Chapter 3: The Day I Went to the Web Summit

WebSummit 2015: it’s a wrap!

Dublin was hosting for its last time the Web Summit. Founded in 2010, this event has grown from 400 attendees to almost 42.000 this year (41.675 to be precise).

Lisbon will host WebSummit 2016. In a blog post, Paddy Cosgrave explained that Lisbon’s infrastructure and event capacity was a major reason behind the move. But this move is a blow to the Irish economy. According to the Irish tourist board, last year’s event brought an estimated 100M€.

It seems that loads of people attending the event were complaining too about the hotel rooms price in Dublin during the Web Summit, some applying a 600% price increase.

Living in Dublin, it did not have any impact on me but I can understand why some people were reluctant about coming over or decided not to.

The question that has been around for a few months is: is it worth attending the Web Summit? I’ll give about my personal opinion but open to hear any feedbacks from other attendees!

Before I talk about my experience, let’s see how you can attend the Web Summit.

Web Summit has 4 different type of tickets : Startup, Investor, Attendees and Exhibitor.

As I’m neither an investor nor an exhibitor, I’ll leave these two ones on the side.

Two options for you to attend the Web Summit then: as a startup or as an attendee. Startups are divided into 4 categories, depending on how much you got funded for example (ALPHA is less than €500K, BETA less than €3M if I’m not wrong)

ALPHA/Super Early Stage

BETA/Early Stage

START/Growth Stage

Mature Stage

Each week, Web Summit was selecting early stage startups from around the world to exhibit as part of the ALPHA program. The “selected” startups received a discount and could exhibit for €1.950. I put “” around selected as I’ve found the process a bit too easy and it seems that anyone could be selected (had the interviews for the Collision event in Las Vegas last April).

Otherwise, prices were absolutely off the charts!

Same if you are an attendee. From €1.195 up to €5.245, without accommodations or food on-site.

So is it worth it going to the Web Summit?

I went to the Web Summit this year as an attendee (got free tickets thanks to a friend) so I’ll give my feedback as a regular attendee and not an exhibiting startup.

First impression: Web Summit is HUGE and PACKED. As you can see on the map below, the event is widely spread all over the RDS. To go from one side to the other, you need a good 5 min walk (which can be inconvenient if there’s a talk you want to see and it’s happening 5 min after the one you’re at).

21 Summits for 3 days ( Startup, Investor, Accelerator, Marketing, Code, Night, Society, Content, Sport, Design, Pub Crawl, Data, Machine, Food, Money, Fashion, Music, Enterprise, HealthTech, City and Careers night) with an impressive list of speakers.

So many talks I wanted to go to but couldn’t because they were happening at the same time or too far from where I was. This is what happens when you have too many options, you end up not knowing what to do!

Some of the talks that I really appreciated are:

John Collison -Co Founder of Stripe

Mike Schroepfer — CTO of Facebook

Nicolas Brusson — Co Founder of Blablacar

So if you take into consideration all the talks you can go to and if this is the only reason you’re going to the Web Summit, yes this is worth it. You never really have the chance to see the CTO of Facebook, or the co-founder of Pixar. And it’s truly amazing to hear what they have to say.

What about now if you are a startup and you are going there to meet investors?

If you are going there as a regular attendee, don’t even think about meeting some, it’s almost impossible. Even if Web Summit created an app where you can get in touch with people attending the event, the response rate is really low. And as you don’t have a booth or anything, it’s nearly impossible to get attention.

What about if you are an alpha startup with a booth?

I was not one so I’m only gonna tell what I feel/saw during those 3 days.

Almost 2.000 alpha startups attended the event (around 700 per day). An alpha startup ticket gives you a 1mx1m booth for 1 day. Really small. And it’s a jungle.

If you are a first-timer who is not used to the startup world, this is like diving into the deep end of the pool. There are thousands of startups, and you begin to understand you are far from unique. And maybe behind your peers.

Each and every startups are trying to get investor’s attention, by any means.

Some of the investors were almost complaining about it. Startups are so hungry for cash that Web Summit attendees claimed they had to hide their ID badge to avoid being accosted by entrepreneurs.

According to Peter Smith, founder of Bitcoin: “if I don’t flip my name tag around and hide who I am, it’ll take me an hour to get from one side of the room to the other, there’s too much hustling”.

And I had the same feeling. Strolling around, every startups look at your badge and are trying to see if it’s a media or investor one.

But as an entrepreneur, if I had a booth, I probably would have done the same.

So at the end, is it worth going there?

It really depends on which stage you’re at or how much you have in the bank.

If you are really bootstrapping and you could use the money to develop your startup, I’d say don’t go.

But if you can afford buying tickets without any impact your business whatsoever, you should. First, it’s definitely something to see. You meet some of your competitors and get the chance to see amazing talks.

Originally published at blog.refer-me-please.com on November 7, 2015.