Techchill 2024 Celebrated the Best of Baltic Startup Community
This event has an immense impact on local ecosystem
Here we go — I had an opportunity to attend another incredible event from TechChill in April 2024 as a media representative!
Honestly, I’m still buzzing from the level of energy and innovation that startups showcased at this year’s event.
With massive participation, innovative startups, and cutting-edge solutions all around, TechChill 2024 celebrated the best of Baltic Startup community by bringing together fastest-growing startups, interesting speakers, active investors (with vests, of course), and talented tech enthusiasts.
As you can definitely already tell, my experience at the event was absolutely fantastic, and I’m excited to share all about it in this article.
But, before we get into the actual event, let’s have an overview of how the Media Tour and Side Events played out this year.
Media Tour & Side Events
Just like last year, I kicked off my TechChill 2024 experience with an awesome Media Tour organized by Truesix.
This event showcased Latvia’s best, brightest, and the most fun startups by taking us, as journalists, directly to their HQs and production sites.
The startups we visited throughout the tour include:
- OX Drive — a car-sharing and long-term rental platform for Tesla and other electric cars in Latvia. They cater both to individuals and B2B clients, making sustainable mobility accessible to everyone.
- Fermetful — a food-tech startup producing plant-based fermented drinks from green buckwheat supporting your gut health.
- Mosphera — micro-mobility startup that produces industrial on-road and off-road electric vehicles to revolutionize industrial mobility. Originally they designed the vehicles for military purposes but now they have found other use cases for their product as well — it was pure enjoyment to ride their scooter.
- Oruga — they are developing the world’s first all-terrain electric monotrack vehicle. The company was founded just last year by a group of five outdoow enthusiats.
Visiting these companies was a fantastic experience for me — we learned all about their founder stories, tried their products, and asked about their future plans in terms of growth.
Generally, the day before the main event (Day 0) was full of engaging events hosted and organized by different partners of TechChill.
Attendees had an opportunity to go to various demo events, masterclasses, workshops, and fun parties at different locations.
After That, Everything Was Set to Kick off Techchill 2024 On Thursday
With the grand opening show and exciting startup vibes all around the venue, TechChill 2024 organizers welcomed all of the attendees to the event from the stage.
Imagine 2300+ attendees from 40 different countries — 600 startup representatives, and 250 investors going all around the venue eager to find their next business partners.
Networking room was full at all times — through their official app, you could search for attendees and schedule meetings with them to discuss your next billion dollar business idea (or anything else).
This year, TechChill focused on three main themes:
- Frontier Technologies — including AI, cybersecurity, defence tech, energy, climate, and space tech.
- Startup Foundations — founder stories, hard skills, and a survival guide for startups.
- New Rules for Navigating the New Normal — empowering diversity, new metrics for success, the impact of economics on different regions, and the Baltic landscape.
Other than that, there were lots of exciting events and pitching sessions happening on different stages. Let’s have a look:
Startup Pitching — Fifty Founders Battle
Of course, the grand TechChill conference would not go without their signature Fifty Founders Battle event.
This year, the winners had a chance to secure a 350,000 EUR syndicate investment led by BADideas.fund, DEPO Ventures, Diaspora VC, and Acrobator VC + 10,000 EUR no-strings-attached type of investment.
It was amazing to see the hype and interest for this event from startups all over the world. The competition received 388 application from 57 countries to be exact.
Out of those 388, 50 startups have emerged as semi-finalists, which had a chance to showcase their product directly from the TechChill stage.
At the end of the conference, we had the grand finals where Top startups pitched their ideas once again and jury announced the winners.
Tallinn-based Salesforge secured an impressive 150,000 EUR syndicate funding from BADideas.fund and an additional 100,00 EUR from DEPO Ventures.
Additionally, a full-stack fleet care service, FleetFox, got a total of 75,000 EUR in funding, and Silo Team from Sweden seized a remarkable 250,000 EUR investment opportunity from Look AI Ventures.
Not to mention the amazing pitches and products that founders showcased during the finals — what a magnificent show it was!
Stage Talks and Panel Discussions
Besides fascinating pitching sessions, this year’s TechChill was full of interesting talks and panel discussions happening on three different stages.
You could hear everything from insights on how to build unicorns to designing AI products and understanding future trends.
The level of speakers was advanced too — professionals from different companies like Printify, Veriff, and Revolut were taking part in panel discussions to share their unique knowledge and expertise with the audience.
My absolute favourite speeches from the event were “Your Startup Is Great but the World Doesn’t Know About It” and “Founder Story of Supliful.”
What Impact Does TechChill Have on the Latvian Startup Ecosystem?
I have been attending TechChill events for the past two years now.
Thanks to both of these events, I met lots of great founders and local tech enthusiasts that are passionate about the products they are building and have unique drive to share their solutions to the world.
In this sense, TechChill is an excellent platform for them to showcase whatever they have built, get feedback, and connect with likeminded individuals to develop their solutions even further.
To me, this conference feels like a celebration of Latvian startup ecosystem, where the main players and up-and-coming entrepreneurs come together to share their experiences with each other.
With the perfect amount of attendees and high-quality stage programs for two full days, it is always a pleasant experience to come to TechChill and see what the best of Baltic founders have to share with us.
Cheers to an eventful week that never fails to highlight innovation, spirit of collaboration, and the bright future of Baltic Startup ecosystem.
Here’s to many more events like this. See you next year!
