Wrapping up Web Summit 2014

Web Summit 2014 was really impressive, bigger and better than last year, and great fun. The who’s who of the tech world was all there, and we enjoyed presentations from Drew Houston (Dropbox), Brad Smith (Intuit) and Web Summit founder Paddy Cosgrave. Peter Thiel, Facebook’s first investor and the founder of PayPal, also spoke and shared his perspective on the early days of his career. Interestingly enough he shared his scepticism for the work ethic of European companies … and he did it in Europe! He felt that in general European companies were lazier than their US counterparts; thankfully he excluded the startup community present at Web Summit, which he described as ‘uncharacteristic’ when compared to the rest of Europe.

We were in the enterprise section of the summit, which was set up specifically for the core sectors of business and technology. As a selected Beta startup we had our own stand on day one which was a great opportunity to introduce Datamolino and meet other founders on a similar journey. Web Summit created the perfect atmosphere to network, ask questions and offer help – it was a real extension of the startup community we are used to. The breadth of experience was phenomenal and we were in excellent company.

The biggest highlight was the attention we received from a global cloud accountancy software suite. To be approached and told that Datamolino was on their radar was really exciting. And even better, we had a chance to impress them with a live demo! This was just the reason we went to Web Summit and we are really pleased at the possibility of a new relationship. As a founder it is always exciting to know that the work you do is being noticed by the people you want to notice it. For me, it means that we are doing the right things in building this product and this business. With this knowledge in hand we have some more integrations to work on 😉

The biggest disappointment at the conference was the WiFi. One of the greatest tech conferences on the planet and the connectivity was horrible! If you need some conversation starters at any tech event for the next month the Web Summit blog has a list of the ‘other’ big things that happened, and photos of the three days are all here. Web Summit 2015 is in the planning already and we look forward to it!

Andrej