'A Start-up nation': Mapping technology-based entrepreneurship processes in Portugal

This paper has as starting point the questioning of the meaning and implications, of an institutional, socioeconomic, and organizational nature, of the growth and visibility of tech entrepreneurship processes in Portugal. It aims to provide a distinct, alternative perspective, in addition to the ones commonly conveyed in political and media spheres, often uncritical and laudatory, tendent to present these phenomena as homogeneous, seductive realities with unequivocal effects and virtues. This praise has left little room for questioning, presenting tech entrepreneurship and start-up organizations as vague universes, with diffuse contours, for the purpose of empirical analyses. The goal of this paper is, therefore, to shed (more) light into the rising Portuguese start-up phenomenon, based on the analysis of a set of exploratory interviews made with key entrepreneurial agents, and statistical and documentary sources. Six substantive directions for further exploring the Portuguese tech entrepreneurship on an empirical level are suggested.