Case · Ecosystems
Portugal Tech Week: zero to 300+ events in 20 cities, with no production budget.
Portugal’s tech story was a Lisbon story. We built a national festival that anyone could take part in, in any town, under one brand and one calendar, with no production budget and no permanent staff.
The situation
Web Summit made Lisbon visible to the world. The rest of the country was not inactive, just unconnected and unmeasured. Founders outside Lisbon and Porto had no national stage.
We had no budget to build one, no permanent staff, and well-funded programmes to compete with for attention and partners.
The approach
Distributed by design. Instead of one big event that the country travels to, a national frame that lets any organisation run its own event. The centre gives the brand, the calendar and the reach; the edges bring the programme.
What I built
- An open call for hosts: any hub, university, city council or company can propose and run an event, so the festival grows sideways, not through central production.
- One brand, one calendar, one national campaign, so a 20-person workshop in a small town gets the visibility of the whole festival.
- Partners priced on access to the audience, not on logo placement, including named programmes such as PTW House powered by MEO.
- Measurement from day one: events, cities, reach and participants, tracked as part of the operating model.
Results
- 300+
- events across 20 cities
- 1st
- place in Portugal, European Enterprise Promotion Awards 2024 (Promotion of entrepreneurial spirit)
- 0
- production budget; it scales on participation, not payroll
Related
03 · StartupsWorking with startups, for corporates and cities