[msandford]

When a bunch of people have nothing to lose they can do impressive things. In this case, nothing to lose means that they don't have good employment prospects not because of personal failings but rather macroeconomic or structural problems. When there's little to no opportunity cost to trying to start your own business it shouldn't be surprising that so many do try.

[rcarmo]

There's a flip side to that coin, which is that there are a lot of "incubators" set up to purportedly support Portuguese startups that have delivered (statistically) zero successes - there are exceptions, but as far as I know they're not portrayed in TFA.

Regardless, it bears noting that there are more, standalone, bona fide startups out here trying to make it, and fortunately not all of them are relying on the app bubble keeping up.

[hobbes78]

UPTEC last year accepted 165 new start-ups and 22 managed to gain independence and become self-sustained. A success rate of 13% in the start-up world is not that bad...

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&js=y&prev...

[dcustodio]

exactly, I think most incubators in Portugal are there for the real estate and few offer real incubation/acceleration plans.

[pjmlp]

Yes, I really look forward to some of my friends current attempts.