The Web Summit, nicknamed as « Davos for geeks » by Bloomberg, took place in Lisbon from November 7th to 10th . If you didn’t get a chance to attend, here we sum it up for you.
A major event
What did you miss at the Web Summit ? Well you could have met 2100 startups from 17 different industries, 1000 investors from 180 funds that gathered in 4 gigantic halls and 50000 attendees in total. Top that with prestigious international speakers as Justin Kan Partner atY Combinator, John Chambers from Cisco, Werner Vogels from Amazon, and many other speakers making a total of 21 conferences. All these of course, with international media coverage by 1200 different media.
I also have to admit that the main stage looked impressive with its 15000 attendees. Even if the concept is slightly different, the continuation of LeWeb event from Loic Lemeur is guaranteed. You could compare this event to Viva Technology Paris with approximatively the same number of attendees, but at the Web Summit the majority of the stands are dedicated to startups, while the industry players – apart from the few well-known speakers – are not so visible.
Luxembourg well represented
The 5 countries more represented at this Web Summit were Ireland (birthplace of the event where it happened for the first time in 2008), the UK, the US, Germany and France (see more in the infographics below). Luxembourg was also present with 14 startups who made the trip to represent the Grand Duchy (Bom Dia, The Outdoor Journal, 2Gears, Orgamime, Académie culinaire, Realab, Wafer, ND Group, Swipe, Seeqle, Traffic.club, Brave Youth, Osmose and Tripr). I wouldn’t be surprised to see a national stand for Luxembourg startup next year, next to the one of Canada, France or Sweden.
On top of these ambassadors, the Chamber of Commerce masterfully organised an official delegation of 60 people including Étienne Schneider and Xavier Bettel, who understand well the stakes of such an event for the country. I was part of it as well, and got to meet with a very dynamic group from SnT. Big efforts are made at the University of Luxembourg to develop technology transfers issued from the research.
Nyuko took this opportunity to develop its network of partnerships with other accelerators and incubators worldwide. The links with the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Czech Republic and of course Portugal have been reinforced and new opportunities were discussed with Bahrain and Canada. These partnerships will also benefit the Luxembourg Open Innovation Club. I incidentally identified several promising startups in the food-tech sector for the current innovation call.
New funds for European startups
Among the big announcements made, an important one is from the European Commission. Carlos Moedas revealed that EU will contribute for 400 million euros to a new fund program for European startups. This measure should leverage a global investment capacity of 1.6 billion euros to inject in investment vehicles created in the framework of public-private partnerships investing in the startup ecosystem and in innovative SMEs in Europe.
The market of VCs in Europe is still far away from the dynamism of the American one but this initiative is paving the way in the right direction. And it is certainly an opportunity not to miss for Luxembourg, ranking second for investment funds worldwide.
Those are all good reasons not to miss next year’s Web Summit , but if you still need some extra motivation . think about the 15 degrees Celsius more and the generous sun compared to Luxembourg 😉
Update (23/11/2016)
Braking news! The new fund program for European startups announced at the Web Summit is now official.
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