Building Across Borders: Portugal × Silicon Valley. The New Cross-Border Founder — Positioning, GTM, & Scaling Global (public event)

Most founders are not building in just one market anymore.
They are building across cultures, across networks, and across entirely different ways of thinking about product, growth, and ambition.
This is the rise of the new cross-border founder.
For this conversation, we’re bringing together an exceptional panel of founders and experts — from U.S. operators shaping how global companies scale, to Portuguese founders actively building into the American market — to explore what changes when companies grow across borders: how positioning shifts across cultures, how go-to-market evolves between ecosystems, and what it takes to build globally from Lisbon.
Speakers
Marcia Kadanoff
Marcia worked with Steve Jobs during Apple’s formative years, helping launch the Mac II, Mac SE and over 200 products, while pioneering demand-generation and direct marketing programmes that expanded Apple’s reach in business and technical markets.
A startup entrepreneur for more than 30 years, she has served as CEO and CMO to venture-backed companies and founded, built and sold two successful marketing agencies.
She brings a perspective shaped at the intersection of product, narrative and growth — where positioning defines how companies are understood across markets.

Carles Chordà, Deel
From one of San Francisco’s fastest-growing unicorns, Carles brings the perspective of a company built global by design — natively international and fully remote from day one. Operating across more than 100 countries, including Portugal, Deel has become core infrastructure for startups looking to hire, scale and expand without borders.
Carles built Deel’s Southern Europe team from the ground up, growing it from a single account executive into a fully scaled regional function in just 18 months — a clear example of how modern companies expand beyond traditional geographic constraints.
He brings a view from inside the systems enabling global scale — and what it takes to stay cohesive while operating across distributed teams and markets.
Jose Velez, Reach AI
José is the founder of an AI-native company building at the intersection of intelligence, go-to-market and growth — developing new ways for companies to reach, understand and convert their customers.
As a Portuguese founder actively scaling between Europe and the United States, he brings a real-time perspective on what it takes to build internationally from day one, where both the product and the go-to-market need to travel.

A special thank you to Deel for sponsoring this edition and continuing to support the partnership with RedBridge - a collaboration that reflects the global, cross-border mindset at the heart of this conversation.
We’re thrilled to be back in our summer home by the river in Chiado — and can’t wait to kick off the season and celebrate with our community.

Short talks + panel discussion
Audience Q&A
Networking, DJ, wine and treats

📆 28th May, 6:30 - 9:30 pm
📍 Lisbon Palacio

All ticket purchases are final and non-refundable. By completing your booking, you agree to these terms.
By attending this event, you acknowledge that photos and videos may be taken and used for promotional purposes. If you prefer not to be photographed, please let a member of the team know on arrival.