“We were in our little corner in Guimarães, not looking for investors, and then a Basque group came along. We stood out among 60 Spanish companies.”
That’s how Joel Alves - co-founder of Sentinel — describes the unexpected moment when a small, resilient team from northern Portugal caught the eye of Mondragon, the Spanish industrial giant that later acquired a majority stake.
Sentinel Vision, created five years ago by Joel Alves and Álvaro Oliveira, developed a system that uses cameras and proprietary software to monitor products directly on factory production lines. Their “sentinels” are already at work in major Portuguese companies like Navigator and Corticeira Amorim, as well as international manufacturers operating in Portugal.
In an interview for Expresso’s Liga dos Inovadores, Joel explains how the team’s resilience, culture, and results-driven approach convinced large groups to trust a young company with a crucial part of their operations. Sentinel's growth has been steady and unusual for a startup:
“We realized at Web Summit that we weren’t a normal startup - we’re more like a rhinoceros. We’ve been profitable since year one and grow based on those results.”
“We sold our first solution using just a PowerPoint. The software was still immature, but the client trusted us.”
What began as a small Guimarães-based operation has now become part of one of Europe’s most respected industrial groups — proof that deep-tech built with grit, clarity, and consistency can outshine flashier competitors.
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