hello everyone my name is xenia and welcome to this channel where we talk about entrepreneurship and expert life in portugal well as you can guess from my background you i'm not in portugal yet i'm in yerevan in armenia and this is the point and the topic of today's video we're gonna discuss how you can get the startup visa for portugal and as in our case we got it in 28 days which is super short so i would like to share my experience with you to tell how the program works what are the advantages or why we have chosen to move to portugal and start our business there if you're interested if you're an entrepreneur willing to start or relocate your business to portugal then continue watching this video and you will get a lot of useful information [Music] to put it in a nutshell startup visa program exists in many countries in the world and it allows non-resident entrepreneurs to come to the country set up a business there and actually get help with it so what i find the most beautiful thing about those programs is that you don't have to have a real business yet it can be just a well thought idea that you prove to be working so you have a proper business plan you have a market research and you just come to the country and already starts there obviously why the countries need those programs is that because they are attracting investments they are attracting talented people they they're attracting new ideas new technical solutions whatever and develop their economy and develop the society and infrastructure so in case of portugal this program is pretty new it has started in 2018 however it works pretty smoothly the managing organization is called yapnay the agency for competitiveness and innovation so basically it's them who makes the final decision upon your application and they work closely with the incubators so they also review your application that's focused more on the business parts in portugal there are over 150 incubators which are all different some of them are private some of them are municipal university-based or mixed so you can always choose what is the best for your project so who you would like to be hosted by and therefore the price range is also different it can be from 0 to 1 000 euros per month so yeah that's the good point to start with you can go to the description section and find the link to go to the iap website and check the criteria whether you would be eligible to apply for the startup program so go ahead and we move to the next point as a team of a technological startup we were considering startup visa programs in different countries in europe um so we ended up choosing between the netherlands spain and portugal and at the beginning we were like oh portugal is it really good for developing our startup there uh you know we had a strong connection to portugal as a holiday destination obviously spain as well so we couldn't believe it has everything we need uh however the more we did our research the more we asked people around they all said yeah it's gonna be actually quite a good place to start with and here are the advantages or the reasons why we have chosen portable first and foremost it's the easy entry in terms of money and in terms of documents so at the time when you apply when you submit your application you only have to have per 5213 member so it's the bank statement which says that you have this amount and in terms of documents uh there are only a few papers to receive which shouldn't normally take a lot of time to get it from your country and the other advantage of the program is the residence permit you get it for two years for the first time so when you just come to the country and apply and then for the second extension you come and you get it for three years which is five in total and which i find super brilliant especially considering the fact that you apply as a team so you can include up to five people with your startup and all of them would be able to extend their residence permits if they stay of course with the startup and then as a team leader you don't have to worry about them uh staying in the country and uh being legal and so on the next point is gonna be super short but super important port against people can speak english i mean it's important on a daily basis uh because living in the city means that you would always interact with people so most of them speak english this is the information from people who are already there and what i can say from my side is that all the incubators we were in touch with while deciding who is going to host us they all spoke english it was no problem and they would never say uh you have to learn portuguese to develop business in portugal and the final two points climate and living costs the living costs are some of the lowest in europe and as i told you in the beginning we're only considering europe to live in so portugal has 10 out of 10 here and climate i guess you can imagine that portico has a lot of sun and in general just really great nature so we thought that for moving our team this would be also the best solution because people who spend nearly 15 hours next to laptops every day just going out and seeing some sun it would be absolutely needed the fun fact though is that none of our team has ever been to portugal so if you guys watching this video have been there or if you live there right now just write us in the comments and say what you think is it really cool to live there how do you like it uh or you can also give us some recommendations and we move on to the next point documents and project criteria finally the point that gives an answer to the initial questions or the title of this video how to make it in 28 days so actually i must say that our case is positively unusual because ninety percent of the startups that i know that i've been talking to they all got their approvals in two to five months that's because skipmay first of all checks all the applications not in their order and the second point is that you get sometimes the request to resubmit some documents to clarify your business plan or maybe something else and that is why it takes them another month to to submit to to wait and so on and here are my recommendations what you can do to avoid those requests to avoid waiting for so long the key points of success here number one if it's not possible to get your account in your own country and you only have it in the local currency then ask the bank to write an estimated amount in yours at the time when you get the bank statement number two don't forget to write a declaration saying that you will transfer your money to a portuguese bank account as soon as you come to portugal and open it and you make it as a second page of your bank account statement and attach to your application number three another declaration this time you have to write there that you don't have any tax and social security numbers in portugal obviously if you do have you just scan them and attach but if you don't you have to write it and then sign the paper that you don't have and that's it number four a certificate of criminal records doesn't need to be notarized yet at the time of your application it's only enough that you translate it with a legal agency that puts a stamp and a signature on this translation of course i don't think it's going to be a mistake if you scan the notary of documents however you want to avoid spending much time and money on doing that so use this tip since there were no questions to ask from yep may i suppose that we did everything correctly and again i usually support uh startupers making those applications by themselves without using agencies or other helpers so i would gladly share the samples of those declarations which i mentioned above just drop me a message on my instagram say hi and i'll just share the text of it in terms of the project criteria of course you can find all information at the email website you go to the legislative order or some other official papers however i just go quickly through them to give you more information about what is what the first criteria is your motivation so you have to attach the motivation letter in the first part of your application saying why you need portugal and why portugal needs your project so you always have to think about this why your project would benefit from being in portugal so you have to show the real interest in developing an entrepreneurial project in this country and you have to show how innovative it's going to be the second criteria is that your business has to be international so go global think global and they say your business at least has to show the intention to go from the regional or local level to a global level so as i said in the beginning portugal wants to attract more investments more like bigger businesses and you want to be one of those the next point is innovation so what is innovation some people think that it's about creating something fantastic something absolute uh novelty but this is definitely not about creating a novelty it's about responding to a real market demand and solving some real problem that people have so you're gonna find this you're gonna say what technology or what knowledge helps you to solve this problem and here you go here's your innovation and you're going to describe it really well to ema the next point is the incubator's interest so my recommendation here is to start contacting incubators as soon as possible which means that you may still be at the stage of filling out the application form but you already start emailing incubators and saying hey this is me this is my project you have any recommendations to me can i improve somehow so at the time when you submit your final application you already consider their advice and the final criteria is the potential so your startup project has to show the potential of creating jobs and of creating certain income so you have to create at least five jobs within 24 months and to achieve a turnover over 325 000 euros per year in five years time so after five years you have to show that you reached already this minimum so guys this is it from my side for today thank you very much for watching this video till the end and the first thing you want to do is you go to the description box and check whether you are also eligible to apply for the fantastic startup visa program in portugal and if yes hit subscribe to my channel to not miss the future videos which are going to be more in depth about the application process the visit process and many other useful things and also live in portugal so yeah follow my story and say hi on instagram and see you in next videos bye [Music] you