- Francisco Banha
Francisco Banha, (11/02/1963) is a Portuguese entrepreneur specialized in the areas of management, venture capital and entrepreneurship. Within these subjects he created the companies Gesbanha, Gesventure and GesEntrepreneur which act in these three areas respectively. Having created his first company (Gesbanha, SA) in 1986 in the management and accounting area, he soon realized the market potential existent at the level of national venture capital yet to be explored.
Thus, in 1999 he created Gesventure, a Portuguese company catalyst of venture capital. Since then, he has supported directly 14 companies in raising 16.4 million euros resorting to venture capital and to business angels. The work developed by this organization is perceptible to the public through two annual events – Gesventure’s Meetings and Venture Capital IT – and in an extensive participation in other initiatives, from the organization itself or from other organizations.
In 2000, Francisco Banha established the Business Angels Club, the first one in Portugal, which at the present counts with 65 registered members.
In 2006 Francisco Banha created a partnership with the Canada-based CGInternational and created GesEntrepreneur, company that bets in entrepreneurship education based in programs focused in the learning by doing methodology. The new company dedicates itself to entrepreneurship education, mainly in the prisons and in the educating environment, since the first years of school until university. Since 2007 that Francisco Banha is president of the Portuguese Federation of Business Angels (FNABA - Federação Nacional de Associações de Business Angels), being actively involved in the creation of the first world association of this kind.
Francisco Banha is also a business angel and director of several start-up companies, some of which he helped to establish.
Consultant in the areas of venture capital, entrepreneurship, information technologies, knowledge capital and internet, Francisco Banha is also closely connected to management, being a specialist in information reporting to multinationals, holdings, Banco de Portugal, Instituto de Seguros and CMVM, companies downsizing, mergers and acquisitions and in process reengineering (administrative, accounting, financial and operational).
In December 2004, Francisco Banha decided to create a professional blog where he shares his activity, relevant news and information about the sectors in which he works with the visitants. Francisco Banha is author of the books "Capital de Risco - os Tempos Estão a Mudar" [Venture Capital – Times are Changing] (Bertrand, 2000) and "Capital de Risco - o Impacto da Fiscalidade" [Venture Capital – the impact of Taxes] (Edições Vida Económica, 1998).
[http://www.gesbanha.pt/ Gesbanha,SA]
[http://www.gesventure.pt/ Gesventure,SA]
[http://www.gesentrepreneur.com/ GesEntrepreneur,Lda]
[http://www.businessangels.pt/ Business Angels Club]
[http://www.fnaba.org/ FNABA - Federação Nacional de Associações de Business Angels]
[http://gesbanha.blogs.sapo.pt/ Francisco Banha - Weblog]
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