November 11, 2014

What an amazing event. Over 20,000 people descended on Dublin last week for the 4th Web Summit. Networking, pitching, investing, observing, inspiring …… and consuming Guinness. Wiggin were there to meet the movers and shakers, some of the 1000’s of start-up exhibitors, soak up the atmosphere …… and consume some Guinness. The stats are phenomenal – in 4 years the Web Summit founder, Paddy Cosgrave, has single-handedly grown attendance from 400, to 4000, to 10,000, to 20,000. And the range and quality of speakers is impressive: where else can you hear from former Apple CEO John Sculley , Bitcoin Foundation’s chief scientist Gavin Andresen, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, Saul Klein of Index Ventures, Twitter, Evernote, Sequoia, Rackspace, and 500+ other speakers over 3 days of intense web and tech fever.  Oh and Eva Longoria, Bono, and Tony Hawks to add some (slightly irrelevant) celebrity glitz. The opportunity for exhibitors from the newest start-up to more established growth companies is clear and the appetite and enthusiasm it instils is infectious – as Patrick Freyne of The Irish Times put it this creates “a strange cult of self-confidence, hope, greed and utopian thinking.” There was huge diversity of businesses and ideas on show but one of the most striking things was that these companies came from literally the four corners of the globe to be there. Ireland, the UK and the US were well represented, but the majority came from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Israel, South America, South and East Asia. It speaks volumes for the huge strength of the tech scene in Dublin and in NW Europe in general that so many start-ups, investors, advisers, government bodies came from all over the world to be part of the scene. One wonders what will come next for the event, as whilst its size and draw is incredible, the volume of people and companies, events and talks can be somewhat bewildering. There is a clear scale of ambition that rivals the likes of SXSW in Austin. The event included not only the core Summit Main stage/Summit and other tech related spin off Summits covering Marketing, Machine, Enterprise, Builders and Investors but this year they also packed in Music, Sport, Film and Food. Some may say there is a potential risk of dilution if the expansion continues at this rate. In any event, you have to quickly get over any FOMO (“fear of missing out”) syndrome, as you just cannot be in six conference halls listening to different themes on different stages all day for three days. When it comes to business development opportunities, a heavy dose of efficient and ruthless filtering is needed. Many of the ideas and pitches presented have been done before, or are clearly (to any trained or untrained eye) just not going to work. In true internet style, you need to fail fast, iterate and go again when you are a delegate at the Web Summit. Really interesting event, not to be missed. We will be back next year Paddy!