As Lisbon Challenge coordinator I end up exchanging lots of emails with the founders of startups selected to go into Lisbon Challenge, and here is a FAQ that results from a compilation of those email interactions:

Regarding the fee are the 150€ fee to be paid for each team member?Yes, each team member coming to Lisbon Challenge should pay the 150€ reservation fee.

My investors are asking me for more information about the program and I haven’t found the exact “perks” that you will be giving us (mentors, in-house team, etc)

Mentors - http://www.lisbon-challenge.com/mentors

What LC2013 looked like - http://www.lisbon-challenge.com/2013/

Perks - http://www.lisbon-challenge.com/supporters (over 100K€/ team and growing each day)

In-house team - http://www.lisbon-challenge.com/team

In-house entrepreneur - Paulo Taylor

2013 alumni - http://www.lisbon-challenge.com/startups (1 on YCombinator, 2 Seedcamp, over 40% startups were invested during or 2 months after the program ended).

How much time does the In-house team dedicate to each team on average? How much can we ask them?

We have a team of 6 instructors for 30 selected teams. Each instructor will be coaching 5 startups. Each instructor will have 30 min weekly meetings with each startup, to screen progress on https://www.launchpadcentral.com/, the tool that we will be using to measure progress. All instructors are Beta-i staff.

I see there are a lot of mentors. Do we choose them or the other way around?

Mostly, the startups choose them on an internal shared wish list. Some “rock-star” mentors like Brant Cooper usually give 4 hour slots for Lisbon Challenge that translate into about 8 mentoring slots (30 mins each), and it might happen that not all startups wishing mentorship might be able to get a free slot. Most slots are assigned per FIFO order.

If we were selected among the best 10 startups. When would the investor’s day be held?

Investor and Venture Days, July 10-11th are held for all Lisbon Challenge startups. In case you are among the selected startups for investment we will conduct private negotiations with you, in order to close a deal - these negotiations are an add-on to the program, and not part of the official curricula.

Last year, there were 150.000€ in prizes. I’m guessing this year this has been replaced by the up to 60.000€ you can invest in each startup?

It’s a different game. We’ve dropped the prize-money and opted for a selective investment strategy. Beta-i reserves it self the right to invest on startups according to its own investment criteria, so there is no guarantee whatsoever that your startup will be invited to be part of investment negotiations. That will mostly depend on the a) quality of the due diligence done during the program, b) fit with the investment criteria, c) specific negotiation resolve. All details regarding the investment possibilities will be explained on the opening day of Lisbon Challenge, May 2nd

Right now we are 6 full-time people on the team. However, due to a problem only 3 of us would be able to go to Lisbon (me, one of the programmers and one of the marketing team; splitting the team in half). And now I’m wondering if splitting the team this way will be a good or bad thing. Do you have any advice on this? Are other startups having the same issue? How are they solving it?

From our experience a 6 people team can be split. Here is how we advise you do it, the CEO (you) and two other core tech people can stay in Lisbon, while business dev people can stay in your home country. I believe you can let home city office in business support & assurance mode, giving support to existing business, and making local leads, while Lisbon team is doing product/ internationalization dev, and international business growth. If you need you can always hop on the plane or vice-versa.

We have however some doubts. For economic reasons and commitments we cannot allocate two elements to be full-time for three months in Lisbon. Is there the possibility of attending the program with a smaller workload? Is it a viable scenario of two elements of the group goes twice a week to Lisbon?

Lisbon Challenge accelerator is a full-time program, which requires a stay of at least two members of the team to be full-time, so that they can participate in sessions with mentors, workshops, and master classes, among several other program activities. Basically, what is expected is that the startup moves to Lisbon from May 2nd till July 27th (international roadshow included).

Thanks,

Andre Marquet