How we participated in Slush 2015 (Helsinki)
An event called Slush takes place every year in Helsinki. This is the largest technology startup party in Europe, among the organizers of which is Peter Vesterbacka (Rovio "Mighty Eagle", Angry Birds).
Slush does not look like a typical conference - lighting effects, lasers and music from all sides, different scenes are separated from each other only by distance - there are practically no walls except physically necessary. This is partly why the event quickly became successful - this year about 15 thousand visitors, 1700 startups, about 700 investors and 700 journalists, and the Prime Minister of Finland attended the opening ceremony. In terms of quantity, there is a clear advantage over major US events, such as TechCrunch Disrupt.
Buying your own stand at Slush is quite expensive, so we would hardly have thought about participating in this event, if not for the invitation of the Skolkovo Foundation.
In general, Slush visitors are divided into:
- Startup (we belonged here)
- Conference (those who came to listen to the speeches)
- Executive (top managers of large companies)
- Investor (investors themselves or representatives of investment funds)
- Media (press)
This status is clearly written on all badges, so many had to hide it in order to pester less. Well, startups here are not exactly the ones we're used to. According to statistics, 67% of the participants have this next startup, far from the first, so the red Startup badges were often visited not by yesterday’s students, but by former Skype or SalesForce employees looking for a new way to conquer the world.
Last year we didn’t have a place at the stand, but I managed to speak:
This year, the performance was not lucky, but there was a place on the stand, which brought much more interesting contacts.
Those who stayed at the stand were mainly interested in the iOS8 interface with a house on a large android tablet, an inscription under our name or a roll-up. Some showed the scan function and control of the Bluetooth dimmer from the iRidium Lite beta (thanks to Peter SwitchEEL), made a good impression.
Many representatives of companies with patent services came up. They recommended not to tell anything publicly at all and especially not to develop it until they patented it. There is a grain of truth in this, but if you listen to them, then everything will stop, as it seems to me.
On the first day, Arkady Dvorkovich and Victor Vekselberg came to the stand. They had many meetings with investors, who later came to our booth - "Well, show me where you have innovations."
Several top managers of system integrators became interested in iRidium Server. They say that they need an “offline controller in place that collects information from different protocols and sends it to the central SCADA”, and this is exactly our future product. Good Scandinavian contacts can hardly be overestimated; it is enough to recall the Finnish partner Helvar, who recently announced Hilton Schiphol Amsterdam with our participation.
After each day, parties were held where everyone communicated informally. I managed to inexplicably get to the hangout of North Zone and Friends, where I had fun and useless conversations with funny Scandinavian investors under a good 12-year-old whiskey.
Of competitors / potential partners, Cozify exhibited for the second year in a row and periodically dropped in to visit InControl. There were "ordinary suspects" - Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, everyone listened with interest and left with a comment, such as "very ambitious, good luck to you guys!"
At our Skolkovo booth there were several of our colleagues, residents of the foundation:
- DO-RA - portable dosimeters for smartphones
- ExoAtlet - exoskeleton for people with disabilities
- GBooking - a set of tools for online recording and business management
- ABBYY - an intelligent system for recognizing, analyzing and translating text
- NetPolice - an Internet security tool for children
and others. I apologize right away if I forgot or did not notice anyone.
On the spot, we met an interesting Russian company Navigine, which offers an accurate indoor positioning system (I did not manage to return home, a potential object for use has already appeared).
One of the main events of Slush 100 is the contest of 5-minute pitch presentations of one hundred of the best startups. The winner (an Australian, one of the first SalesForce employees with his next startup) received 650,000 Euro investments.
The second place was taken by the Russian-American project AstroDigital, which was represented by the amazing Skoltech graduate Ekaterina Kotenko-Lengold.
We, meanwhile, had a lot of interesting communication with the leaders of the system integrator companies, the press, and just students at Aalto University (Helsinki). Of the largest, Elisa, a major Finnish communications provider, expressed the greatest interest. About 10 people approached, were interested, then they called for a meeting with the vice president. They have big plans for IoT, but there is a feeling that they are similar to Rostelecom - to develop a piece of iron with a web interface and sell everything. But maybe something more.
The Finnish office Kapseli produces "capsules for sleeping" and they need a solution to manage this business from the inside - light, climate, music / cinema.
DigitSole make bluetooth insoles. If they give me a test, I think it would be great to develop a driver (I can’t calm down, I’m trying to arrange a Wow factor for us, and the bluetooth insole is quite “wow. (Why ?!)”).
I did not have more time for a walk, but I think you can find many reviews of what was presented on the network. I sincerely hope that this was not my last Slush, the atmosphere attracts and makes me want to return, already in a higher status (for example, Executive).
Slush does not look like a typical conference - lighting effects, lasers and music from all sides, different scenes are separated from each other only by distance - there are practically no walls except physically necessary. This is partly why the event quickly became successful - this year about 15 thousand visitors, 1700 startups, about 700 investors and 700 journalists, and the Prime Minister of Finland attended the opening ceremony. In terms of quantity, there is a clear advantage over major US events, such as TechCrunch Disrupt.
Buying your own stand at Slush is quite expensive, so we would hardly have thought about participating in this event, if not for the invitation of the Skolkovo Foundation.
In general, Slush visitors are divided into:
- Startup (we belonged here)
- Conference (those who came to listen to the speeches)
- Executive (top managers of large companies)
- Investor (investors themselves or representatives of investment funds)
- Media (press)
This status is clearly written on all badges, so many had to hide it in order to pester less. Well, startups here are not exactly the ones we're used to. According to statistics, 67% of the participants have this next startup, far from the first, so the red Startup badges were often visited not by yesterday’s students, but by former Skype or SalesForce employees looking for a new way to conquer the world.
Last year we didn’t have a place at the stand, but I managed to speak:
This year, the performance was not lucky, but there was a place on the stand, which brought much more interesting contacts.
Those who stayed at the stand were mainly interested in the iOS8 interface with a house on a large android tablet, an inscription under our name or a roll-up. Some showed the scan function and control of the Bluetooth dimmer from the iRidium Lite beta (thanks to Peter SwitchEEL), made a good impression.
Many representatives of companies with patent services came up. They recommended not to tell anything publicly at all and especially not to develop it until they patented it. There is a grain of truth in this, but if you listen to them, then everything will stop, as it seems to me.
On the first day, Arkady Dvorkovich and Victor Vekselberg came to the stand. They had many meetings with investors, who later came to our booth - "Well, show me where you have innovations."
Several top managers of system integrators became interested in iRidium Server. They say that they need an “offline controller in place that collects information from different protocols and sends it to the central SCADA”, and this is exactly our future product. Good Scandinavian contacts can hardly be overestimated; it is enough to recall the Finnish partner Helvar, who recently announced Hilton Schiphol Amsterdam with our participation.
After each day, parties were held where everyone communicated informally. I managed to inexplicably get to the hangout of North Zone and Friends, where I had fun and useless conversations with funny Scandinavian investors under a good 12-year-old whiskey.
Of competitors / potential partners, Cozify exhibited for the second year in a row and periodically dropped in to visit InControl. There were "ordinary suspects" - Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, everyone listened with interest and left with a comment, such as "very ambitious, good luck to you guys!"
At our Skolkovo booth there were several of our colleagues, residents of the foundation:
- DO-RA - portable dosimeters for smartphones
- ExoAtlet - exoskeleton for people with disabilities
- GBooking - a set of tools for online recording and business management
- ABBYY - an intelligent system for recognizing, analyzing and translating text
- NetPolice - an Internet security tool for children
and others. I apologize right away if I forgot or did not notice anyone.
On the spot, we met an interesting Russian company Navigine, which offers an accurate indoor positioning system (I did not manage to return home, a potential object for use has already appeared).
One of the main events of Slush 100 is the contest of 5-minute pitch presentations of one hundred of the best startups. The winner (an Australian, one of the first SalesForce employees with his next startup) received 650,000 Euro investments.
The second place was taken by the Russian-American project AstroDigital, which was represented by the amazing Skoltech graduate Ekaterina Kotenko-Lengold.
We, meanwhile, had a lot of interesting communication with the leaders of the system integrator companies, the press, and just students at Aalto University (Helsinki). Of the largest, Elisa, a major Finnish communications provider, expressed the greatest interest. About 10 people approached, were interested, then they called for a meeting with the vice president. They have big plans for IoT, but there is a feeling that they are similar to Rostelecom - to develop a piece of iron with a web interface and sell everything. But maybe something more.
The Finnish office Kapseli produces "capsules for sleeping" and they need a solution to manage this business from the inside - light, climate, music / cinema.
DigitSole make bluetooth insoles. If they give me a test, I think it would be great to develop a driver (I can’t calm down, I’m trying to arrange a Wow factor for us, and the bluetooth insole is quite “wow. (Why ?!)”).
I did not have more time for a walk, but I think you can find many reviews of what was presented on the network. I sincerely hope that this was not my last Slush, the atmosphere attracts and makes me want to return, already in a higher status (for example, Executive).