What you missed at the Web Summit 2014

A few numbers first

- 22,000 attendees from 109 countries (only 400 in 2010)
- 2,200 people working at the Web Summit
- 2,160 exhibiting start-ups
- 1,324 journalists from 70 different countries
- 614 speakers at the event
- and 82,000 coffees served

The little story

One of the biggest problem at the Web Summit from the start was the lack of Wifi. Paddy Cosgrave (co-founder of the Web Summit) apologized several time on stage, but still it almost did not work during the whole 3 days.

Super Super Super

As said in the media, the word 'super' precedes everything. “We are super exciting to launch...” “The market for wearable is super-interesting right now.” “The internet of things is going to be super hot sector this year.” It may be super annoying, but the word is now de rigueur for young start-ups hoping to promote their services.

Speakers (in short)

Among the speakers are cofounder of Paypal and Facebook’s first outside investor Peter Thiel, Dropbox founder Drew Houston, Amazon Chief Technology Officer, Werner Vogels and Google’s Vice President of Engineering, Anna Patterson.

Media's sweetheart

For the media, the most interesting speaker must have been Desperate Housewives Eva Longaria speaking about her role as an angel investor (yes that is why she was invited). It turns out she is not only gorgeous! She also talked about her association with philanthropist Howard Buffet (son of billionaire Warren Buffet) to help disadvantaged Latinas start their own business. She also wanted to challenge all women entrepreneurs to mentor younger women, as without mentors the system doesn't work.

Ireland's sweetheart

The other star of this Web Summit was also Bono, closing the Web Summit by defending Spotify and calling for more transparency from records labels.

My own sweetheart

On my side, the most interesting speaker was Peter Thiel. The German American Venture Capitalist reiterates his view that “Europe is not trying hard enough” and also “The Web Summit is not representative of Europe at all. How would my life have turned out if I grew up in Germany instead? I think there’s something about the pessimism that permeates continental Europe that’s very demotivating.” “Founders and entrepreneurs should aim to be monopoly” he said, citing Google as a good one. However, he added that from a societal perspective it is a different argument. He finished saying that flying cars did not exist yet only because of government regulation and not technology and that our society should promote other company than one limiting their user to 140 characters.

Food for thought

One last thing, even though 40% of attendees were female, only 15% of the speakers are women. I believe one could say this unfortunately only reflects reality, there are simply not enough women at the top of the tech industry. Maybe this is the next challenge to solve in the tech world...

Teaser for Hong Kong...

Hong Kong startups rocked the place in Dublin with Variab.ly, HealthySelfie, BitGameLabs, BitMex, Onanoff, Oursky, Retain.cc, EcoPort, Ecowarehouse, #be, uHoo, W Hub... We even had David Rosa from Variab.ly as a speaker during the Summit.

For those who missed it, it seems the Web Summit's little brother "Sync" will be hosted in Hong Kong in July 2015, get prepared!