World Talents’ ambitious mission: Investing in talent to connect qualified individuals, investment, and Portuguese universities to drive project development in Portugal
The pitch is simple, but the task is ambitious: “We’re building a bridge between highly qualified individuals, foreign entrepreneurs and Portuguese universities, to help them develop projects in Portugal. The idea is that they can also bring their companies, knowledge and experience here. They can also set up new businesses or help others who are starting out, through mentoring,” explains Bernardo Saraiva, CEO of World Talents, a start-up based at the University of the Algarve’s business incubator.
To do this, the company handles “all the legal and logistical aspects”, and has also created the Global Talent Portugal programme, which has already attracted around 80 entrepreneurs and companies to the country, with an investment of around €2.8 million.
According to Bernardo Saraiva, this initiative has attracted the interest of “entrepreneurs and projects from industries such as artificial intelligence, software development, renewable energies, and biotechnologies”, as well as start-ups “focused on sustainable development and digital solutions for traditional industries”.
Timur Sitdikov and Bernardo Saraiva
The CEO predicts that, in the near future, World Talents will be able to attract a further €2 million in Research and Development (R&D) projects, through synergies created between international entrepreneurs and Portuguese universities.
The Algarve is an ideal region for attracting talent and investment because it already has a “regional innovation ecosystem”, says Hugo Barros, head of CRIA – UAlg’s Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer Division.
The partnership between the two organisations began in January 2024. Since then, it has already attracted the interest of a Japanese investor, with experience in economics and finance, who promotes international academic exchange, as well as a Swiss environmental project based on Google technologies to measure air quality, taking advantage of public transport routes, which can generate useful data for popular tourism destinations such as the Algarve.
“If the technology is ready, we can prototype or optimise it. We can also link the project promoter to various local players. Of course, in the end, what we want is for a company to be created in the Algarve. Ideally, it will hire master’s or PhD students to develop it,” says Hugo Barros. “And even if the idea never comes to fruition, new ones could be born (the spillover effect).”
As an example, Bernardo Saraiva mentions “an Indian entrepreneur with experience in setting up and running software companies, who played a key role as a mentor at UAlg” and who “supported several local start-ups by sharing specialised knowledge”.
Timur Sitdikov, founder of World Talents, also mentions the case of “a US entrepreneur who runs a Nasdaq-listed company valued at approximately $700 million” who is interested in investing in Portugal.
In addition to UAlg, World Talents also collaborates with the University of Coimbra, the Polytechnic University of Setúbal and, more recently, the University of Évora.
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