João Pereira
Investment Director
João Pereira is Investment Director at Portugal Ventures, focusing particularly on the Digital sector. He is based in Porto and has 20 years of accumulated experience in venture capital investment. João began his career in 1988 at Sonae’s retail holding, at the time in the early stages of management control business concepts. His first experience with venture capital investment came in 1992 as portfolio manager at SPR, the first Portuguese venture capital fund. The fund was integrated with Millennium BCP as a result of a bank merger and, in 1999, João took on the role of Associate Director of Credit Risk for Large Companies. He decided to return to the startup world and, between 2000 and 2004, as CFO and Controller, enthusiastically monitored the startup and pivoting of companies such as Highgrove (long-term care), Imediata (multimedia kiosks), both in Portugal, and BEM (banking services), in Spain. He returned to venture capital in 2005 by joining InovCapital (today Portugal Ventures). João managed and led programmes and funds Finicia, Actec and the Call for Entrepreneurship and participated in more than 100 early stage investments. He has a degree (1988) and Master’s (1998) in Economics from the University of Porto’s Faculty of Economics, where he lectured for 15 years. As visiting professor, he has lectured on special subjects such as marketing technology, business models, marketing and strategy at several institutions such as the Porto Business School, IPAM and the University of Porto’s Faculty of Engineering.
Companies: B-Parts, Codavel, Displax, Fever, Science4You, Xhockware
Reference Exits: Outsystems
