This article was written by Ana Prata, Co-Founder of MY.SKINMIX, our current Lisbon Challenge startup. Ana shares her personal story about how she entered the biggest start up accelerator in Europe.

In the same day I had the online interviews to apply to The Lisbon Challenge, I left Portugal. Destination? The whole Europe; on that day, I started a trip that would last for exactly one month.

I was in Prague by the time I received a single email. The title: “The Lisbon Challenge – Congratulations!”. First I didn’t quite understand, second I didn’t quite believe I was actually reading that email. Just some months ago I was in college having classes, and out of sudden I was in the middle of Europe, thousands of miles away from home and guess what, I just entered the biggest start up accelerator in Europe with our crazy (and awesome) startup MY.SKINMIX. What a day!

Then the most stressful moment of my vacation happened: I was simply unable to connect myself to the internet for several days, and I almost missed the confirmation dead-line because of that. But finally, in Munich’s central station I managed to have enough internet access to send an email that said something like “YES I’M READY TO GO TO LISBON CHALLENGE, PLEASE LET ME GO”.

In the next days I visited a lot of different countries, but for some reason I was always thinking about Lisbon and what was waiting for me right there. You can always say I was missing my home, my food and above all my bed (and I will give you a lot of reason actually), but I knew it was not just that. I started to realize that when people said to me “this will be the trip of your life”, they actually couldn’t imagine how much they were right, but not exactly for the reasons they thought. To know I was in the Lisbon Challenge was truly one of the best moments of my journey.

15 cities and 29 days after I was back to Lisbon, and deep inside of me, I knew my life had changed. But when I told that to my family, their answer was something like “Oh, take it easy, that’s because you just came from a long adventure and you’re very tired, go to sleep”. Well, I guess I must be still dreaming, because these last months are being simply unbelievable. There isn’t a single day in which I don’t learn something new, and that would be totally impossible without the dedication of all the team and partners of the Lisbon Challenge.

In less than 6 weeks I’ve learned more about entrepreneurship than I would ever imagine possible. I learned how to trust and believe, not only in all the people that are every single day in the Lisbon Challenge to help and guide us, but above all, I learned how to believe in myself and trust my own decisions.

For all we have already been through, and for all that is yet to come, my most genuine thank you to all.