João T. Fernandes

Building from Portugal. These days it's mostly Indie Seguros, which plugs insurance into digital platforms, with coverage per unit of work, instead of annually. It's my third product company. eCheque came first, then Colmena (both ended up acquired).

I've also built agencies. Monday, my first company ever (digital marketing then, business design consultancy now). I sold my stake to my co-founders to go all-in on myAdLab, a very early mobile apps studio we later merged into SendIt. Then a lice-removal franchise that was a complete failure. And now Quatro40, a strategic comms agency for innovators, forward thinkers and other dangerous characters. We get founders and what they're building into the news. The worst we produce has plenty of airtime already; good examples are contagious.

Things I think about

• Risk. Work happens in tasks now; insurance is still sold by the year. A courier should be covered for the delivery, not for 2026. Every task teaches something about risk that insurers can't see. That gap is where I spend most of my days.
• Small companies. Portugal has 1.7 million of them, buying insurance like it's 1994. Most of Europe's economy looks like this: small, underserved, and nothing like the startups that get written about.
• Business. The best machine we have for producing and distributing wealth. Entrepreneurs make companies, companies make jobs, jobs make prosperity. I've never found a better value chain. It's why I start companies, write cheques into other people's, and trade mentorship with other founders in both directions.
• Constraints. Nothing new comes from looking at the same problem, from the same angle, with the same constraints as everyone else. First principles. Don't accept things as they are; build them as they should be.
• My kids. I don't know what they'll become, and it's not my call anyway. I do want them to know they can look at a problem their own way, make something, and charge for it. So we're starting early. With my daughter, contacontos.com: what could we do around children's stories? With my oldest son, one of openbanking.pro, colleccionadores.online or 40words.com. The domains came first. Around here, they usually do. Best cap tables I'll ever have.
• Return to the mean. One of the strongest forces in the universe. Revolutions like AI bring short-term friction, and after the chasm we end up better than we started. I'm an optimist on the far side of most panics.
• Memory. We've never had so much information and so much trouble selecting, processing and retaining it. How can we deal with this? How can we extend our brain and have external knowledge ready to surface, be actionable and useful within the right context? I've been fooling around with this a bit. If one day it becomes a product, it'll happen in memlore.com, but so far it's just a domain and a question lingering in my brain.
• Hiring. Why do startups only recruit when they're desperate? Proactive recruiting feels obvious and nobody does it (cofoundhr.com; same status: domain, conviction).
• The Stoics. I read them when the rest of this list fails me, which is more often than I'd like.
• Cooking and wine. I can talk about both for longer than you have.
• Sporting Clube de Portugal. Through thick and mostly thin.

Angel and LP cheques: AngelsWay, THV, GoParity, Cycling District, and an oyster farm, because why not.