On February 3rd, the meeting celebrating 16 years of the IST spin-off community took place. Professor Pedro Amaral began by presenting the renewed momentum that Técnico wants to give to this community, emphasizing the bidirectional nature of the relationship: while Técnico supports its spin-off ecosystem, the spin-offs should also support Técnico. It is a voluntary commitment of mutualism, whose intensity and expectations Técnico intends to strengthen.
From now on, there will be different approaches for two types of spin-offs: the “Made in Técnico”, in which researchers, faculty members, or students bring the results of their scientific and engineering work to the market and the “Técnico DNA”, companies whose founders leveraged the knowledge acquired at Técnico to create businesses anywhere in the world. The latter represent the vast majority of current members of the Técnico spin-off ecosystem, and Albatroz Engenharia is proud to have been a founding member in December 2009. There will be new logos and branding, along with strengthened support tools from Técnico, built around six pillars:
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Training and people development, including discounts on Técnico+ Training & Development programs
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Visibility & Networking, backed by the network and the “Técnico Lisboa” brand
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Access to Técnico’s laboratory infrastructure
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Business mentorship and acceleration
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Intellectual property
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Funding
A roundtable discussion then addressed a topic familiar to all entrepreneurs: fear.
Moderator Ricardo Constantino (NTTDATA) encouraged an open and lively exchange of ideas with Teresa Fiúza (Banco Português de Fomento), Daniel Riscado (Fidelidade), and Ana Teresa Freitas (Professor at the Department of Computer Engineering at Técnico) on the topic “From University to Start-Up: overcoming the fear of entrepreneurship.” It would be impossible to reproduce the entire discussion here — hopefully the organizers will publish the video with all the interventions — but in the final remarks, a provocative question from Professor Pedro Amaral brought to the surface some long-buried memories from the prehistory of Albatroz Engenharia.
The essence of the question was “Do Americans have more success with start-ups because they proudly embrace the desire to become wealthy, while Europeans are afraid to admit they want to be rich?” This is one of the fundamental questions of entrepreneurship: what truly motivates entrepreneurs?
The speakers responded that the desire to become wealthy and the public perception of wealth varies by age, while the sentiment is common among people over 40, the willingness to openly embrace the ambition of becoming rich tends to increase as age decreases.
The prehistory of Albatroz Engenharia
Albatroz Engenharia began to take shape in September 2003, during the Vector E course at Instituto IN+, associated with Técnico’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. The goal of the course was to train students to develop a business plan for a new technology company, which would later be evaluated by an international jury of investment professionals. The course lasted about 10 weeks and cost several hundred euros, possibly more than a thousand. At least 50% had to be paid upfront by cheque to Técnico.
The coordinator, Burkhard Schrage, a German who spoke fluent Brazilian Portuguese with a rich vocabulary, asked a question in one of the first sessions:
– “Who came here to become rich?”
People in the audience looked at each other and very few hands went up.
– “If you want to be rich, you should look somewhere else. More than 90% of new companies fail before covering their initial investment. If you do the math, there are better ways to become wealthy.”
It was a cold shower of reality. After giving everyone a few seconds to reflect, he added in a friendlier tone:
– “We only cash the cheques at the end of the month. So you still have one or two weeks to think about what you’re doing here and, if you change your mind, go to the office and collect your cheque. At least you’ll recover your investment.”
At the end of the course, Joao Gomes-Mota, one of the two future founders of Albatroz Engenharia, together with another Vector E colleague, submitted a business plan in a field already involving LiDAR technology. The idea was one of two joint winners of the program and, fortunately, it never moved forward.
Fortunately? Yes, because one of the course’s key lessons was that the best validation comes from the customer. The course mentors — led by Burkhard Schrage — repeatedly insisted “I only care about primary contacts (= direct customers), everything else is just talk to lull babies to sleep. How many primary contacts did you make last week?”
During the project, the two aspiring entrepreneurs became increasingly enthusiastic even going to the National Registry of Legal Entities to register the company name “Albatroz Engenharia, Lda.” However, as the primary contacts, always rare and difficult, continued, reality set in.
At the final public evaluation, with the jury and all teams present, the founders admitted they feared the market traction would be limited, one of the evaluators congratulated them and asked:
– “So, after considering everything, will you move forward?”
Their answer was no, the expected profitability was in the “higher one digit” range (5%–9%), and there would certainly be costs they had not yet anticipated. The evaluator replied:
“In my country, Switzerland, a business like this would need 20–30% margins in the business plan just to land in the lower double digits in reality. If you start in the single digits, you will probably end up with negative margins.”
And so Albatroz remained an egg that had been incubated but never hatched.
Two years later, a new problem appeared, a new team member joined Alberto Vale, PhD, a colleague from Técnico, and a new LiDAR-based solution emerged, this time there was only one “primary contact”: LABELEC, a company from the EDP Group, but the client’s representatives were just as eager to use the product as the founders were to build it.
Then came another challenge: the first client would buy only one unit, which would already represent 100% of the national market. Any additional units would need to be sold outside Portugal.
Fear returned: by then there were children and families to support. Despite these fears, the founders’ confidence in their ability to build a product that met the client’s needs pushed them forward. This time the egg hatched and a small albatross was born twenty years ago, in February.
There was even more fear when they made another bold decision: knowing they were not enough to deliver the product on time, they hired four more engineers. It was no longer a small rowing boat, it was now a boat with six crew members who had never worked together before, and 10–11 months to deliver the product to the client, otherwise, the company could sink within 6–7 months.
In June 2006 the concept “Power Line Maintenance Inspection” was born, 31/01/2007 – the first real-time operational demonstration and 15/06/2007 the first unit was delivered to the client in Chaves for validation.
Where does Técnico fit in?
Three months after creating Albatroz, the founders went to the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering to sign their first collaboration agreement with universities, which remains active to this day. They did not do it out of boredom or lack of work, they did it because they knew that staying connected to those advancing the state of the art was essential to improving the product and securing the second sale and those that followed.
Albatroz Engenharia was built as a bridge between the university (know-how) and the market (the desire to use).
Through this relationship with Técnico, many initiatives took place, Técnico summer internships and IAESTE internships, Master’s thesis projects, data sets provided for laboratory problems, participation in academic weeks, BEST courses, IST bootcamps and hackathons, introductory Electrical Engineering classes given by Albatroz members, airworthiness classes, company visits, and others…
In 2009, the invitation from IST for Albatroz to become a founding member of the IST spin-off network came naturally and the response was naturally positive.
The flashback from 2003 to 2009, followed by a fast-forward to 2026, lasted just until the stage welcomed Carlos Moedas, a civil engineer trained at Técnico, former European Commissioner for Innovation, and currently Mayor of Lisbon.
In a brief speech, he left three messages for the participants, two stood out, disruptive innovation does not depend on one person who knows everything, it depends on multidisciplinary teams where each member is highly skilled in their own domain and capable of collaborating effectively with other. Only this kind of innovation creates better and more attractive jobs.
The third message addressed fear. Quoting his professors, Carlos Moedas said that the antidote to fear is self-confidence, not blind confidence, but the sweet spot on the path between ignorance and arrogance.
Self-confidence lies between ignorance and arrogance.
Conclusions
What does Albatroz take from this meeting, and from 15 years in the spin-off community?
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The desire to act must prevail over the desire to claim action. When something becomes real, the formal paperwork appears. If you start with the paperwork, you may never reach reality.
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All fields are connected. Knowledge is a single connected graph. Linking distant topics sparks chain reactions in receptive communities — the best way to stimulate creativity. The software Albatroz uses in helicopters to inspect power lines is the same software used to create a 3D model of Lisbon’s Roman galleries.
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The team matters more than the product. A good team can change the product — or change direction if the product proves unviable. A bad team can destroy even the best product.
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Entrepreneurs start companies because they believe they alone can solve a problem. Albatroz exists because a) its founders believed they could build the “Power Line Maintenance Inspection” system and b) the first client believed they were the only ones capable of solving the problem with the “Power Line Maintenance Inspection” system. If the entrepreneurs ever become rich, that will simply be a spin-off.
In summary, beyond a brief set of tips for aspiring entrepreneurs who do not have time to read more than 555 characters (were fear is also a subject), one conclusion remains entrepreneurship is born from the alignment between confidence in the ability to create and the need to use, between wanting to build and wanting to use. Or, as Alexandre Herculano, also quoted by Carlos Moedas, wrote:
“To want is almost always to be able; what is exceedingly rare is the wanting.” Alexandre Herculano