ISSUE 2: Portugal is the New West Coast
COVID-19 has accelerated momentum for potential new tech hubs.
A tech hub is best thought of as a startup. Much like the startups it seeks to attract, a tech hub candidate must find its product-market fit, clarify then amplify the forces of its flywheel, and execute, execute, execute.
Some of the best thinking on creating a sustainable tech hub from scratch can be found in The Rainforest: The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley, written by my longtime friend Victor Hwang of The Larta Institute and his co-author Greg Horowitz.
Then COVID-19 happened and spectacularly lowered the barrier for newer, less mature tech hub regions. Brad Feld, co-founder of the Foundry Group and Techstars, wrote today:
Distributed work is here. And State Taxes are now a competitive disadvantage…
There are three states on the 0% State Tax list that I expect many corporations, VC firms, and HNW people will move to in the next 12 months. They are Florida, Texas, and Washington (State). The more adventurous will move to Alaska, Nevada, South Dakota, and Wyoming.
That Texas is on the map should not be a surprise. The state has steadily drawn tech entrepreneurs and workers the last ten years. More notable is Florida, whose proximity to EMEA and Latin America, along with attendant opportunities, is much underrated. Miami-native and author of The Pull Request Antonio Garcia-Martinez penned a New Year’s Day deep dive of Miami’s new momentum:
And that’s what Miami is: it’s the intersection in the Venn diagram between American business culture and rule of law, and Latin American culture and vitality (not to mention a market of 650 million consumers and a combined GDP of over $5 trillion). To most Americans Miami might mean beaches and bling and palm trees, but in Latin America it’s something else altogether: a combined bolthole, bank and bazaar…
The city hosts a slew of multinationals and their regional offices, from Proctor & Gamble to Facebook. Brickell Avenue is a sort of Latin American Wall Street, lined with the logos of every major commercial bank. If you do business in LatAm, you’ve got a Miami office.
Culturally, Miami is like that cantina in Star Wars’ Tatooine, but at city scale: You're going to hear Spanish inflected with every accent from Madrid to Buenos Aires (and you'll learn to distinguish between them), as well as Hebrew, Russian, French and God knows what else. It’s Bartertown meets tropical wild west, with high-rises.
Which brings me to the subject of today’s Ion Drive: Portugal as the New West Coast.
Entrepreneurs and tech workers for decades have been drawn to the U.S. for a multitude of reasons that speak to its enduring soft and hard powers. Yet whether it’s the Rise of the Rest as observed by Steve Case or the tightening of U.S. immigration policy, if you were not already American, alternatives are multiplying outside the U.S. Post-COVID some are only getting more attractive.
In the case of Portugal, in recent years its left-leaning moderate government led by Prime Minister António Costa has defied political norm and pursued a thoughtful, enterpreneur-friendly policy set. Practically, it has streamlined work and living permits for Europeans and non-Europeans alike. Then it conceived of a brand campaign on a continental scale, drawing heavy-hitting technolgy conference Web Summit to host its landmark conference in Lisbon for the next ten years. Web Summit CEO and co-founder Paddy Cosgrave has explained he and his team chose Lisbon over more than 20 other European capitals, despite higher offers elsewhere, due to its growing appeal to talent, quality of life, and ease of doing business.
Similar to Garcia-Martinez’s insight on Miami’s aesthetics tilt, for the design-savvy entrepreneur, Portugal offers a deep well of visual inspiration, craftsmanship tradition, and advanced manufacturing capabilities. Monocle magazine best captures the tension between tradition and modernity that powers Lisbon’s attraction to the creative class:
Lisbon is one of Europe’s oldest cities but it’s far from staid. In fact there’s something decidedly unruly about it: massive murals coat tumbledown façades, azulejo-covered townhouses abut cutting-edge museums and those indefatigable yellow trams have the jerkiest of brakes. With its glistening river views and nearby sandy beaches, Lisbon is a laidback and liveable city.
The same could be said about much of the rest of the country.
Of course, a dose of skepticism is always healthy, and on-the-ground conversations reveal a more nuanced view. In 2018 in my final op-ed as publisher of EE Times, I met with Portugal’s former Secretary of State for Education, José Franca. Over dinner, Franca explained with hard-eyed realism:
“Much of the buzz we hear these days about Portugal’s burgeoning tech scene is, of course, wonderful, but we run the risk of believing our own hype and not doing enough to ensure early progress takes root and sprouts future progress.”
In an article for Portuguese national newspaper O Público, Franca identified a power hierarchy now known as a technology league of nations, and advocated that Portugal’s industrial policies ought to facilitate the nation’s rise as a technology-producing powerhouse by nurturing an agile, outward-looking, but indigenous research and design talent base.
That the country’s thought-leaders exhibit such humility and insight is itself a powerful deterrent against complacency.
You can read my full write-up here. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
In future editions of The Ion Drive, I will dive into other tech hubs and initiatives such as La French Tech and the burgeoning industrial internet of things scene in Munich.
From Aspen, Colorado 🇺🇸
Victor