João Nunes

João graduated from Católica Lisbon SBE with a degree in Business Administration before moving on to Nova SBE and the University of St. Gallen where he pursued a Double Degree Master’s in Business Analytics (with a specialisation in Machine Learning & AI) and International Management (CEMS).

During the 1st year of his Bachelor’s degree, he built a student-led organisation to help promising early-stage startup founders completely pro-bono. During the rest of his academic path he experienced working in the financial sector mainly in M&A, Private Equity and Consulting.

Along the way he’s always had a passion for helping companies innovate and solve business challenges having developed consulting projects for companies like Sony Entertainment or Google where he developed the firm’s GTM strategy for the Cloud market in Switzerland.

In the summer of 2021 he joined the initial team of an emerging Web3 VC fund and the team went on to raise $30M from investors like Marc Andreessen and SoftBank among others. He then joined Techstars as the first EMEA-wide investment team hire and focused on scouting and investing in early-stage founders in the region. He was also part of Included VC’s 2022 cohort.

João recently joined Playfair focusing on deal sourcing and the initial stages of the investment process.

Outside of Playfair, João is always up for an adventure, be it travelling 3 days by boat in remote Indonesia to go see the Komodo dragons, or just going on a culinary journey around the streets of Lisbon.