The European Startup Festival: Exemplar business insight

The European Startup Festival is an online event that will take place between 16-21 November. The event is in its third year running, the first festival having taking place in Turin Italy in 2018.

The second edition was held in Malmo Sweden last year. I spoke with Sumeyra Tansel, one of the events coordinators about the inspiration behind the European Startup Festival.

The European Startup Festival: Progressing ideas and interest

We began our conversation by discussing why the festival was created and how it can benefit startups for years to come:

“Being entrepreneurs and investors ourselves, we wanted to create something of value to us and the start-ups that we are involved in.

We found that there is not enough support for start-ups on a European basis that has a bottom-up approach rather than a top-down approach involving all stakeholders of a European start-up ecosystem.

So we are creating an ecosystem that is collaborative, borderless, and involves everyone that should be. We then decided to share this valuable network with the rest of the world and kicked off our activities with the first European Startup Festival in 2018”.

Sumeyra spoke about what attendees can come to expect from the festival and what is its daily schedule:

“The Festival offers compelling keynote speeches from renowned entrepreneurs, professionals, and investors from all over the world, including Mitch Joel, one of the biggest names in marketing, and Roger Dooley, the pioneer of applied neuromarketing.

Each day of the festival will focus on one of the following six key topics: innovation, marketing, funding, team building, sustainability, and well-being.

The daily program includes a keynote speech, a panel, and a workshop, besides networking and start-up/investor matchmaking”.

In relation to this, was the opportunities available for start-up owners expecting to gain knowledge and advice, which Sumeyra went onto detail:

“During the panels, experts and start-ups will share their insights, experiences, and knowledge on the topic of the day with the participants. The audience can learn and grow by participating in interactive workshops and keynote speeches from world-class speakers.

Startups and investors that are members of the European Startup Association can enter the process to be selected and matched during the event. Startups and investors can join the association for free.

The Festival also focuses on networking for all the participants as there will be virtual tables to meet other participants face to face – just like in the real world”.

The list of speakers was our next conversation point, and the number of excellent guests is impressive:

“Amongst other excellent speakers, we have two Marketing Gurus in our event, Mitch Joel and Roger Dooley. Mitch is the bestselling author of business and marketing books such as ‘Six Pixels of Separation’ and ‘Ctrl Alt Delete’. He has been called “the Rockstar of Digital Marketing” and “one of North America’s leading digital visionaries.”

Roger Dooley is an author and international keynote speaker. His books include Friction: The Untapped Force That Can Be Your Most Powerful Advantage ( It is named one of the Best Business Books of 2019 by strategy+business).

Another world-class speaker is Tim Urban who will give a keynote on innovation. He is the writer/illustrator and co-founder of Wait But Why, a long-form, stick-figure-illustrated website with over 600,000 subscribers and a monthly average of half a million visitors.

Besides these legends, we also have other inspiring speakers such as John Purkiss, Emma Arekelyan, Servane Mouazan, Magnus Eriksson, Teodoro Da Silva, and Jennifer Austin”.

For those attending, Sumeyra provided tips on how to make the most of the experience:

“Listen to important insights from our inspiring speakers, be engaged, and don’t be scared to ask your questions to our speakers and experts, learn from the workshops. Get the networking opportunities, take a seat at our virtual tables to meet other participants face to face”.

Before we finished, Sumeyra provided some background information about The European Startup Association, who sponsor the event:

“The European Startup Association is a growing community devoted to exploring innovative approaches to entrepreneurship as a way of life.

The founders, Adriano Travaglia and Christine Michaelis know that the success of a start-up is not only dependent on investment but on your network, knowledge, and your team.

The community is based on 3Cs (culture, collaboration, and creativity) – involving all stakeholders of a European start-up ecosystem: start-ups, investors, accelerators, incubators, public and private agencies, cities, co-working
spaces, event organizers, and universities.

If you would like to book tickets online, you can do so by using this link: https://eustartupassociation.com/festival/

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