Rui Ferreira

Rui Pedro Soares Ferreira is a Portuguese venture-capital and corporate-finance executive best known for his leadership role at Portugal Ventures, the Banco Português de Fomento Group venture-capital company. Portugal Ventures’ site and public announcements identify him as Executive Vice President in 2018–2021, later as President/CEO/Chairman during the 2022–2024 leadership period. In early 2025, Portugal Ventures announced a new Board of Directors for the 2025–2027 term, with Marco Neves as President, João Paulo Miranda as Vice-President and Carla Areias as Executive Board Member, making Ferreira a former head of the firm.

His academic background is in management and finance. ISCTE’s public Ciência-Iscte profile lists him as holding a degree in Business Organisation and Management from ISCTE and a master’s degree/MBA with specialisation in Finance from Universidade Católica Portuguesa. The same profile says he has taught entrepreneurship, corporate finance and M&A at ISCTE Business School since 2002, including business-plan design and financing modules.

Before Portugal Ventures, Ferreira built a long career around SME finance, venture capital, restructuring and entrepreneurship. ISCTE’s profile lists roles at IAPMEI from 1993 to 2000, including coordination of financial engineering and innovation finance work; SBI Small Business Investments in 2000–2001; API/IPE-Capital from 2001 to 2004; Deloitte’s Corporate Finance division in 2004–2005; Audax/ISCTE from 2005 to 2009; Capital Criativo in 2010–2011; Tec Labs in 2012–2013; BIZ4U from 2011; Blue Catching SCR from 2013; and CFO of Shark Tank Portugal from 2014.

At Portugal Ventures, Ferreira’s public comments emphasized the firm’s public-policy role in filling financing gaps for Portuguese startups, while pushing them toward global markets and co-investment with private capital. In March 2022, Expresso quoted him saying the goal was to reduce public-money participation in Portugal Ventures-backed startup investment from 69.3% toward a 50/50 mix with private investors.

• Portugal Ventures invests in startups with registered offices in Portugal at pre-seed, seed and Series A stages, with tickets between €50,000 and €1.5 million.
• The firm focuses on Digital & Technology, Manufacturing & Technology, Therapeutics & Health Tech and Tourism.
• Portugal Ventures favors co-investment with Portuguese and international partners, invests by tranches tied to milestones, takes minority stakes and typically takes a board seat.
• Ferreira’s stated focus in 2021 was on “R&D, tech-based and scalable solutions created by solid and highly motivated teams,” with new investments supported by close ties to the firm’s Capital Partners Network.
• In Enterprise Deep Tech, Portugal Ventures said it sought “global, sophisticated corporate users” where the team’s deep-tech value proposition is clear and market differentiation is sustainable.
• Ferreira framed the firm’s role as addressing market failures in early-stage funding, especially for pre-seed projects, and pairing capital with the Portugal Ventures team’s know-how and partner network.
• He has publicly highlighted management quality as central to startup outcomes, telling Expresso that success depends heavily on managers’ profile, attitude, resilience, ability to overcome difficulty and team interaction.