What Happened During Our European Roadtrip
The memoirs of AE Ventures about the epic rockstar-style blockchain tour
AE Ventures’ team recently concluded the epic road trip around Europe and we want to share with you impressions and experience!
We (co-)hosted meetups in 15 cities and we met plenty of blockchain startups with great ideas, chatted about blockchain technology and its potential to change the way our society is interacting with entrepreneurs and developers, sparked even greater interest in guest, who are simply curious, and most importantly — we got to meet the local blockchain communities and discussed trends and problems of the blockchain world today.
Here are the major takeaways from every location we visited:
Berlin, Germany
23.08.2019
We started with a blockchain meetup co-organized with æternity during the Berlin Blockchain Week — the most exciting time of the year for blockchain enthusiasts living in Berlin.
Berlin Blockchain week was as exciting as ever. We intentionally avoided the main crowds and hang out in front of the conferences talking to as many different people as possible spreading the gospel of Satoshi.
We hosted our meetup in the Blockchain Embassy on the last day of the official Berlin Blockchain Week and geeked out with people interested in æternity blockchain. Yanislav Malahov, the founder of æternity blockchain had an inspirational talk about his vision of the industry and how it is evolving.
Berlin Blockchain Week was as exciting as ever, vibrant as usual and an absolutely must-go for everyone who is involved with blockchain.
Belgrade, Serbia
04.09.2019
The second meetup from our road trip was held in Belgrade. In collaboration with our partners from the ICT Hub and MVP Workshop, we have been able to attract all significant players from the local blockchain community, as well as a surprisingly large number of blockchain startups.
Again, we are nicely surprised by the huge potential of the blockchain projects from the Eastern Balkans!
Prague, Czech Republic
18.09.2019
The ecosystem in Prague has traditions in blockchain since the early years of Bitcoin led by Slush, who created the first mining pool and then founded Trezor — the first hardware wallet who is still one of the best in the world!
No surprise, Prague’s meetup was one of the most exciting ones!
We greeted over 50 participants from the local startup ecosystem but also some of our Starfleet alumni teams — Mislav Javor from AMPnet and Florian Braeunig from YAIR.
It was a great pleasure for us to meet such a vibrant and interesting crowd, to discuss our upcoming Starfleet accelerators in Malta and India, and listen to Mislav and Florian sharing their experience of being part of our program!
Sofia, Bulgaria
25.09.2019
Sofia Crypto Meetup is an iconic monthly tradition held in Sofia every last Wednesday of the month for the last 42 months, we calculated it for you — 3.5 years! The organizer of the event Vladislav Dramaliev is one of the veterans of the Bulgarian blockchain scene, also the Community Developer at æternity.
Very special guest speakers were two charming ladies — Biliana Alexandrova from the Balkan Blockchain Association and Steffy Stojanow — the very-pregnant-but-unstoppable Head of Marketing and Operations at AE Ventures.
Except for the presentation of the new vision of AE Ventures and its upcoming Starfleet accelerator in Malta, we had an interesting discussion on the topic of upcoming crypto legislation frameworks with blockchain lawyers.
Istanbul, Turkey
30.09.2019
Istanbul has a vibrant community with a lot of potential for businesses with blockchain. Young entrepreneurial people and experienced professionals from established companies and financial institutions both are driving the search for applications of the blockchain technologies in the local ecosystem.
Our meetup was held in the ING Innovation Center and it was packed!
We are totally amazed by the Turkish blockchain community and the enormous potential of the startups there! There were more than 70 attendees, consisting of investors, startups, blockchain enthusiasts and government agencies. Valentin Alexiev, our Blockchain Specialist explained the opportunities that Starfleet provides to blockchain startups and success stories from the first two batches.
We also had a great panel discussion with representatives of the Istanbul Blockchain Women, Menapay, Global Miles and Kripto Para Haber.
Tallinn, Estonia
30.09.2019
This dynamic and vibrating environment reminded us that Estonia is definitely one of the most blockchain-friendly countries!
We had an opportunity to share thoughts and impressions with our hosts from the LIFT99 and friends from the Estonian Cryptocurrency Association whose valuable insights definitely convinced us to pay attention to the local blockchain community.
Numerous questions from startup founders showed us that our accelerator can help them resolve some of the problems they encounter, and also can offer a great opportunity for future development and growth!
Bucharest, Romania
02.10.2019
In contrast with what we’ve heard about Romania, our impressions from our meetup there were that the blockchain community in Bucharest is still in its infancy.
The small crowd that we gathered at the Smart Suport Hub was consisting of quite a few interesting blockchain startups and developers, but mostly blockchain curious people.
We presented the opportunities for funding and acceleration our Starfleet program offers and answered many questions about blockchain in general, æternity in particular and real-life blockchain use-cases.
Cluj Napoca, Romania
03.10.2019
Romania was the only county where we organized meetups in 2 different cities.
Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca both have a lot of tech-talents and can provide fertile soil for blockchain development. Probably, the main drive will come from international companies that will establish teams locally.
We saw that there is a bit more developed blockchain community in Cluj Napoca — a city with many startup hubs, events, and associations.
Our meetup was hosted by Cluj Hub and while there we saw their agenda of for the month — saturated with startup and blockchain events. The reason behind this is that the people in the area are curious about blockchain opportunities!
Zagreb, Croatia
03.10.2019
We had the extreme pleasure to be “the special guest” of a meetup called Blockchain that means Business.
Our Business Development and Head of Starfleet Luka Sucic presented the opportunities for blockchain startups we offer and shared insights of the blockchain businesses.
An intriguing part of the event was the panel discussion on how can blockchain help create new ways of communication between government and citizens and elevate the trust in public services, featuring Vedran Brnicevic from Suprabit and Maxim Denizhenko from Kaspersky Labs.
We enjoyed guests from different backgrounds — government officials curious about crypto & blockchain, local blockchain association, startups, and other blockchain enthusiasts.
Helsinki, Finland
04.10.2019
Even with the crypto market going yet undefined way, Finland boasts a large number of crypto enthusiasts and traders.
Interest in this futuristic technology has not waned, as evidenced by the solid number of applications we have received on-site. With the help of our friends from Blockchain Forum ry, who helped us promote the event, as well as the Helsinki Think Company, who hosted it, we are impatient to see what potential opportunities this progressive blockchain community will create.
Ljubljana, Slovenia
05.10.2019
Taking into consideration the extremely short notice we had, it will be fair to say that there was quite an interest in our meetup in Ljubljana.
We welcomed a small but enthusiastic crowd of startups, local business angels, crypto activists, founders of incubators and investors, and a local blockchain association in the famous Bitcoin Cafe of the BTC City.
We believe that there is more potential there and we would love to explore further.
We discussed in detail the future of blockchain as an industry and answered tons of questions about æternity blockchain, Sofia (the smart-contract programming language of æternity) and Starfleet.
Bratislava, Slovakia
07.10.2019
The Blockchain scene seems a bit lacking. We would love to explore further and to dig deeper. We have heard a lot of great things about the friendly attitude the Slovakians have towards Blockchain.
The meetup was organized in Progressbar Coworking Space — an ultra-cool blockchain coworking and community space and hangout zone in downtown, Bratislava.
We reached out to the blockchain associations and it was marketed in collaboration with them. Startup associations and incubators and accelerators were reached out too and some of the most prominent ones came at the event. We did meet with the most impressive crypto VC!
Hopefully, next time we come to visit we will have the pleasure to meet them all again, but most importantly — to reach and meet more blockchain involved companies and individuals.
Utrecht, The Netherlands
07.10.2019
Utrecht has one of the coolest blockchain vibes we have seen! For this event, we partnered up with Jana Petkanic the organizer of the Blockchain Talks Amsterdam — a monthly event held in the beautiful Dutch capital, and also part of the DEBNK project and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) evangelist.
We chose Utrecht for our meetup because of two reasons: 1. there is the famous Lisk Center — the Blockchain hub of the Netherlands and 2. because it is as beautiful as Amsterdam!
On the meetup, we met developers, investors, blockchain enthusiasts, founders, and startups. The networking part was as interesting as valuable! It is amazing how many possibilities for cooperation are there and how open people are for creating something for the sake of blockchain development and implementation!
Krakow, Poland
08.10.2019
We had the pleasure and honor to be hosted by Crypto Krakow — one of the largest crypto meetup groups in that part of Poland. There was a very lively discussion about the purpose of blockchain, what do we want to achieve with æternity Blockchain and AE Ventures. Also, a very detailed presentation about what is Starfleet, what it offers and why is it beneficial for blockchain startups.
We were helped by the guys from Gamerhash too — a platform that allows you to share excess computing power when watching movies or browsing the Internet and earn.
Yerevan, Armenia
14.10.2019
We had a great opportunity to visit our friends from Nooor Armenian Blockchain Association during their ChainPoint 19 conference and to provide them with a jury member in a startup competition — our Business Development Superstar Luka Ciganek.
The Startup Battle winner was CoinStats — a very cool-looking cryptocurrency portfolio tracker. They have won 100 000 IBM cloud credit and also their guaranteed place in our Starfleet Accelerator with 100 000 USD investment opportunity!
While looking for business opportunities within the regional tech ecosystem, we have encouraged many interesting startups to apply for our accelerator.
We would like to say huge THANK YOU to all partners who helped us to organize, host and promote the meetups! Also, special thanks to everyone who came to meet us! For us, it has been a pleasure!
If you are interested to learn more about our Global Accelerator for Blockchain Startups Starfleet, please visit https://aeternitystarfleet.com.
Had you experienced something different in one of these locations? Are you a local blockchain evangelist? Write to us! We would love to hear more about the local blockchain communities and continue organizing or co-hosting meetups and blockchain events. United we stand stronger!
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