Day 2 of the SIM Conference (Startups & Investment Matching) 2025 edition kicked off on the Startup Stage with an update that some 2,500 connections were made the previous day. With an emphasis on facilitating positive discussions and interactions between founders and investors in a relaxed environment, SIM certainly appears to be delivering on its goals once again.
With a packed agenda again today, choosing which sessions to join was not an easy decision. One of the first discussions on the main SIM Stage featured Carolin Wais, Partner at Plug and Play Ventures; and Ryan Brown, Venture Partner at Render Capital, in a session titled ‘The Elephant in the Room: How to overcome the first ticket void?’.
Moderated by Max Pog, Founder of Venture Studio Family, the session offered valuable insights from the perspective of experienced investors to founders looking to raise capital. Brown was keen to highlight that for him he doesn’t want to see initial pre-seed investment used by companies to figure out what a problem is – he would much rather see it spent in areas such as customer discovery.
The relationship between investors and founders was also compared to a marriage. Wais said if she is giving her time, trust and money she needs to see that reflected by founders who are full time to their company and totally committed to that business, ideally with a supporting team beside them. For Brown, the companies that appeal most are those with two co-founders, one of whom has technical expertise.
Later on day 2 there was a popular session on the SIM Stage delivered by Ann Charlotte Joubert, Project Lead at HER FUND, a pan-European network of investors keen to back female-led companies. Founded in 2024, HER FUND has already garnered support from nine partner organisations in seven different countries.
The mission of the network is to build a community of gender conscious investors and stakeholders to support women led startups and create a more inclusive and gender equal innovation ecosystem. Joubert outlined some revealing statistics to highlight both the challenges and opportunities that exist currently around why investing in women matters, including that:
- Women bring in 150% more revenue than men for every € invested
- Closing the gender gap would raise global GDP by 26%
- Just 17.4% of deep tech companies in Europe are founded by women
In closing the 2025 edition of the SIM Conference, António Dias Martins, Executive Director of Startup Portugal, first announced the winners of the startup pitch battles from both days of the event across all verticals. He then went on to highlight the significant growth from last year’s conference following two days of presenting and inspiring talks, emphasising that Startup Portugal want SIM to be invaluable to startups and investors and produce meaningful connections between them.
Felipe Araujo, Vice President, Porto City Hall, then joined the stage to reaffirm that SIM is a catalyst for connections, interactions and innovation and the next chapter of the conference begins now. The closing remarks were left for Pedro Duarte, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs of Portugal, who said SIM was a meaningful and impactful event that will only continue to scale, while helping to put Portugal on the global map for entrepreneurship. Here’s to the 2026 edition!
