Pedro Santos

Pedro Santos

Co-founder Beta-i & CEO at Darwin Labs

Biography

Pedro Santos is one of The masterminds of business innovation in Portugal. He co-founded Beta-i, one of the main entrepreneurship and innovation organizations in Europe. He’s the CEO at Darwin labs, a consulting company specialized in Outsystems agile development using onshore and nearshore development model. Pedro is also a published author, he wrote European Founders at Work in 2012, and When Founders Fail: Lessons from the Entrepreneurial School of Hard Knocks in 2014.

Check out the schedule

Morning Snack for the early birds

Todays digital world gets more crowded every day. Often it seems to be impossible to push through the noise. How can I build a personal brand that sticks out of the crowd? How can I make sure my message gets heard and how can I attract the right customers, partners and employees for my business? Is a strong personal brand just something that comes naturally or can I follow a specific framework to grow and scale my brand?

Business is adapting to new standards of the digital age but managing a company still challenges any skilled decision-maker. Knowing how to resist The Dark Side of Management is imperative to successfully implement the best strategies for business growth.

For centuries, international business meant sending a messenger horseback riding with a letter, or shipping goods on wooden sail boats. With the rise of telecommunications and the revolution of the Information Age, we’re currently living in the tipping point for international business and career, that’s why globalization should be everyone’s priority on a professional and personal level.

How DarwinLabs manages to sell to North America, Europe and Asia without leaving Portugal.

Artificial intelligence technologies are impacting the business world. “Artificial intelligence” is a broad and general term that refers to any type of computer software that engages in humanlike activities, including learning, planning and problem-solving. Today, artificial intelligence is a household name (and sometimes even a household presence – hi, Alexa!)

Nowadays, organizations have lots of good ideas or initiatives, but they don’t have the resources to pursue all of them. Having a clear, transparent, and collaborative process for choosing the right actions is crucial for the success of the innovation initiatives.

Lets peels back the curtain to reveal the truth of starting and scaling a successful business in the digital age, no holds barred.

Crowdfunding is a tough world. At the same time it provides magical opportunities for hardware companies to overcome huge manufacturing MOQs and raise money by selling their products before they exist. This presentation goes inside the bits and bolts of a campaign that raised $120k

The way we communicate is constantly changing. And businesses need to keep evolving. The way brands communicate with their clients has a growing new element: chat bots, which is AI at the service of brands, giving customers a sense of humanisation. It allows businesses to scale while saving time and resources. How have brands dealt with this new reality? What are the success stories? And the failures? What can we learn from them?

Afternoon Snack break.

Starting a new business is exciting but if we want to create a business with longevity, we need to keep a few critical things in mind. Whether you’re creating a business to run yourself or to eventually sell, you want to stand out in the new economy.

A lot of aspiring entrepreneurs who are thinking about starting a business are often held back from moving forward. They are usually worried about not being experienced enough, not having enough capital or backing from investors. In this presentation I will share my own experience of starting a b2b consultancy business in Portugal, and how it really is possible to achieve success without experience, investors or capital.

As Reid Hoffman puts it, “if your first product doesn’t embarrass you, you’ve launched too late.”
Your entrepreneurial journey starts with your first customer, and with doing stuff that doesn’t scale. It’s hard work, and sales is part of it.
Understand why and how you’ll be better prepared than your competition by focusing on selling from day one.”

If you could choose any person or company to have as client of your company, who would you choose?
In our case, the dream client would be the Hollywood studios. This is the approach we followed to reach that unrealistic goal

In a world constantly measuring “how many” likes, employees, followers, you name it, what if instead you could focus on “how good”? We have grown the obsession to scale up. What scaling really means? Fateme will guide you through a more human focus on scaling.

Speaker 1: Fateme Banishoeib.
Speaker 2: Terra Milo.

Moderator: Pedro Lemos.

This presentation will cover the benefits of automation and when to streamline your business. It will also teach you how to keep a personal touch while maximizing your time and the steps you can take to successfully implement automation processes in order to scale your business.

Donna Longhurst Jackson is a renowned branding expert and she will be speaking about branding, both personal and corporate, and how it defines success and relates to scaling. How to find clients and pitch for financing. The journey from start up to Scaling.

Chad Spain, Consulting Partner at Whitten & Roy Partnership, LLC will let us know about the 5 mistakes we often see companies make when building the sales function of their business.

The reality is that it’s never been easier to start a business, and never been harder to scale. Dakini will share her experience, challenges, and answer questions from the audience.

Insights on how digital marketing tools can be used to scale up your business.

Speaker 1: Dr Rodrigo Perez-Vega.
Speaker 2: Dakini Alexandra Isenegger.

Moderator: Terra Milo.

Identify some of the most common mistakes people make at times of scaling.

Coworking as the new blitzscaling platform.

Nuno will talk about co-working and Deborah helps people with the psychology of being an entrepreneur.

Speaker 1: Nuno Guilherme
Speaker 2: Deborah Dahab

Moderator: David Ganço

Learn how to grow and scale your business with Instagram and Facebook ads. What and how is the Facebook Family offering to companies to reach their preferred and new audiences via Social Media. Learn about different marketing campaigns and their Ad Formats.

About the social media supremacy and how to make it work for your business.
Speaker 1: Alexander Kraus
Speaker 2: Rodrigo Perez-Vega
Moderator: Miguel Salvado

Startup life is rough, limited time, staff and resources. Success is based on the team you hire, that do more with less.

How should companies decide whether they need to get bigger? While conventional wisdom has taught us bigger is better, the decision to grow or scale your business comes down to how founders define success, what really matters, and how to work within those parameters. Solonia Teodros, co founder of The Change School, will share her journey of building, growing and transforming a Singapore-based startup into an online business, and key lessons learned along the way.

back to top