If you recall our first experience at Web Summit last year, then you’ll remember that we greatly enjoyed it.
This time around there were not only quality speakers (as usual) but the weather and food were also memorable!
The main difference for us in Lisbon, was that we didn’t have a stand. We decided to attend the event as simple attendees because we felt that we could use our time more effectively that way. Prior to the event we obviously looked at the speakers — schedule on the Web Summit website to determine who we wanted to speak to and listen to during the four day happening.
Day 1
The opening ceremony took place on the Monday evening and as you can imagine the arena was packed — around 15'000 people! Paddy Cosgrave gave the welcome speech, he was followed by the mayor of Lisbon and finally the Prime Minister of Portugal spoke too.
Day 2
We spent most of our day talking to people at different stands and attending various conferences, ranging from sports to hightech. I think for the vast majority of attendees, the highlight of the day was having two football legends stop by — Luis Figo & Ronaldinho — on center stage and share their startup experience.
In case you didn’t know this yet, a normal day at Web Summit doesn’t just end with the last speaker. There’s a thing called “Night Summit”. Basically everyone goes to the city center, finds a pub and keeps networking till the wee hours. We went to an event organized by “La French Tech” and met some wonderful people there.
Day 3
On Wednesday we managed to have a few appointments lined-up with different companies who were at Web Summit. They were all very effective rendez-vous because we were able to meet C-level executives. In the coming weeks we should meet some of them again and hopefully partnerships will result from these meetings.
One specific conference stood out from the rest: Entrepreneurs need a God Complex to drive innovation.
As you can imagine the debat was rather lively.
Day 4
For the final day we tried to squeeze in as many appointments and conferences as possible. We didn’t want to have any regrets ;) .
It was fun listening to Snowden pitch on center stage! Okay just kidding Snowden evidently wasn’t there however Joseph Gordon-Levitt was.
He co-founded a startup called “HitRecord” back in 2004 with his brother — it’s an online collaborative production company.
To finish off Web Summit they had the guys from Hyperloop-One come over and present their amazing project. It’s mind-blowing to think that you will be able to travel from Toronto to Montréal in only 34 minutes!
Conclusion
This tweet pretty much sums-up the week in Lisbon:
Definitely count us in for 2017 :)
