OutSystems founder Paulo Rosado says unicorn status no longer carries real weight in the tech world. “It doesn’t help you find investors or customers—today, it’s relatively easy to be a unicorn,” he told Liga dos Inovadores, reflecting on the company’s journey from a garage in Portugal to global recognition.
Founded in 2001, OutSystems aimed to simplify the complex and failure-prone world of software development. Its innovation? A low-code platform that lets users build apps visually, by dragging and dropping elements like Lego blocks—no coding required. “We created a product that accelerated software automation and eliminated many developer errors,” Rosado said. By drastically reducing the complexity of large-scale systems, OutSystems enabled faster, more reliable deployments. “A system with 30,000 objects replaces one with 10 million lines of Java code.”
Despite achieving unicorn status in 2018, Rosado remains unimpressed by the label. He emphasizes the company’s real value lies in its product’s success and customer impact—not in valuation hype. Now serving as chairman, Rosado handed over leadership to Salesforce veteran Woodson Martin just six weeks ago.
“We weren’t born in Silicon Valley. We were born in Portugal, in a garage. Selling software here and hitting €100 million in revenue is no small feat,” he said, crediting OutSystems’ early adopters for taking a risk on a little-known company. “They believed in us before the analysts even knew we existed.”
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