware are still getting as much, are senior of my age and older, friends that are self employed, or those that only get half of the salary in official ways (yes undeclared payments are still daily business).
So yeah, while being away for 18 years might not make me have a daily picture, it is not as I don't come regularly back home.
But I'm not disagreeing with you, the salary ceiling is low, I was just noting that it wasn't as low as 1k/1.5k (yeah, 2k/2.5k is more like it, the taxes don't help neither)
Then you will end up getting a small flat in Sintra, Vila-Franca, Seixal, Cacias, or whatever up to 30 - 60 km from Lisbon and enjoy 1 h commute every single day, both ways.
While companies continue to base offers they make on your current salary (if you're silly enough to disclose it), accepting a lower salary on the basis of a lower cost of living is going to lower all your future salaries.
While in the US, I see seed rounds of 0.5-1.5 Millions, the last 2 seed deals I've seen in Lisbon were of mere 50K€
Seed rounds don't exist in the US any more. The first raise is effectively a Series A, because startups are expected to bootstrap to revenue now.
We need to make a few hires, but sourcing talent is either more time consuming or more expensive (head hunters) than it feels like it should be.
You could try reaching out to devs in those cities, I am sure many would be more than willing to move back home for the right price.
P.S. I don't think them moving to London is such a big risk anymore))
I'd move out there in a heartbeat...although it does help that I have some passable Portuguese comprehension :)
Naturally public sector has the most attractive numbers for years working/minimum age.
1. For people in the demographic of the, "environmentally aware" middle class. They sure do love to travel around on high polluting jetliners.
2. The arbitration of salaries might seem tempting, but are they paying tax whilst in the country? Most of these nomads don't pay tax and their economic benefit is minimal (partaking in the local economy to buy their coco puffs and artisanal coffees).
The hypocrisy I experienced of some dev's complaining about the dilapidated infrastructure in Italy whilst being there as a "tourist".
3. "I want to go a city with a good level of English" - Amsterdam, Munich, Berlin, Lisbon, Madrid.
They don't want to go and experience a small town in Greece with no amenities or "English Expat Meetup" group.
4. Productivity (f(x) = internet connection x time difference x work equipment)
I will take a remote dev in their homeland, over hiring a jet setter dev.
5. Relationships, I am not sure what some of these nomads are running away from / towards.
They are extremely flaky in professional relationships, I wonder if that also is the same for personal relationships too.
It makes it hard to share knowledge with these types. Pooof! They are gone now, "oh well so much for that Wiki page they promised to update before they left".
-----
Conclusion - the nomad worker is the apex persona of the entitled middle class malaise.
</end rant>
I did consider becoming a nomad worker at one point, then I realised it's a terrible lifestyle.
You have to grow roots to grow, doesn't matter if its a "boring" town. You have to grow up and realise someday that you can't keep being a rolling stone.
Note: I am not against people moving to a better place for life /career / personal reasons. It's when it happens 10-20 times in the space of 10 years, that you need to start asking yourself hard questions
Furthermore, plenty of countries have double taxation treaties. The UK has one with Portugal, for example. My understanding is that you can work from Portugal for a UK company and pay tax only in the UK, as long as you're not a tax resident of Portugal. The 'tax resident' bit is complicated, but the point is that the UK and Portugal have agreed to it.
And I don't mean to be snarky, but when other people's free choices rile you up this much, maybe it's you that needs to start asking hard questions of yourself. A couple of your points are good, but it sounds like you're projecting your own problems onto others.
Freedom Day (25 April) is a national holiday, with state-sponsored and spontaneous commemorations of the civil liberties and political freedoms achieved after the revolution. It commemorates the 25 April 1974 coup and Portugal's first free elections on that date the following year.
Nice bridge.