Entrepreneurship has a particular meaning for me. To me, it is reflected in how you think and act when faced with challenges and uncertainty. My career has been shaped by deliberate progression and resilience. Each step built on the previous one, while requiring me to keep learning, question assumptions and adapt when circumstances demanded it.
Each stage of my career gave me a different perspective and set of skills. Investment banking at UBS and J.P. Morgan taught me financial discipline: how to understand the numbers, model scenarios, value businesses and think about capital. Consulting at Bain taught me how to structure problems, build strategy and turn analysis into action.
My experience in a Rocket Internet start-up added something very different. It exposed me to the reality of a smaller business: limited resources, constant trade-offs, and the need to move quickly.
Over time, those experiences came together. My partner and I raised a search fund, spent two and a half years looking at businesses in Spain and Portugal, and in 2023 acquired Effisus. That was the point when it became very concrete: taking responsibility for a
company, with a board and investors to answer to, a plan to be accountable for, and a team and clients who had not chosen me.
What I had to earn was their trust. What I brought was method, shaped by my experience in banking and consulting. That combination of structure and humility is what running a company has taught me more than anything, and it continues to shape how I think about its future.
I also think entrepreneurship is about not letting failure define your direction. Setbacks are inevitable, but they should not decide where you end up. If anything, they should push you to question yourself, learn faster and keep looking for the next opportunity.
Growth often comes from discomfort: when you challenge yourself, change environments, take on something unfamiliar or accept that you may fail.
Marcus Aurelius captured that idea well: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

The biggest lesson for me has been learning to stay close to reality and adapt quickly when it changes.
A business plan is a hypothesis, not a promise. No plan survives exactly as written. What matters is recognising early when reality is telling you something different, understanding why, and being willing to adjust. Life will happen. You need to act.
Working across Portugal, Spain, the UK, the UAE and Saudi Arabia has reinforced that. Every market has its own logic. You need to be close to the customer, listen to the people on the ground and stay humble enough to change your assumptions when they prove you wrong.
I have also learned to separate clearly what you can control from what you cannot. This year, for example, external conditions in the region affected shipping routes and lead times. We could not influence that, but we could decide how prepared we wanted to be. Our local team identified the risk early; we modelled different scenarios against our project pipeline and compared the cost of holding additional inventory with the potential impact of running out of stock. We decided to build inventory in the region early. It tied up cash, but it helped keep our customers’ projects moving, and that kind of reliability builds trust.
That experience also reinforced something I believe strongly: instinct tells you where to look; the numbers tell you whether you are right. Since acquiring Effisus, we have put a lot of focus on financial discipline - cash-flow forecasting, working-capital management, weekly reviews of cash and pipeline, and understanding the performance of each market individually. Long-term value creation is the objective. Cash is the fuel.
There is a line in Lampedusa’s The Leopard that I often come back to: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” I interpret that as a reminder that change should have a purpose. You change what needs to change to protect what really matters - the customers, the people and the quality of what you do. If a change serves the core of the business and the numbers support it, then move decisively, as we did when we chose to build inventory in the region. Knowing when to act quickly matters but knowing when not to act can be even harder - and, in many cases, more valuable to master.

Effisus is a Portuguese company that has grown into a leading international player in external weatherproofing by combining complete systems, technical expertise and strong local support.

Portugal remains the centre of our product development and certification, while Dubai has become the hub for much of our international expansion. We have been established in the UK for several years, are developing our presence in Spain, and in 2026 entered Saudi Arabia through our partnership with Asasat. Increasingly, the Middle East is also giving us a platform to look further afield, including India and Africa.

We place a lot of value on proximity. In construction, technical expertise is most valuable when it is available locally and at the right moment. Staying close to customers, understanding how projects really work in each market, and being able to respond quickly are all part of the service we provide.

For me, proximity also means understanding the local context. Every market has its own ways of working, expectations and culture. Respecting those differences is fundamental if you want to build long-term relationships.

One thing I have learned in this industry is that the most critical challenges are often found in the details. Building performance is rarely compromised by the core materials themselves; it is the interfaces, junctions and transitions between different systems that often determine success or failure. That is where we focus much of our attention.

Our engineers look at the full system: membranes, tapes, accessories, compatibility, detailing and installation. We work closely with architects, façade consultants, contractors and sub-contractors from the earliest design stages through to site, ensuring a complete solution is considered from the beginning rather than improvised later.

That approach is reflected in projects I am particularly proud of: the coral-inspired façade of the Red Sea Marine Life Institute in Amaala, 30 Hudson Yards in New York, and the restoration of Battersea Power Station in London. Different climates, different regulations, same approach.

In my opinion, being a game changer is ultimately about making weatherproofing certain - getting the critical details right from the beginning, staying close to the project from design through to installation, and ensuring proper maintenance throughout the building’s life cycle.

I believe some of the greatest opportunities for growth come from how we respond when things do not go as planned.

I have learned that life and business will inevitably bring rejection, setbacks and situations that do not go the way you expected. I do not see that as a negative; it is simply part of trying to build something. What matters is what you do next. Sometimes a no means changing your approach, sometimes it means trying again, and sometimes it means learning enough to come back stronger.

The same is true of failure. I think we sometimes underestimate how much you can learn from getting something wrong. A setback should not define you; what matters is how you respond to it and what you take from the experience.

But resilience is only half of it. I also believe strongly in playing the long game. The best work I have done has always been with strong teams and people I trust. Reputation and relationships compound over time. Results vary from year to year. Your reputation stays with you.

So, my motto would be: “Turn the no into a yes, get back up faster than you fell, and play the long game.”

For a growing SME, having access to the right people, experience and perspective makes a real difference. Before Effisus, I worked in investment banking in London, and that experience shaped the way I think about some of those decisions, particularly around financing.

One thing I learned is that European SMEs often operate with a relatively narrow set of financing options. In the United States, mid-sized companies typically have access to deeper venture capital, private equity and public markets, while in Europe raising equity or market-based debt can be more complex and expensive at SME scale.

As a result, many European SMEs rely primarily on bank debt. It is an important and very useful tool, but it is designed for specific situations and is not always the right fit for an acquisition, international expansion or a more ambitious growth plan. Those situations may require a different type of capital, yet many founders are simply less exposed to the alternatives available to them.

In that context, ELITE gives companies greater visibility on the full range of financing options available to them, from private placements and minority investors to structured debt and, eventually, public markets. At the same time, the training and network help companies develop the governance, discipline and credibility needed to engage with those investors.

I also think the value of the right investor can go well beyond funding. The right partner can bring a different perspective, challenge your thinking and encourage greater discipline around governance and reporting.

Another connection that I think has significant potential to develop further is between European SMEs and investors in the Gulf. Regional investors and family offices often bring long-term capital together with an operating mindset, which can be a natural fit for European companies looking to grow in markets such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Networks like ELITE can help build those connections in both directions.

But the value of the network is not only about investors. It is also about being surrounded by companies from different countries facing many of the same challenges. The markets may be different, but many of the questions around growth, financing, people and internationalisation are very similar.

For me, the real value of ELITE is access to the knowledge, discipline and relationships that can help companies take the next step.