The Red Chair

Francisco Veloso is the Dean of INSEAD since September 2023. Previously, he was the Dean of Imperial College Business School, and before that, the Dean at Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics. Francisco spent the formative years of his academic career at Carnegie Mellon University, where he became a Full Professor. Francisco's research focuses on high tech innovation and entrepreneurship. He has several dozen publications in leading academic journals and has won several international awards for his academic work. He regularly works as a consultant and advisor to start-ups, established firms, universities, and governments around the world.

Arlindo Oliveira was born in Angola and lived in numerous other countries. He obtained his BSc and MSc degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) and his PhD degree, also in EECS, from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was a Fulbright fellow. He was an invited professor at MIT and a researcher at INESC, CERN, the Electronics Research Laboratory of UC Berkeley, the Berkeley Cadence Laboratories, and the University of Tokyo. He was a member of the National Council for Science Technology and Innovation and of the Advisory Board of the Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA) Panel of the European Parliament. He is a distinguished professor of IST, president of INESC, distinguished visiting professor at Macau University of Science and Technology, member of the board of Caixa Geral de Depósitos and a researcher at INESC-ID. He authored five books and hundreds of articles in international conferences and journals in the areas of algorithms, artificial intelligence, machine learning, bioinformatics, and computer architecture. He also received several prizes and distinctionsHe has been on the boards of several companies and institutions and is a past president of Instituto Superior Técnico, of INESC-ID and of the Portuguese Association for Artificial Intelligence. He is a member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, of the Portuguese Academy of Engineering, of IEEE and of ACM.

Dr. Steven Waterhouse is the Founder & GP of Nazaré Ventures, an early stage AI Venture Fund. He's been active in building and investing in tech, web3, and AI since 1997. Steven is a staunch defender of personal privacy as a basic right and is also an avid waterman who loves the cold waters of the Pacific and Atlantic west coasts. 

Simon began his career as a designer in 1997, working for German startups with his own interactive agency and later invested in around 50 early-stage companies. In 2011, he co-founded Factory, pioneering Europe's mega-campuses for startups. He organized the Startup Europe Summit (2015–2019) and expanded Factory with Berlin's "Silicon Allee" (2017) and Factory Lisbon (2022). Simon was the founding President of Startup Portugal, a member of the 200M public venture fund, and is now President of Allied for Startups.

Xico By Xico (Francisco Alves), is an entrepreneur, influencer and professional surfer who combines humor, surfing, and a relaxed lifestyle to spread positivity. With a Marketing degree and the support of ReAct Sports Management, Francisco successfully launched the innovative brand, Xico by Xico, as a brand focused on bringing joy and inspiration to others. Today, he partners with several brands and creates engaging social media content, using his platform to connect with those who love surfing, laughing, and embracing life.

Yaron Brooke is the current chairman of the board at the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI). Prior to joining ARI, he was a finance professor at Santa Clara University, where he taught for seven years. Brook is the host of The Yaron Brook Show, streaming live on YouTube, and he is also a regular guest on prominent national radio and television programs.

Michael de Mello is an experienced business executive managing multiple companies in the U.S. and Portugal, including Carmarjo SGPS and Espirito Santo Consultores. He serves on the advisory board of Indico VC Fund I and volunteers as Chairman for the Carlucci American International School in Lisbon, where he's been a board member since 1994. Michael de Mello's career spans roles in private equity with ESDCIL and leadership positions at Colep Portugal and Queijo Saloio. He has an MBA and BA from Columbia University and has worked in finance in New York, London, and Tokyo. A competitive water skier, he holds several national titles and ranks #12 in the 2023 Europa-Africa Waterskiers list.

Chitra Stern is an entrepreneur, co-founder of Martinhal Family Hotels & Resorts in Portugal, known for its luxury, family-friendly properties. Along with her husband, Roman Stern, she launched the first Martinhal resort in Sagres in 2010, expanding to other locations. She also co-founded the United Lisbon International School, contributing to education in the region. With an MBA from the London Business School, Chitra is recognized for her work in hospitality and education in Portugal.

Jeffrey Levine is a prominent real estate developer and entrepreneur based in New York City. He is the chairman and founder of Douglaston Development, Levine Builders, and Clinton Management, three companies that work in synergy to focus on real estate development, construction, and property management.

Pedro Santa-Clara has been a professor at UCLA and also served as a Dean at Nova School of Business and Economics in Lisbon, best known for his work in financial economics. Beyond his academic achievements, Santa-Clara is deeply involved in fostering the next generation of talent in technology and creative industries, bridging the gap between academia and the demands of the modern workforce. He co-founded TUMO and 42 Studio which offers tuition-free, peer-to-peer learning programs in software engineering.

José Avillez is a renowned Portuguese chef known for revolutionizing traditional Portuguese cuisine with modern techniques. He trained at the prestigious El Bulli in Spain before establishing his culinary empire. Avillez owns multiple restaurants, including the acclaimed Belcanto in Lisbon, which was the first in the city to receive two Michelin stars. Expanding globally, he has opened restaurants around the world, promoting Portuguese flavors internationally. Beyond his restaurant ventures, Avillez's influence extends into television, publishing, and culinary consulting.

Henrik Zillmer is the CEO and co-founder of AirHelp, a flight compensation company which helps people get money back from airlines for delayed, cancelled and overbooked flights. AirHelp has offices across the world, is available in 30 countries, offers support in 16 languages and employs more than 550 employees globally. Henrik is a serial entrepreneur who has created more than 10 startups in the United States, Europe and Asia, including Zalora and most recently Room.com. Previously, he worked at UNICEF in Copenhagen and as an IT consultant in Silicon Valley.

Ricardo Torgal co-founded Indico Capital Partners in 2017, where he is General Partner and CFO. Prior joining Indico, Ricardo worked at Caixa Capital (2010-2017) leading VC and Private Equity investments. His previous experience includes work at Centrocar, Ascendum Group (2006-2010), helping to set up the reporting and management control unit, and was also responsible for the ERP implementation. From 2000 to 2006, he worked at BPI Private Equity, monitoring a PE/VC portfolio.

Mohan Iyer is a General Partner at SOSV and a Partner at IndieBio. Mohan carries deep operational experience with more than 25 years as an entrepreneur and leader at several life science startups where he enjoyed developing strategy, building successful teams, executing against complex operational goals, fundraising in good times and bad, and forging creative sell-side strategic partnering and M&A deals. Having walked in these shoes, he is passionate about serving genius entrepreneurs to realize their mission of a better world by creating, scaling, and exiting meaningful new companies.

Christoph Janz is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor. He co-founded Point Nine in 2011 and is today one of the most well-known SaaS influencers and investors in Europe and worldwide. Having founded and exited multiple companies himself, Christoph's first venture deal was an angel check to Zendesk, which was acquired by an investor group led by private equity firm Hellman & Friedman and Permira for $10.2 billion. His most notable deal was his 2017 investment of about $1 million in video recording tool Loom, which was acquired by software firm Atlassian for $975 million in 2023.

Itxaso del Palacio is a General Partner at Notion Capital. Since moving to London in 2010, Itxaso has been an entrepreneur, investor and educator. Having invested in more than a dozen businesses and taught entrepreneurship to around 2,000 students at UCL and Imperial. Itxaso has a passion for helping entrepreneurs build their businesses, supporting them with her network, knowledge and positive attitude. Itxaso joined Notion in 2018 from M12 (formerly Microsoft Ventures) where she launched their UK office and led investments in Onfido, Beamery and Unbabel, a company we are also investors in.

Bjorn Tremmerie is Head of Technology Investments at the European Investment Fund, which he joined in 2002. With his team, he invests and monitors investments in VC funds and is in charge of a portfolio of over 250 European VC funds (including ours!). Bjorn sits on the Investment Committee of the Dutch Venture Initiative Fund-of-Funds and is also a member of KfW Capital's Advisory Board.

Frederik Fleck has founded 10 companies over the last two decades, including Ostrich Media, donare.de, test IO and expertcloud. In 2007, after his first exit, he founded Richmond View Ventures and invests in 3-5 early-stag companies each year. Since then, Frederik has been a self-proclaimed "curiosity-minded guy who also invests in stuff he's interested in", as well as an advisor to early-stage B2B SaaS and D2C companies across different industries and a mentor to entrepreneurs via CDL at Oxford University, EO and Antler in Berlin.

This month on The Red Chair, and with excellent timing considering the upcoming Web Summit conference, we spoke to Paddy Cosgrave! Paddy worked in a number of startups before launching the annual Web Summit conference in Dublin, which has grown rapidly since 2010 - having been in Lisbon since 2016 - and has seen him listed as one of the most influential people in tech. Paddy has been coined a "master connector" by WIRED and a "master of revels" by the Financial Times. His trademark has become bringing tech founders together, not just to participate in a 9-5 tech conference, but to join curated networking experiences such as f.ounders, which allows founders to enjoy the event's after-hours pub crawls. Click the link below to watch the full episode!

This month on our podcast we had the pleasure of speaking to Tim Maurer. Tim's 15+ year career at the intersection of technology, cybersecurity, policy, strategy, and geopolitical risk spans the White House National Security Council, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the United Nations, think tanks and academia. He is a solutions-focused manager adept at developing a strategic vision and direction, building and managing inclusive teams, creating institutional support, as well as managing complex cross-departmental teams in high-stakes, high-stress environments. He is a tested crisis manager able to quickly adapt, clearly communicate, and successfully navigate complex operational, policy, communications, and legal challenges. 

This month on our plush red chairs, we spoke to Tom Henriksson, General Partner at OpenOcean Capital. Tom started his career in VC at Holtron Ventures, one of the A round investors in MySQL, delivering industry leading returns for the fund. Later, he was at Nokia for almost 9 years in various leadership roles, developing and investing in new businesses. Tom's team built Nokia Interactive Advertising to the world leader in premium mobile advertising. Since 2011, Tom is at OpenOcean, an early-stage venture capital firm investing in B2B software across Europe.

Our guest this month is Fred Gil, a former professional tennis player who competed in the ITF Men's Circuit. Fred made some major Portuguese tennis breakthroughs during his career. At the 2010 Estoril Open, he was the first Portuguese to reach an ATP final, and in April 2011, he achieved a career-high singles world ranking of No. 62. He was the first Portuguese man to reach the third round in a Grand Slam singles event and the quarterfinals of a Masters 1000 event. Now retired from professional tennis, Fred still competes and is World Champion of the ITF Young Seniors World Championships and is mostly dedicated to his new business venture: a groundbreaking tech-enabled world class tennis academy.

Mike Butcher is Editor-at-large of TechCrunch. He has been named one of the most influential journalists in European technology by media outlets such as Wired magazine and The Daily Telegraph. He is a regular tech commentator on the BBC, Sky News, CNN, CNBC, and Aljazeera. He has advised the UK government on tech startup policy and was awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours for services to the technology industry. He co-founded The Europas Awards for European startups, the non-profits TechVets and Techfugees, and was a judge on hit TV series “The Apprentice UK”.

Mike Sigal is an entrepreneur, consultant and advisor specializing in business development, corporate innovation strategies and financial innovation, with over 25 years' experience in the global startup ecosystem, including as founder of 7 companies (3 exits, 1 IPO) and advisor to dozens of institutions.

For the first episode of Season 2 of The Red Chair, we are delighted to welcome Cristina Fonseca, one of Indico's founders and our entrepreneur in residence. Cristina is a well-known figure in the tech startup community and has been instrumental in shaping Indico's vision and direction over the years. Cristina co-founded Talkdesk in 2011, the first cloud native call center solution which raised $500M from top global investors. In 2018, Cristina co-founded Cleverly.ai, an artificial intelligence automation startup that was acquired in 2021 by Zendesk, the global leader in customer service software. Appointed as Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2021, she holds a degree in Computer Engineering and Telecommunications from Instituto Superior Técnico (Lisbon).

Ítalo Ferreira is a professional surfer from Baía Formosa, on the northeastern coast of Brazil. Born from humble beginnings, as a child Ítalo began surfing on a styrofoam lid where his father, a fisherman at the time, would store fish. Once he got his first surfboard his talent quickly became seen, and his quickly climbed the ranks. Ítalo became the WSL World Champion in 2019 and in 2020 became the first-ever Olympic gold medalist for surfing at the Tokyo Olympic Games. Now he also dedicates some of his time to philanthropic efforts, namely through the Ítalo Ferreira Institute.

Diogo Mónica is the co-founder and president of Anchorage Digital, the premier digital asset platform for institutions. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the Técnico Lisboa, and has worked in software security for over 15 years. As an early employee at Square, he helped build security architecture that now moves $100 billion annually. At Docker, he helped secure core infrastructure used in global banks, governments and the three largest cloud providers. In 2017, he co-founded Anchorage, the first-ever federally chartered digital asset bank.

Our guest this month is Fred Destin, the founder of Stride.VC, a seed fund based in London. Prior to Stride, Fred was a General Partner at Accel and Accomplice (formerly Atlas Venture) where he played key roles in the success of companies such as Deliveroo, Pillpack, and Carwow. In addition to his work in venture capital, Fred is also a noted blogger and conference keynote speaker.

Kunal Gupta is is the founder and CEO of Nova (formerly Polar), a creative advertising software provider to the world's largest media publishers, platforms, brands and agencies. Kunal is a devoted meditator and regularly writes about leadership, culture, and mindfulness.

April Rinne is equal parts global authority, advocate, ally and adventurer. She sees trends early, understands their potential, and helps others do the same. She's a global citizen who brings insights, access and perspective to companies, governments, investors and organizations worldwide. But April is not only a thought leader; she's also a doer. She connects people, ideas and resources in ways that say "wow, that's what the world needs" – and then makes it happen.

Nic Von Rupp was raised in Sintra, son of a German father and Portuguese mother. He has been surfing since the age of 9, going on to win European Surfer of the Year in 2013. He saw the start of his professional surfing career during his teenage years , but nowadays Nic is focused on what he is most passionate about: moving frontiers in Big Wave Surfing. While chasing the heaviest waves around the world from Nazaré to Hawaii, Nic has grown his YouTube channel and personal brand, and dedicates much of his time towards ocean protection.

Vasco Pedro is no stranger to startups! In 2016 he won the Startup Founder of Year award by Startup Portugal, and has mentored several startups both at the Founders Institute and the Lisbon Challenge. Currently he is the Co-founder and CEO at Unbabel.

Marcelo Lebre is a dad, husband, engineer, tech geek and sci-fi nerd. Passionate about building products, scaling architectures and teams, Marcelo works with startups and founders as an advisor. In 2019, he co-founded Remote, of which he is currently the COO/CTO.

Ari Newman is an entrepreneur, investor and mentor who was previously a Techstars Partner after spending over a decade as an entrepreneur. Currently, he is a Partner at Massive VC & The Fund Rockies.

Jenny Fielding is a two-time founder, pre-seed investor, mentor and entrepreneur from New York. She was the Managing Director of Techstars New York for 7.5 years, before founding her own pre-seed investment fund - The Fund - of which is currently a General Partner.

Cem Sertoglu is an entrepreneur and venture capital investor, focused on technology ventures in Turkey and CEE since 2006. He is currently a Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Earlybird Digital East Fund. Cem holds a BA in Economics from The University of Texas at Austin.

Stephan Morais interviews acclaimed author, entrepreneur and Indico investor, Tim Ferriss.