Luis Goncalves
Luis Gonçalves
Luis Gonçalves

Twenty years in product.Still in the trenches.

I build my own companies. I help founders build, scale and run theirs.
Portugal, Finland, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Brazil. The last five years inside the startup ecosystem: founders, accelerators, investors.
20 years
digital product
5 countries
lived and worked
50+
organisations, 3 continents
5 books
two more this year
Find your door QeVentures · three companies, three different people
Get the thing out of your head and into the market, and then make it run without you.
Nothing is sold on this page. Each door goes to the brand that does the work — its own diagnostic, its own programme.
You're employed, with an idea
You ship and sell a real product on your own, with AI, without quitting your job to find out if it works.
GoSolopreneur

For the mid-to-senior professional with an idea that has been dying in a notebook for years. You think you need a developer, a co-founder or a VC. You need none of them.

Runs on BUILD — validate, MVP, income, launch in public, grow on data. Free entry: the Corporate Suffocation Index. Then self-serve, then a twelve-week accelerator by application.

“Build it while you're still employed.”

You run a service business
Your business runs when you're not in the room.
YourMachine

For the agency or service founder who is the bottleneck in their own company. Every engagement runs through you. You've mistaken a job with worse hours for a business.

Runs on MACHINE — Model · Architect · Community · Harvest · Integrate · Navigate · Execute. Free entry: the Founder Trap Test. Then you do it, we do it with you, or we do it for you.

“If it only works when you're in the room, it isn't a business.”

You're running on fifteen tools
The whole company runs on one platform instead of fifteen tools.
FIKR Space

For startups, accelerators, investors and the institutions running programmes for them. OKRs, CRM, content, scorecards, finance, pitch, cap table, people — plus accelerator and investor surfaces.

Entrepreneurship infrastructure — not a methodology, the rails the rest runs on. Startups use it free; the demand side, accelerators and investors, is what pays. I built it myself, it's live, and you can check it before you decide whether to hire me.

“One startup can't predict success. Thousands can.”

The twenty years Portugal · Finland · Germany · Saudi Arabia · Brazil

Twenty years of doing the job before teaching it.

I left Portugal at 26 with one bag, €5,000 and no job. I found one in Helsinki paying €1,300 a month, in a market paying three thousand, and took it. Then Germany. I worked inside Nokia and SAP and alongside Fortune 500s — telecom, enterprise software, banking, government.

In 2015 I founded Evolution4all and ran it for ten years: agile transformation and product strategy, fifty-plus organisations and startups across three continents. It closes in 2026, and QeVentures takes its place — the group that holds the three companies below. Along the way, five books — and the conclusion that a method somebody else can run is worth more than my opinion on a call.

For the last five years I've worked inside the entrepreneurship ecosystem — founders, accelerators, investors, government programmes. That's the current job, not a sideline.

Why my advice is different

Most people who mentor founders have never carried the risk themselves. I've built and run companies, I've lost money on the wrong bet, and I've shipped a real software platform end to end rather than briefing someone else to do it. When I tell you something won't work, it's because I've been on the wrong side of it.

Books Five published · two releasing shortly · all on Amazon
Teaching

I teach at Porto Business School. I also speak and run workshops for accelerators, universities and government programmes — usually on why a portfolio of startups stalls in exactly the same place.

The podcast

Dark Entrepreneur — the conversations founders don't have publicly. One guest, unscripted, sometimes anonymous, and the uncomfortable pauses stay in.

Five countries, one bet that went wrong, and what I do differently now
Still not sure which one is you?
Start with the free diagnostic on whichever door sounded closest. Each one tells you where you actually are in about two minutes, and neither costs anything.
Based between Portugal and Brazil. I answer my own mail.
luis@luis-goncalves.com
© Luis Gonçalves
No testimonials. No logo wall.
Every claim here is verifiable.