The BirrPonte brand, from a velvet, a bridge and a name.
In the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon there is a sixteenth-century hanging woven in Bursa: red velvet, silver thread. Inventory 1433. I came across it there, and the number stayed with me.
The museum’s record lists the thread as silver. Yet look closely and parts of it shine gold. It is the same silver; a weaver who knew the craft made the difference. That is where our colours come from: silver is where a company stands today; gold is what it could be, already within reach, with the right question and the right hands.
One carnation, and inside it a garden: each flower keeps its own form, and every stem rises from one point. That is BirrPonte and its six brands — each in its own form, all from one root.
Ponte is the other half of the name, and the bridge I had in mind is the Vasco da Gama, across the Tagus: seventeen kilometres, opened in 1998, five hundred years after the man it is named for reached India by sea. From the shore it is one line running to the horizon, and at the towers the cables open out like rays. That is what a bridge is for: discovery. It is built so that someone can reach what was out of reach.
Put the two together and you have our logo. The silver rays come in from one side: where a company stands today. The gold rays go out on the other: what it could be. The ring in the middle is BirrPonte — the space where we work with you, wherever you are. That is where the change happens, like silver turning to gold in the right hands. The small point at the centre marks the moment it begins: the right question, asked.
Birr — Business Intelligence, Relation, Result. It is also an old Arabic word for goodness; we chose the name for both. Ponte — bridge, in Portuguese.
Who is behind this.
I connect companies to the possibilities already within their reach. Since 2012 I have worked with more than five hundred of them; trade intelligence has been the method since 2018, and in 2024 I invested in AI with CallsenderAI. BirrPonte is where all of it meets Lisbon.
Outside the companies: civil-society work since 2006 — AIESEC, JCI.