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Starting in the domestic market is 'fantasy', unicorn creators warn. Entrepreneurs who want to create unicorns should start in the foreign market, not only for scale but also for the additional demands, urge the CEOs of Tekever, Anchorage and Remote. The reduced scale of the domestic market means that entrepreneurs who start by selling in this 'corner' to try to lead a company to be valued at more than one billion euros are making 'a big mistake' and falling into a 'fantasy' on a 'difficult' path, according to the CEOs of three companies that have already reached that level. Choose ECO as your preferred source on Google. 'The big mistake that Portuguese entrepreneurs make - and I give this advice a lot, and I am completely ignored - is selling to the domestic market,' said Diogo Mónica, CEO of the cryptocurrency platform Anchorage Digital, at the Game Changers Forum event, which takes place this Saturday at Meo Arena, in Lisbon. 'Full stop, paragraph,' he exclaimed. 'There are no really big companies that sell to the domestic market and that start in the domestic market, and there is a fantasy here that we can start in the domestic market and then learn here and manage to export to the whole world.' For the CEO of Anchorage, that does not exist. 'There are rare exceptions in which it exists, and therefore the reality is that Portuguese entrepreneurs, if they want to build companies of international dimension, true unicorns, have to really look at the largest markets in the world. That is where they have to start.' Diogo Mónica stresses that there are no major disadvantages in starting in a larger market. 'There is indeed more competition, but the upside [the potential] is much greater,' he stressed. 'Extremely difficult,' says the CEO of Tekever. On the same panel, on whether unicorns can change Portugal, Ricardo Mendes, CEO of Tekever, agreed. 'No company can have great international success if it prepares first for the domestic market, in any sector.' 'There are sectors in which this is more difficult to do first, and security and defense is one of them,' he added. 'In that sector, the clients are either large companies or public, government, defense, security institutions, etc., quite resistant, quite averse to change.' Therefore, explained the CEO of the drone manufacturer that is valued at 5.5 billion euros, 'it is much easier to win that flag at home, but in Portugal that market is small, it is on the scale of the country, so it is extremely difficult.' 'What happened in our case was to look for clients in this market who had an international role, to win first there,' added Mendes. 'The first two highly relevant clients in this sector were the European Environmental Safety Agency and the British Home Office. It was those two anchors that made us jump, they were the two super-excellent, reference clients, and from there all the doors opened,' added. Marcelo Lebre, CEO of the human resources platform, chose to give the Portuguese past as an example. 'We have a very interesting past, historically, we are explorers. In fact, I like to say that, at a certain point, Portugal had half the world and shared the other half with friends.' 'The truth is that the desire to explore is always there,' he added. 'And we gather in Portugal many conditions to effectively do that exploration, and we are a leap away from the whole world.' Portugal has conditions not only to create businesses and for hiring, but also 'a strategic point of view that has a lot to do with our worker DNA, we are, culturally, very used to having to work in the world,' stressed Lebre, agreeing with Diogo Mónica that 'it is always very difficult to start here.'

Anchorage Digital acquires Routable to bring stablecoins into corporate payments. The federally chartered crypto bank is buying a fast-growing payment platform and plans to add stablecoin and tokenized deposit settlement over the coming quarters 2 hours ago Sponsored: Vera - AI-powered prediction market intelligence, built for serious analysts Explore Vera Anchorage Digital, the first federally chartered crypto bank in the US, has acquired Routable, a payment orchestration platform founded in 2017. The deal was announced on October 6, 2026. The pitch is simple. Routable already moves large volumes of fiat to vendors and contractors. Anchorage wants that same pipe to carry stablecoins and tokenized deposits too. What Anchorage is buying. Routable's specialty is payment orchestration. For a company paying thousands of drivers, suppliers, or partners, that layer handles the scheduling, routing, and reconciliation that finance teams would otherwise juggle by hand. The platform has been on a tear. Routable posted over 100% growth in each of the last two years. Its client roster includes delivery logistics company Veho, insurance firm Ethos, and electric vehicle maker Polestar. Those are real operating businesses with real payout needs, not crypto-native experiments. Routable has also drawn backing from some recognizable names. Investors include OpenAI chief Sam Altman and Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia. A new name and a new set of rails. After the acquisition, the company will operate as Routable by Anchorage Digital. Anchorage expects to roll out stablecoin and tokenized deposit settlement over the coming quarters. Those options would sit alongside the traditional fiat transactions Routable already processes. AI, tech, and the markets they move - in one daily briefing. Daily. Free. Join 34,000+ readers across crypto, finance, and policy. A stablecoin is a token designed to hold a steady value, usually pegged to the dollar. A tokenized deposit is a bank deposit represented on a blockchain, so it can move like a token while remaining a bank liability. Anchorage brings the regulated back end. The bank offers stablecoin issuance, custody, and settlement infrastructure built for institutions. Routable brings the front end that corporate finance teams actually log into. How Anchorage got here. Anchorage has spent years positioning itself as the compliance-friendly option in crypto. Its federal charter makes it a rare entity: a crypto company regulated as a national bank. The firm also holds licenses in Singapore and New York. The Routable deal follows a major capital raise. In February 2026, Tether invested $100 million in Anchorage, lifting the bank's valuation to $4.2 billion. What this means for institutions and the stablecoin market. Routable gives Anchorage a door into the corporate payments conversation. Instead of selling stablecoins as a new asset class, it can offer them as one more payment option inside a tool companies already use. The inclusion of tokenized deposits is also worth watching. Banks and regulators have shown interest in that model as a bank-native alternative to privately issued stablecoins. By supporting both, Anchorage avoids betting on a single winner. There are open questions. The stablecoin and tokenized deposit features are slated for the coming quarters, not available today. Execution will depend on how smoothly Anchorage can integrate its infrastructure without disrupting the fiat business that drove Routable's growth. Customer appetite is another variable. Clients like Veho, Ethos, and Polestar signed up for efficient fiat payouts. Whether they, and companies like them, opt into digital settlement will be the real test of the strategy. Disclosure: This article was edited by Kaye Quema. For more information on how Cryptobriefing create and review content, see its Editorial Policy.