Swedes Abroad: A quick wrap up of the Web Summit in Dublin
For those who weren’t aware, last week the Web Summit conference was held in Dublin, and some 10,000 people and 500 startups attended. It was a fairly amazing conference, given the sheer volume of people who were there at once. Of course, the size meant that at times the event felt slightly bloated, so many of the startups paying for a booth, probably got less attention than they would’ve liked.
When speaking with Qapital co founder Erik Akterin, he seemed to echo those sentiments:
I think that the WebSummit as a whole is an impressive event and for Qapital it was a big success. We established a number of important contacts that will help us a lot going forward.
As one of the 150 startups selected for the STARTGlobal group we felt that we had a distinct advantage over other participants, with better exposure in the main hall and a lot of activities such as dinners with speakers and access to a lounge where we could hold meetings in a more secluded environment. I think the sheer scale of the summit as a whole might be something to evaluate in the future.
There was a host of interesting speakers at the event, including Niklas Zennström, Robert Scoble and Kevin Rose. In addition, there were over 500 startups exhibiting, and to my knowledge there were around 10 Swedish companies – Jobylon, Postify, Detectify, Qapital, MostPhotos and Merchii to name a handful.
Whilst there were a couple of technical problems such as no WIFI on the first day, Wouter Veenstra, marketing at Postify thought that perhaps it actually benefited some of the companies!
Considering the size of the Summit, the lack of internet, and all the other growing pains the conference has had to overcome, we have been able to validate our business model and build some personal relationships during our stay in Dublin. Without internet, and therefore without demo possibilities, you’ll be surprised at how good you can get at pitching your business!
Aref Abedi, CEO of social recruiting service Jobylon noted:
All in all, I think the Web Summit was great for Jobylon! We quietly launched our new service during the Summit and used our time there as a way of celebrating the launch and the hard work with the team. In addition, we got some great response on the product and it’s fantastic to see the number of startups increasing in the recruitment space. Its definitely a space that is getting more and more attention and it will be super interesting to follow it!
Did you attend the Web Summit? If so, let us know your thoughts in the comments!
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