Web Summit: Searching for green badges like lions hunting wildebeest
Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan delivers a keynote speech in Centre Stage, Altice Arena, during the second day of 2022 Web Summit on Wednesday in Lisbon, Portugal. Picture: Horacio Villalobos#Corbis/Getty Images
A day at the Web Summit begins the morning after the night before.
While not exactly hitch-free — with a camera falling from the rafters halted for the guts of an hour — the event’s opening night went well, with the emotive speech of Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska hitting the right notes.
The conference proper kicked off on Wednesday, getting down to the nitty-gritty, the reason why 70,000 people travelled to Portugal’s capital.
Web Summit is hard to define at this stage, given its absolutely enormous scale. Primarily, it’s a networking and investing event. Goal One is to secure interest and investment. But Goal Two is to be seen at the event, and "seen to be seen".
The conference is improbably gigantic. Located on Lisbon’s stunning shorefront, there are five massive pavilions, each containing multiple stages, food courts, unique partner stalls for larger companies (which change daily), and row after row of startup stalls, split into alpha and beta companies.
That’s not to forget the giant 14,000-capacity Altice Arena, where startup pitch competitions reach their denouement and where Paddy Cosgrave addresses the masses on opening night.
There are 2,300 fledgling companies looking to sell their wares — about 40 of them are Irish.
It leads to a unique atmosphere. Everything is phenomenally busy, everyone is either going somewhere, or listening to someone, or pitching something.
I watch Denis Galka, chief executive of Sequoia — a sexual health app — pitch his business on-stage to four judges and speak about how his idea stemmed from an uncomfortable feeling in the nether regions in as enthusiastic a fashion as you can possibly imagine.
It’s all a little head-spinning.
The people in attendance are all doers — with money-making ideas they want to push to fruition.
Innovation is everywhere, though much of it is incomprehensible to the layman.
“Probably the very first SAAS auction platform with integrated AI sales engines,” states another alpha startup. You need to be fluent in this lingo.
One thing you won’t see is a suit. Wearing a three-piece equals investment death, it seems.
Nevertheless, everyone is both polite and super-friendly. This may not be real (it’s not easy to pitch a business if you’re behaving like a pain in the neck, one surmises), but regardless, it’s disarmingly effective.
Nipun Kathuria is representing one of the Irish startups — Smile Genius Dental, based in Dublin. His company acts as a sort of digital middleman for orthodontics supply chains. His day is spent talking to investors and keeping his pitch fresh. But he seems happy with how things are going.
Energy, philanthropy, media, consumerism, advertising — the companies looking to make it big cover the gamut of possibilities and niches. But this is a tech conference, and tech ideas are to the fore, with cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence (AI) notably well-represented, despite the former suffering a torrid few months at the hand of global markets.
Walking from cavernous hallway to hallway, the daily steps limit will be passed several times over before lunch.
Speaking of which, the food options would give any hipster festival a run for its money.
Although, also in common with all festivals, the summit must be a sometimes irritating experience for females, given the large queues for every bathroom.
My experience is obviously a unique one, given I’m wearing a green media badge.
Everyone wears a badge, with a QR code on each, presumably to give an indication of who went where, and what held their attention.
The badges adhere to Web Summit’s absolute class system, and woe betides the person who forgets theirs — the friendly atmosphere does not apply to the Portuguese bouncers, who rule with an iron fist and are, frankly, terrifying.
At the bottom of the pile are the common-or-garden attendees. Then there are the thousands of pitchers. Then partners/investors, all the way up to chairpersons and executives.
The highest-priced tickets for Web Summit cost over €25,000 — for the people and companies for whom such an amount is chump change, and a presence at Europe’s largest tech conference is essential.
The media ticket is outside that system, but can arouse great excitement among attendees. Because media attention is gold at Web Summit, and it doesn’t matter if the outlet is based in a country many thousands of miles away.
“You’re media! I’ve been looking for you,” shouts Astghik Zakharyan, whose company is a startup investor accelerator. That is, they turn people from innovators into investors, which is a neat trick. She and her team are scouring the halls looking for green badges like lions on the hunt for wildebeest.
She’s very nice but has only one question: “How do I get the media's attention?”
Somehow, I doubt she’ll struggle.
Suddenly it’s 5pm, and a full day is over in a heartbeat. Attendees will now head either to Night Summit — the event’s after-hours experience — or any number of exclusive parties dotted around the city. In truth, that is where the deals are really done, when the hair is down.
Then it’s back tomorrow morning at 9am to do it all again.
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