I spent last week on the west coast at Web Summit Vancouver, checking out the city’s first year as host of the newly-branded event after its move from Toronto. Acquiring the event from its previous host city (Toronto hosted Collision from 2019 to 2024, with the exception of 2020 and 2021 due to COVID) is estimated to have cost local, provincial and federal funders nearly $15 million in funding over a three-year period. I’ll let you read about what took place at the event elsewhere (shoutout BetaKit) but as I walked around the event floor, I couldn’t help but wonder if the type of financial investment required to attract Web Summit is worth it?

To help answer that question, I sought out a trio of startup ecosystem leaders from Portugal who happened to be in attendance. Lisbon has hosted the European Web Summit equivalent since 2016 and offers an interesting perspective on the impact this type of event has on a local ecosystem. And while today Portugal hosts what is regarded as one of the most dynamic startup ecosystems in Europe, it wasn’t long ago, however, that the Portuguese economy bounced between repeated economic crises. The post-2000 period saw the country’s unemployment rate skyrocket, hitting its peak during the Eurozone crisis in 2011  near 18 percent, with young adults facing an unemployment rate closer to 40 percent. It was only in 2014-2015 that the Portuguese economy started to emerge from what had been nearly 15 years of economic instability, low-growth and high-unemployment rates.

Now, in the decade that has followed, Portugal’s startup ecosystem has flourished. Is hosting a major global tech event like Web Summit part of its economic rebirth?

I asked representatives from Startup Portugal and Unicorn Factory Lisboa this question and they noted that the event served to catalyze the maturation of what was, in 2016, a relatively early-stage ecosystem that while busy with startups, had yet to develop the international connections to both investors and customers that are required to help startups scale. Web Summit Vancouver served as a platform to attract those global stakeholders, as well as to attract the attention of the pipeline of tech talent required to further build Portugal’s startup funnel.

Importantly, however, this attention was accompanied by a suite of policy reforms centred on the launch of Startup Portugal and the implementation of a national strategy for entrepreneurship that was developed by the Portuguese Ministry of Economy in 2016. The strategy focused on the use of vouchers to incubate and accelerate startups as well as the creation of matching funds for angel and venture investment. A follow up strategy launched in 2018 fuelled further energy into the ecosystem by, amongst policy reforms, facilitating the entry of tech talent through tech and digital nomad visas and introducing the favourable treatment of startup stock options.

The results of this combination of good policy and global attention are impressive. Between 2000 and 2023, Portugal’s startup sector grew twice as fast as the general economy in terms of revenue (30% vs. 14%) and nearly 4x higher in terms of employment growth. And talent has flowed in, in particular from the rest of Europe and Brazil. Startups (alongside tourism) have become the engine of Portugal's economic growth.

Can Vancouver and British Columbia expect a similar ecosystem-return on their investment to bring Web Summit to YVR? Lisbon’s story tells us that the substantial international interest that Web Summit brings needs to be paired with good policy that facilitates talent attraction and startup scaling, providing incentives for both employees and investors to double down on green shoots.

Whether Vancouver and British Columbia can do so given much of this policy suite (e.g. visas for tech talent, stock options and incentives for investors) is governed in Ottawa, creates a big question. And that question mark highlights how important policy coordination across orders of government is for each of Canada’s tech ecosystems and their efforts to help their founders scale at home.

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