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In January 2014, I took a spur of a moment decision to fly to Luxembourg to apply for dual citizenship through ancestry.
The year was already getting busy, I had a week available and didn’t otherwise know when I’d make it to Luxembourg. At that point, fewer than a hundred Americans had done it before me. I was 25, armed with a stack of genealogical documents and not much else. By September, I had my EU passport in hand—and my life was changed forever.
The thing about that trip to Luxembourg, is that I actually had my first trip to Brazil planned three weeks later. I had been planning and saving for that trip for over a year. When I got there, I didn’t speak a word of Portuguese. By the time I left a few weeks later, I was holding basic conversations with taxi drivers. I’ve lived in 8 countries and speak 4 languages fluently. I can say for sure it’s not always the case. But something about Brazil—the openness of the people, the energy of the place—stuck with me in a way I didn’t fully understand yet.
I didn’t know it then, but those two trips—Luxembourg and Brazil, three weeks apart in early 2014—would turn out to be the opening chapters of a very interconnected story.
Twelve years later to the month from my trip to Luxembourg to apply for citizenship, I found out that I became Brazil’s newest permanent resident.
How Luxembourg Led Me to Brazil
Many of you know the work we’ve done at LuxCitizenship over the past decade. You trusted us with your family’s story, and together we helped more than 3,500 Americans reconnect with Luxembourg.
What some of you may not know is about is our research projects—the demographic studies we’ve been publishing since 2018. We’ve been featured in the media, government publications and other diaspora outlets for our work using our data to explain who are the new Luxembourg dual citizens.
In 2022, we conducted a survey and published our first study on Luxembourg dual citizens in Brazil. The numbers were staggering. In fewer than five years, the community had grown from well under a thousand to over 20,000 people—concentrated overwhelmingly in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, and most visibly in the state capital Florianópolis.
I had to understand why.
So in early 2023, I visited the city, and extended my stay twice. What I found was far more than a diaspora story. Through the Association of Luxembourg Citizens in Brazil (ACLUX), I helped coordinate the first visit by Luxembourg politicians to meet their Brazilian dual citizens.
To set up for the visit, we toured the city’s innovation ecosystem—organizations like ACATE and Sapiens Parque. And I discovered that Florianópolis calls itself Ilha do Silício—Silicon Island—for good reason: startups, universities, venture capital, and serious institutional support.
Extending my visit twice wasn’t enough. I went back in 2024 to deliver a talk in Portuguese on our demographic research. In 2025, I spoke at Hacktown, Brazil’s largest independent innovation festival.
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LuxCitizenship clients who book a personalized consultation will receive a 50% discount for a limited time using the code “LUXCITIZENSHIP26”.
Finding the Path
Through these visits, I started meeting Luxembourg dual citizens in Florianópolis with genuinely exciting business ideas. I began exploring what it would take to hire people in Brazil and establish a permanent presence there to support the development of our sister project, Citizenship.EU. That’s when I discovered something I hadn’t expected: Brazil has an immigration pathway specifically designed for foreigners to open or invest in a Brazilian startup for less than $30,000 and get permanent residency in return. That makes the program one of the cheapest residency by investment programs in the world. Many comparable programs are 10-15 times the price and rarely is permanent residency granted so quickly, without the need to live in the country full time.
The legislation was strong. The opportunity was genuinely compelling. But when I went looking for help navigating the process, I came up empty. No one operated across the full sequence: company formation, capital transfer, banking, Central Bank registration, innovation ecosystem requirements, and immigration. Reliable information barely existed.
After 8 months of a complex application process, on January 2nd of this year—almost exactly twelve years after my first trip to Luxembourg—I was approved for Brazilian permanent residency. Through extensive research, our best estimate is that I am roughly the eighteenth foreigner to complete this pathway since in 2021.
Why Brazil
All the same, you might be wondering, why Brazil? Brazil is the largest economy in Latin America, the sixth most populous country on earth, and a rising force in global trade as a member of the BRICS bloc.
Florianópolis, where I’ve made my base, sits on the coast in the most prosperous, secure, and stable region of Latin America. For context, it’s as far away from Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, as Kansas City, Missouri. It’s a city with world-class beaches, a thriving tech sector, excellent infrastructure, and a cost of living that lets you live well. But Brazil’s appeal goes beyond lifestyle. This is a continent that is largely removed from the geopolitical tensions reshaping the Northern Hemisphere—a country that is self-sufficient in energy, minerals, and food production.
Moreover, Brazil’s investor permanent residency opens the door to all of this, quality of life, strategic autonomy, great climate, without requiring that you remain continuously physically present. You must enter Brazil to complete the application for permanent residency, but once you have your residence card, you only have to be present in Brazil for 15 days every two years to maintain permanent residency status. Other than that, the main difference between permanent residency and citizenship is that citizens can vote, run for office and work for the government.
Additionally, within two hours of receiving my permanent residency, I successfully opened a personal bank account—something I never achieved in six years as a dual citizen in the EU, thanks to FATCA.
Weeks later, I was even approved for a home loan that everyone told me was impossible for a foreigner.
These are all great benefits. But there is no ecosystem player putting all the steps together. As soon as I began the process myself, I knew I could bring together my network of startups, institutions, and lawyers in Brazil to build the solution needed.
Introducing StartBrazil
I built StartBrazil because no one should need a decade of cross-border experience to take advantage of this opportunity. StartBrazil is our end-to-end concierge service for Brazil’s startup investor residency—from initial eligibility assessment through business formation, capital transfer, document preparation, and follow-up with Brazilian federal authorities.
The program requires that you either open a qualifying business with an investment of $30,000.00 or invest in an existing startup attached to an innovation eco-system (ex, incubator, accelerator, startup association). At its core, StartBrazil works by connecting foreign investors with qualifying Brazilian startups. This is where our network becomes your advantage. Through nearly a decade of work with the Luxembourg community in Brazil, through our connections to Citizenship.eu and the broader European diaspora, and through my own relationships in Florianópolis’s innovation ecosystem, we’ve built a pipeline of vetted startups and institutional partners that most people walking into this process alone would never find. We handle the complexity—you focus on the opportunity.
In addition to investing in an existing startup, you can also open your own company and invest the same amount. If you decide that opening your own business is the path for you, we can both leverage my personal experience being the 18th foreigner to do this process and get the permanent residency, as well as our network.
The Next Chapter
Ten years ago, many of you had never heard of Luxembourg citizenship by ancestry. Today, over 20,000 Americans have dual citizenship because they took a chance on something unfamiliar. I know because I was one of the first 100, and I’ve spent the last decade helping thousands follow.
In a fast evolving geopolitical context, I believe Brazil can be a new chance to take a bet on something unfamiliar and open the door to new opportunities. This residency by investment option is a powerful pathway that almost nobody is thinking about yet in a country the size of a continent and with a population of over 213 million.
I’ve made a home in Florianópolis—the city where Luxembourg’s most important diaspora community lives, on an island in one of the most beautiful corners of South America. The path that started with my great-grandmother’s birth certificate brought me here. I’d be honored to help it bring you here, too.
In the meantime, very importantly: I want to confirm that nothing is changing about the operations of LuxCitizenship. This is an additional service that we’re offering. And I hope that we’ll have the chance to discuss with you should you be interested.
Learn more and get started at StartBrazil.com.
Special Note: LuxCitizenship clients are getting advanced access for two weeks before we make a larger public announcement. We are hosting 2 free webinars, you can sign up here.
If you know that you’re ready to have a personalized consultation and get the process started now, you can also book a consultation with our team. The first 20 LuxCitizenship clients to sign up will have access to a 50% discount by using the code “LUXCITIZENSHIP26”.
