Participated · Equity · May 2024

Oscar is a Lisbon, Portugal–based mobile platform that connects customers with technicians for maintenance, cleaning, laundry, and beauty services. Led by founder and CEO João Marques, the app aggregates over 12,000 technicians and offers more than 150 distinct services. The company raised $6.5M in funding to support growth. Oscar intends to use the proceeds to expand operations, broaden its business reach, and accelerate product development. The platform focuses on matching users with local service providers through its app to scale home-services penetration in its markets. The business model centers on marketplace transactions between customers and vetted technicians. Oscar operates a home-services platform accessed via an app on Google Play and the App Store that connects users to about 3,000 professionals. The app offers more than 150 services including repair, cleaning and laundry at fixed prices with a maximum response time of 30 minutes. Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Lisbon, Oscar currently serves districts including Lisbon, Porto, Margem Sul, Coimbra, Setúbal, Cascais and Sintra. The company announced it closed a €1.1M financing round led by Lince Capital with participation from Olispo Way and business angels Tony Honkanen and Humberto Ayres Pereira. Oscar said it will use the funds to expand its pool of professionals and technicians into new districts, strengthen its presence in existing areas, broaden service categories, and bolster engineering and operations teams. Recent leadership changes include the appointment of Diogo Coutinho, formerly Kitch’s Portugal director, as country manager to lead the business and expansion strategy in its sole market to date.

Led · Seed · May 2024

Checkfirst builds an API-first platform that uses AI for remote inspections, image recognition, automated report summaries, and scheduling tailored to TICC workflows. The product schedules inspectors by geography and qualifications to reduce travel, lower environmental footprint, and improve workforce utilization and margins. The company emphasizes scheduling as the primary industry pain point and applies AI to optimize task assignments. Founders include CEO Ben Lambert, CPO Oyvind Henriksen, and CTO Rami Elsawy; Lambert previously worked at Nexmo and Agora. Checkfirst initially used a mix of open-source and commercial AI models and is now building proprietary models for image recognition and scheduling based on its data. The startup is working with several clients on proofs-of-concept, including one client that the company says has 30,000 customers, and has raised a $1.5M pre-seed to advance product development and POCs.

Participated · Seed · Jul 2023

sheerME offers a mobile app and integrations (Google, Meta — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp — and Glovo) for easy online booking and payment of wellness, beauty and fitness services. The platform serves over 100,000 users and partners with more than 2,500 commercial establishments. Customers earn benefits in a digital wallet that can be redeemed on future bookings to encourage repeat usage. The company has a team of 25 professionals, seven of whom are based in Brazil, and is expanding operations into Brazil and Spain while continuing to grow in Portugal. CEO Miguel Alves Ribeiro said the startup aims to become the largest community and platform of wellness services globally within five years. Management projected plans to quadruple revenue in 2023.