Ricardo Jacinto

Ricardo Jacinto is a Managing Partner at Shilling VC, the Lisbon-based venture firm originally founded in 2011 as a group of angel investors and later institutionalized through the Shilling Founders Fund and Shilling Opportunity Fund. Shilling’s own team page lists him as Managing Partner, and his Shilling profile lists his areas of expertise as finance, IoT, B2B, energy, and real estate.

Before joining Shilling, Jacinto worked in corporate finance and investment. VCWire reports that he started as a consultant at a Big Four firm and later worked in Strategic Planning at José de Mello, one of Portugal’s largest economic groups. Al Andalus Innovation Venture names Deloitte and José de Mello specifically, noting his focus on M&A, private equity, and investment.

He is also a founder-operator. In 2016, he co-founded Elecctro, an IoT cloud platform for vending and unattended markets. His earlier Kendall profile states that he started at Deloitte Corporate Finance in Lisbon, worked on M&A and investment planning at José de Mello, joined Kendall in 2013, graduated in Management from Nova School, and earned an MSc in Corporate Finance from Católica Lisbon.

At Shilling, Jacinto’s role combines investing, portfolio support, and ecosystem building. In interviews, he emphasizes that Shilling’s model is shaped by founders backing other founders, with a community and profit-sharing structure designed to align the fund, LPs, and portfolio founders.

• Shilling is broadly sector-agnostic: Jacinto told VCWire that the firm is “not limited by sector” and invests when it believes a company can change the world, drive economic growth, and create jobs.
• Stage focus spans early and growth: Shilling Founders Fund focuses on pre-Series A with tickets up to €1M, while the Opportunity Fund targets Series A and later rounds, with larger tickets.
• The firm looks for disruptive, technology-based companies with global potential and scalable business models, especially those entering large markets quickly or creating new categories.
• Jacinto says he looks for founders with “grit, resilience, ambition, persuasion, and perseverance,” plus clear market understanding, a compelling vision, and a team with complementary skills.
• Sector themes he has publicly highlighted include AI, HealthTech, FinTech/InsurTech, marketplaces, consumer, cybersecurity, SpaceTech, and ClimateTech. His Shilling profile also names finance, IoT, B2B, energy, and real estate as personal areas of expertise.
• Shilling’s geographic center is Portugal, but Jacinto has said the firm looks across Europe and has invested outside Portugal, including Europe, Canada, and Brazil.