About
I'm Fernando Jardim, an AI advisor, board member and keynote speaker based in Lisbon. I co-founded 351 Startups, Portugal's largest startup community, and took Portugal Tech Week from zero to 300+ events in 20 cities.
Twenty years running the operation, not advising on it. Today I build with AI: a company brain, agents that do the daily research and follow-ups, a sales system that delivers the same results with a team 66% smaller. Then I help companies build their own, with their people.
Bio
For event programmes, press and introductions. Use it as it is, in English or Portuguese.
Fernando Jardim is an AI advisor, board member and keynote speaker based in Lisbon, named International Personality of the Year 2026 at the Unicorn Factory Lisboa Entrepreneurship Awards. He co-founded 351 Startups, Portugal's largest startup community, and led Portugal Tech Week, 1st in Portugal at the European Enterprise Promotion Awards 2024. Today he builds AI systems that do real work, from sales to operations, and helps companies build their own.
Fernando Jardim is an AI advisor, board member and keynote speaker based in Lisbon. He has spent twenty years building sales, partnerships, communities and operations.
He co-founded 351 Startups, Portugal's largest startup community, with 3,000+ members and 80 volunteers, and took Portugal Tech Week from zero to 300+ events in 20 cities. The festival took 1st place in Portugal at the European Enterprise Promotion Awards 2024, and Sifted named 351 one of the 50 best communities in Europe for first-time founders. In 2026 Unicorn Factory Lisboa named him International Personality of the Year. He is also co-founder of Founder Institute Portugal and works in business development at Startup Genome.
Today he builds with AI, from company knowledge bases to agents that run the daily research and follow-ups and a sales system that delivers the same results with a team 66% smaller. He helps companies build their own and speaks in English and Portuguese.
Fernando Jardim is an AI advisor, board member and keynote speaker based in Lisbon. He helps founders and companies put AI to work, grow faster and build with startups, as an advisor, on boards, or in the room with their teams.
He has spent twenty years building things end to end: sales, partnerships, communities and operations, first in São Paulo and then in Lisbon. At Le Wagon he ran the São Paulo campus and later led growth in Lisbon, where his programmes were rolled out to 20+ cities worldwide. At Lisbon City Council's Made of Lisboa he grew Lisbon Entrepreneurship Week to 100+ events.
In 2019 he started 351 Startups as a one-person effort. It is now Portugal's largest startup community, with 3,000+ members and 80 volunteers; in 2025 it ran 300+ initiatives in 20+ cities, reaching 50,000+ people. Its festival, Portugal Tech Week, took 1st place in Portugal at the European Enterprise Promotion Awards 2024, and in 2025 Sifted named 351 one of the 50 best communities in Europe for first-time founders. In 2026 Unicorn Factory Lisboa named him International Personality of the Year, an award he shares with the 100+ volunteers who built these projects with him.
He is co-founder of Founder Institute Portugal and of Sendfy, a WhatsApp and multichannel automation platform, and works in business development at Startup Genome, the startup ecosystem research and advisory firm. He is a member of the European Commission's Startup and Scaleup Taskforce, takes part in the OECD Youth Entrepreneurship Policy Academy, and sits on the SXSW Pitch Advisory Board.
Today he builds with AI: a company brain that knows the business, agents that run research and follow-ups on a schedule, an editing pipeline that turns recorded talks into video, and a sales system that delivers the same results with a team 66% smaller. He teaches founders to do the same in hands-on workshops such as The $1B Solo Founder, and speaks in English and Portuguese on AI, growth, entrepreneurship and the future of work.
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How I work
Thirty minutes, no deck. Tell me where it's stuck and I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right person.
Email is the fastest way to reach me. I read everything.