#start summit

Start Summit will be celebrated on the 15th and 16th March 2018 at St. Gallen, Switzerland. This edition will be focused on technology trends like the Internet of Things, Augmented & Virtual Reality, HealthTech, Artificial Intelligence, and Blockchain Technology. Disruptive industries define new boundaries and create a new reality. With more than 2,000 participants from 86 countries, this event…

End of next week on Friday 14th and Saturday 15th, the student association START from University of St. Gallen is organizing a 2-days startup conference. More than 400 students, founders and investors from 18 countries will gather to listen to big names of the tech scene like Klaus Hommels or Morten Lund.

Workshops, speed-pitching and speed-dating (young graduates meeting potential employers among startups), a lot of networking breaks, a Capital On Stage session and… parties (of course!) will be available. 

Last year was a big success… this year looks promising too! So if you'd like to have a taste of what startups are, want to meet some prominent investors coming in Switzerland or simply want to enjoy the parties, you should go!

We often hear people complaining there are no big startup events in Switzerland (except Lift Conference, but which is not so directly startup centric).

But how many of you (especially in Western Switzerland) know Start Summit, happening next week in St.Gallen? I know it's a bit far away from Geneva (just kidding... if you're a startup entrepreneur and St.Gallen is the end of the world for you... please stop your journey now, you don't have the global ambition your project deserves).

Organized by the local team of the global student association START, the event expects welcoming more than 350 startup-minded guys from all over Switzerland (and also from Germany & Austria). They've managed to convince startup rockstars like Klaus Hommels (investor in Spotify, Skype, Facebook, etc.), Christophe Maire (serial entrepreneur currently managing txtr - as a regular reader of startupolic, you can remember having read about him!) or Lukasz Gadowsky (co-founder of Team Europe). Impressive!

As well as HSG alumni network is known for its wide reach (and what are doing guys from HEC Lausanne in the meantime?), you can give a big credit to the organizers (stop a second and... applause!) to find and convince all these prominent entrepreneurs and investors to speak on 22-23rd of March. 

Start Summit will be populated by aspiring entrepreneurs or future startup employees (students), startups who will be able to pitch their company and share their BP to potential investors... and investors, of course!

Registration fee is cheap: CHF 60.- for students, CHF 100.- for startups for a 2-days event - and you can even have a free accommodation provided by HSG students (hey guys, why not having a look on StartupStay and do it via this platform for the next events?)! And a bit more expensive for investors.

Start Summit is even organizing free bus from Zürich, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, etc... And why not from Lausanne, Neuchâtel? But anyway, there is no need for this, as it much more simple to jump in a train to go! 

I’ll start with a big “thanks” to Games in Ireland for hosting a great event and the fine folks at Enterprise Ireland for helping out and arranging a meeting with Big Fish Games to discuss Localization!

The event was hosted at the beautiful Gibson Hotel directly across from the O2 Arena.  As the day progressed the crowds kept growing and it was standing room only to hear some of the speakers. Topics ranged from gaming in the cloud to design. The speakers all had great nuggets of information to share.

Towards the end of the evening as I started to browse the twitter sphere I caught wind of another event being hosted not too far from #GIG12 called Start Summit.

The event was sold out but thanks to @jamesplloyd and @russellbanks77 I was able to get a ticket last minute and for free!  Good looking out Guys -

Rode my first Public Bike through the busy streets of Dublin, stopped for a slice of Rays Pizza and continued my networking at a full bar of entrepreneurs and tech fans.  A great BIG shout-out to @StudioRua better known as Padraig for taking me under his wing!