Slush 2018
WORLD’S LEADING STARTUP EVENT.
During what is – let’s be honest – the sh*ttiest weather season of the year, Slush brings together the leading actors of the global tech scene to Helsinki for something very special. Described by many as “Burning Man meets TED”, the event has grown in just a few short years to 20,000 attendees and 1 million live stream viewers.
In 2017, over 2,600 startups, 1,500 venture capitalists, and 600 journalists from over 130 countries gathered to Slush to drive business, and to experience the phenomenal atmosphere.
NOT THE CALIFORNIAN SUN, BUT HONEST SLUSH.
Slush has grown from a 300 person assembly to a world-renowned event, now spreading globally. The philosophy behind Slush has remained the same: to help the next generation of great, world-conquering companies forward.
CELEBRATING ENTREPRENEURSHIP.
Held during the darkest time of the year in Helsinki, Finland, Slush has always been characterized by a unique energy and enthusiasm. The very core of Slush is to facilitate founder and investor meetings and to build a world-wide startup community.
Slush is a student-driven, non-profit movement originally founded to change attitudes toward entrepreneurship. In 2016, Slush was organized in Tokyo, Shanghai and Singapore.
ONE-OF-A-KIND COMMUNITY.
Think of Slush as a collision of a festival and a conference. It’s not a business, but a community of people who love what they do.
Slush is run by the youth who want to make a difference in their societies. Several successful entrepreneurs such as Niklas Zennström (Skype & Atomico), Taizo Son (GungHo), Ilkka Paananen (Supercell), and Risto Siilasmaa (Nokia) among others, have already become a part of the non-profit initiative that is radically changing how entrepreneurship is perceived in Northern Europe, Japan, and China.
Startup Europe Summit – Post Event
For two days hundreds of policy-makers, founders, venture capitalists and key startup stakeholders converged on Berlin to inspire each other and create frameworks for real change in innovation policy. Thank you to everyone who attended!
After the success of the first edition of Welcome Roadshows for early stage startups, that last year saw six high potential companies travel across Europe broadening their network and raising funds cross border, WELCOME consortium is engaged in offering even a better experience to the 10 amazing startups selected for 2016.
Their second stop was in Berlin on June 9th and 10th where they attended the Startup Europe Summit 2016, a two-day conference focused on technology and policy-making.
At the event startups had the opportunity to represent their projects with a booth and to take part of the “Startups Games” a pitch competition organized within SES, they enter the pitching battle with almost other 20 startups. Our WELCOME Roadshow startups fought with honor round after round till the final battle where 3 of them out of a total 6 got the opportunity to pitch on the main stage of the event. The final was pretty intense but WELCOME startup still managed to position themselves 2° and 3° with SwiftComply and Girl Crew.
They will soon leave for the Silicon Valley to attend two-week startup school and come back to Europe stronger for next to trips to Madrid and Dublin.
Coming from the five WELCOME HQs these are the 10 selected startups participating to the EU Roadshow tour and Silicon Valley startup school:
- Aria Wearables (Milan) an active thermal shoe sole that heats and cools down the feet
- Cloudroom (Madrid) a cloud based learning platform that brings MOOC into the corporate world
- GirlCrew (Dublin) a global community for women
- Link.Fish (Berlin) a bookmark manager that allows people to work with the information behind URLs
- Replex (Berlin) a service for IT teams that enables them collecting critical information on all infrastructure assets both physical and virtual
- Replit (Madrid) a social discussion platform based on short videos
- Solo (Milan) a virtual POS that lets merchants accept credit and debit card payments
- SwiftComply (Dublin)a platform solution for Fat, Oil and Grease compliance in the food service industry
- TourSnapp (Berlin)a service that applies the concept of Smart cities to cultural tourism
- Up to Seven(Madrid) a social network that enables foodies to share recipes and suggestions
Stay Tuned!
Winners: Pamela Newenham of GirlCrew, Luuv’s Tim Kirchner and Michael O’Dwyer of SwiftComply at the Startup Europe Summit in Berlin. Photograph: Ralf Rühmeier