The seventh edition of the Madeira Startup Retreat officially kicked off on 9 February at the Colégio dos Jesuítas, bringing together in Madeira ten international startups linked to the travel, tourism, and leisure sectors. This year’s programme places a strong emphasis on solutions based on Artificial Intelligence, featuring the participation of: Apollo: Turismo Outdoor (Brazil); Ciceru (Estónia); eTrilhas (Brazil); HotelBuddy (Estonia); Passabot (Brazil); Simplifyer (Portugal); The Regenerative Tourism (Brazil); Tripio.co (Germany); Tripnly (Turkey & Portugal); Volvero (Italy). 

Organised by Startup Madeira, in partnership with NOVA SBE and with the support of Turismo de Portugal, the programme runs until 20 March.

The Launch Event brought together the participating teams, partners, local hosts, and guest speaker Yuval Ackerman, CEO of Ethical Emails, who opened the edition with the talk “Why sustainable tourism needs ethical marketing: The AI question”. The event continued with presentations from the startups, integration sessions led by Maria Eugénia Mascarenhas, Associate Director at the @ NOVA SBE Haddad Entrepreneurship Institute, and networking activities that marked the start of six intensive weeks of work.

Throughout the first week, dedicated to business diagnosis, strategic planning, and goal setting, the startups are taking part in self-assessment exercises, team workshops with mentor Marta Pereira from Elephant Answer, and the traditional Mentor Madness, featuring experts such as Carlos Neto, Cintia Mano, José Maia, José Marques, Nina Simone Franke and Simone Siebra. The week will culminate with the first roadtrip and participation in the Funchal Carnival, offering the teams a rich cultural experience of the island.

The second week will focus on AI-driven value creation and brand communication, featuring workshops by Shadi Yazdan, CEO of SY Strategy, and Patrícia Soares da Costa, a branding specialist. It will also include a masterclass with the Google Developer Group Madeira, centred on technological experiences and knowledge-sharing between participants and members of the local ecosystem. This phase will also feature a Co‑Create Lab with students from the Universidade da Madeira, fostering collaboration between academia and startups.

The third week, dedicated to product strategy and growth, will welcome a visit from Portugal Ventures, represented by Marco Neves, it will also include a masterclass titled “The Agentic Playbook: How to build an AI-first startup”, led by Martin Hýravý, from Make. The startups will also take part in a workshop with mentor Gil Belford and join two key initiatives: a matchmaking session with the Citizen Circle, community with over 50 participants and the Madeira Library session, which will bring together regional entrepreneurs and professionals from tourism, hospitality, technology, sustainability, and the blue economy.

The fourth week will address scalability, sales, and growth hacking, workshops led by Miguel Alves Ribeiro, founder of sheerME, and Fernando Jardim, from Startup Genome. The fifth week will be devoted to building high‑impact teams and partnership strategies, with sessions guided by Paula Marques, from NOVA, and Tim Ward, founder of Bid Buddy Pro.

During this week, the programme will also include a collaborative hackathon between the startups participating in the Madeira Startup Retreat and the finalists of the Madeira Impact Collective, a programme in which Startup Madeira is also a partner.

The final week will be entirely dedicated to preparing for Demo Day, featuring intensive pitch training sessions led by Brian Tam, founder of Let’s Make Great!.

The highlight of this edition will take place on 18 March, with the Demo Day, showcasing presentations from the ten startups, along with a series of guest talks by Eliano Marques, Lígia Gomes, Carlos Bleck de Siqueira, Sérgio Guerreiro, Carla Portela and Carlos Soares Lopes. The event will conclude with a networking session open to participants, partners, and the wider community. This final session will be open to the public, with registration details to be announced soon on Startup Madeira’s official website.

With ten startups based in seven countries and a total of 27 entrepreneurs representing eleven nationalities, the seventh edition of the Madeira Startup Retreat is taking place from 9 February to 20 March at the Colégio dos Jesuítas in Funchal.

More information about the participating startups, guest speakers, and mentors is available on the official programme website.