Web Summit goes back to basics after controversy and boycott

Katherine Maher, new chief executive of Web Summit: Her calm nature will be a bonus, a trait her predecessor was not known for.
Booming cheers erupted in the Altice Arena at the Web Summit last Monday when newly appointed chief executive Katherine Maher asked how many people were attending the event for the first time.
Many newcomers were not deterred by the Big Tech boycott that followed the controversial comments made by former chief executive and co-founder of the event, Paddy Cosgrave on the Israel-Hamas war. There was a sense for some that the absence of industry heavyweights shifted the focus back onto early-stage companies.
“It’s probably, in a weird way, come full circle right back to its roots,” said Ryan Donnelly, a Belfast lawyer turned entrepreneur who created Enzai, an artificial intelligence governance start-up that is used by banks, who had gone to the trade show for the first time.
The Web Summit, which was co-founded during the 2008 crash, was at the start a 150-person conference based in Dublin that targeted the local tech community. It grew and changed over time to become a completely different beast.
Growing attendance, as well as a row between Mr Cosgrave and former taoiseach Enda Kenny, led to the convention moving to Lisbon in 2016.
The event eventually went much more mainstream to cater for a vast range of interests. Actress and comedian Amy Poehler, skateboarding legend Tony Hawk, activist Jane Goodall and eccentric entrepreneur Elon Musk were some of the names that have walked the Web Summit stage in previous years.
This year was teed-up to be another blockbuster. The original line-up of speakers included
and actress Gillian Anderson plus a keynote speech from another Irish success story, Stripe, the internet payments company founded by Limerick brothers Patrick and John Collison.
The summit preparations had been rocked after Mr Cosgrave had posted on social media a message about the Middle East war: “I’m shocked at the rhetoric and actions of so many Western leaders & governments, with the exception in particular of Ireland’s government, who for once are doing the right thing. War crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies, and should be called out for what they are.”
Many people and firms cancelled, including many of US companies, although they did not clearly spell out the reasons for doing so.
The absence of the big names was noticeable. Walking around some parts of the sprawling convention centre showed the gaps caused by the boycott. It was undeniable the Web Summit had lost some of its sparkle.
For example, two of the main speakers were founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales and Signal Foundation president Meredith Whittaker. Ms Maher, the new summit boss, had worked with both of them in the past in her previous roles as CEO of Wikimedia, which is part of the Wikipedia group. She is also chair of the board of the foundation behind the private messaging app Signal.
Ukrainian entrepreneur Alex Chernenko, who set up Limerick-based translation services company Translit, attended the Web Summit for the fourth time. He said it was “a little bit quieter” this time.
However, the buzz among eager start-ups in Lisbon was still palpable and their energy was almost as strong as the controversy that had shrouded its future in uncertainty.
Irish entrepreneur Lucinda Kelly, who had founded retail start-up Popertee, and recently launched a fertility support in the workplace company called Be Like Water, said the flood of tech giants pulling out of Web Summit made the event more attractive.
“I thought, there is going to be more tickets available. So actually, for me it was an opportunity,” she said.
The Web Summit had been known in the past to cover the cost of tickets for some, especially Irish start-ups. This year was no exception. It did not hurt the optics to have more people wandering around the event, despite the absence of some familiar names. Nonetheless, a record 2,600 start-ups exhibited this year.
The allure of the Web Summit for start-ups may have been heightened by a decline in venture capital funding in Europe, as investors become more cautious about high inflation and interest rates. The economic challenge was discussed at several sessions during the convention last week.
Web Summit veteran, Irish marketing consultant Noel Toolan, said the event was one of the best he had attended since it began more than a decade ago. He said there was more serious engagement and tighter content.
This may have been the perfect time for the spotlight to be put back on young start-ups. Whether this was intentional, or as a consequence of the boycott by some Big Tech names, we may never know.
Blaming the economic slowdown after the pandemic, many tech multinationals have slashed their global workforces. Regulators are also cracking down on Big Tech over the collection of personal data. The main speakers this week took the opportunity to criticise the practices of multinationals. The comments resonated even more due to the number of no-shows by Big Tech companies.
Ms Whittaker called out the "surveillance business model" in tech, saying “we should not have centralised, for-profit social media platforms, full stop”.
Meanwhile, Mr Wales took a verbal swing at X, formerly Twitter, and its owner Elon Musk, saying the platform was “not really a great source of truth”.
This could be a renaissance period for the troubled conference company, and, for now, Ms Maher has suggested the organisation would remain focused on start-ups.
“Our immediate task at hand is returning the focus to what we do best, facilitating discussions among everyone involved in technological progress,” said Ms Maher when she took up the role.
Speaking to the
at the conference, Ms Maher said under her leadership she aims to veer away from the Web Summit being at the “centre” of conversations and instead be used as a vehicle to help firms grow.That said, she has been courting the companies that boycotted the event, indicating at her first press event she expected many of them would likely return in the future.

Under new stewardship, the renewed start-up buzz will not get drowned out by big companies and personalities if they return following the chaotic last few weeks for Web Summit.
The consensus is that Ms Maher is a steady pair of hands for the Web Summit, as it attempts to grow its events in Qatar and Rio.
Ms Maher has a degree in Middle Eastern studies and has lived in Syria and Cairo. She is also on the US government’s foreign policy board, helping provide knowledge on trends emerging in the multinational sector.
Above all, her calm nature will be a bonus, a trait her predecessor was not known for.
During the week, Ms Maher emphasised more than once her appointment was a “fresh start” for the company as it deals with the aftermath of the fallout. In her opening speech, she had described Mr Cosgrave as “outspoken”.
However, Mr Cosgrave remains the majority shareholder of the company, owning a stake of 81%, and its unclear what will happen even though he has resigned as chief executive and stepped down from the board.
Ms Maher was asked if she believed Mr Cosgrave should sell up. She did not answer the question.
For now, Mr Cosgrave has not posted on X since the fallout.
One of the key decisions has been the move to pull Web Summit funding from online publication 'The Ditch', which Mr Cosgrave had in the past often voiced his support for.
Any involvement he has with the Web Summit remains unclear.
It was the first time Mr Cosgrave had not been present. But Ms Maher said she had no communication with him this week, apart from her receiving a text that praised her for doing a “good job”.
The Web Summit was undoubtedly different this year. Mr Cosgrave often used the company as a tool to express his own views, including dissatisfaction with the Government here.
An average person with some interest in tech may have left the conference feeling a bit underwhelmed. However, it may have been one of the most useful conferences for owners of companies with plans for growth and needing to hear from other founders and investors.
It will be interesting to see if the Web Summit continues to show interest in some global political issues in the future, especially after the backlash that came from Mr Cosgrave’s “war crimes” comment.
For example, the convention continued to highlight the ongoing war in Ukraine through a number of sessions.
However, there was no outward support for Palestinian or Israeli companies this year amid the devastation in Gaza.
Palestine had a budding tech community before the war began in October, which included the Google-backed start-up firm Gaza Sky Geeks.
“Web Summit did show a lot of support for Ukraine, they chose not to get involved in the Israeli-Hamas war because there was a controversy, they probably just decided to make themselves distant from this,” said Mr Chernenko.