Tag: 2018

Andy Tsao (Managing Director Global Gateway at Silicon Valley Bank) took us on a journey through some of the emerging markets where he had the opportunity to spend time and build the case for innovation economy. He calls it Adventure Capital.

United States vs Emerging markets

What's happening in US in terms of tech and innovation investing?

The US market has been on a 8-year up-cycle. In 2017, 82,9 M USD were invested and for historical context that is the most amount of Venture invested since the year 2000. But then again by looking at the first quarter of 2018 (28.2B USD) if we do a simple annualization - we may be on a course to exceed a 100B USD venture invested in US this year and perhaps we may eclipse the 105B USD from 2000.

"The US economy is doing well, the stock markets are at all time high, unemployment is at historical low, why are then our investors and entrepreneurs increasingly looking outside the US in emerging markets in terms of creating valuable technology companies?"

If we look at the global set of unicorns - more than half of them reside outside of the US while just 5 years ago nearly 75% of all global venture was invested in Silicon Valley.

Global innovation wave is growing.

➡️ 49% of Global unicorns are outside of US (CB insights) ➡️ 57% of new unicorns are outside US ➡️ China has 55 unicorns, Idia - 9 ➡️ 40% of YC is international ➡️ Less than 45% of global VC is in Silicon Valley Last year, venture commitments in China exceeded $50B for the first time, funded largely by domestic RMB investors. Venture fundraising in china matched US fundraising in 2016, which was the highest total in 15 years. By some measures China is already the largest Venture market in the world. Certainly China is the second largest economy in the world. India is also a good example of "tropicalization" meaning that entrepreneurs and investors can choose business models from developed markets apply innovation to take those models locally to their home market. Flipkart is a good example of that. The company raised billions of dollars and have been competing vigorously with Amazon in India for the e-commerce market.

"As I travel around the emerging markets, one of the sectors that really pops out is Fintech."

It seems like in many of the emerging markets the banking landscape is very similar - usually dominated by a handful of large powerful banks that act in a monopolistic sort of manner. That means they don't take a lot of risk, they don't treat their customers very well and as a result it gives the entrepreneurs the opportunity to really disrupt, innovate.

Secular trends that drive the acceleration of innovation in emerging markets:

➡️ The amount of capital that you need to launch a business today has drastically reduced from a few years ago. ➡️ Entrepreneurs can leverage cloud based technologies using lean startup models, they can get to Proof of concept much quicker than before with much less money. ➡️ Entrepreneurs don't need to go to the large money centers like the Silicon Valley ➡️ Increasing availability for best practices - Endeavor, Techstarts, YC ➡️ Proactive government funding ➡️ More funding available from US and other developed markets ➡️ Rise of the rest - you'd no longer have to be at one of the traditional US tech hubs to launch a relevant high growth technology business.

---

Missed the 2018 edition of Webit.Festival Europe? Don’t miss the 2019! Get your super early bird 2in1 tickets – 2 for the price of 1 here!

More global leaders join Webit.Festival Europe 2018!

With over 75% senior attendance among the 6000 people audience from 110 countries - the speakers can only be global leaders and shapers! Join Webit.Festival Europe to meet with them, including Mr. Liang Hua, the newly elected Chairman of Huawei - the world-leading telecommunications provider, just over $90 billion in global annual sales in 2017, Huawei is also the world’s third largest smartphone seller.

STILL NOT TOO LATE!

---

Join the Festival and explore unparalleled business networking

---

A warm welcome to Thibaut Gregoire, General Counsel, Europe, MasterCard, who joins along with his colleagues - both Vice-Presidents - Mikael Svensson and Louise Holden after the President of Mastercard Europe Javier Perez already joined Webit. Presenting you some of the newly announced speakers of the upcoming Europe's tech, digital economy and policy event for 2018 - Webit.Festival! The Blockchain world joins Webit to challenge the future of the decentralized economy! Webit.Festival is the place to involve policy makers, all major tech companies and the blockchain ecosystem to innovate through collaboration! With over 200 exhibitors and sponsors the 10th Webit.Festival is the largest ever European edition, double in size compared to last year. A warm welcome to Huawei, Red Bull, Google, Amatas, Cogni, Jelurida among the newly joined sponsors and exhibitors of Webit.Fetsival 2018.

---

Interested in exhibiting / sponsoring? Contact us asap!

---

See you on 26-27 June in Sofia! The Webit Team

Most of the hotels in Sofia are already booked for the upcoming Webit.Festival Europe 2018!

As of today (40 days before Webit) Sofia is booked at almost 87% for the days of both - the Festival and the Digital Assembly, the two major events, part of the EU Digital and Innovation Week in Sofia. If you plan to join Europe's tech, digital and media festival and the unparalleled EU digital policy gathering for 2018, you'd better hurry up! There are only 6 available hotels for which you may use the special Webit discounted prices in Sofia - the Digital Capital during the festival - 25 - 27 June, 2018. One ticket for all events! Prices Go Up This Week

Exhibitions opportunities

As Webit doubled in size and we have moved to a much bigger venue, there are new available exhibiting slots. Join the 200+ exhibitors of Webit.Festival Europe 2018. Webit.Festival was among the first events in the world to introduce the multi content tracks (parallel independent summits) as part of the conference agenda 10 years ago.

4000 already booked their tickets to Webit

So far over 4000 influencers have registered for Webit.Festival Europe. They come from all over Europe and rest of the world (a total of 103 visiting countries so far). See who from your network is already booked for Webit.

Some statistics:

Over 68% of all attendees are senior-level decision makers. Over 70% are from Europe (38% from CE Europe, 32% W Europe). Next largest attendees groups come respectively from North America, followed by Asia and Africa

It is not about the size (although Webit is BIG), It is about the experience and your KPIs!

In order for our sponsors, exhibitors and attendees to better focus on their business goals and to experience unparalleled top level networking we have expanded the floorplan and built special networking and 1:1 meeting zones around each of the parallel summits.

10 separate events under one roof

Webit hosts 6000+ attendees but each parallel summit and expo welcomes between 300 and 800 of the leaders in the particular domain. Thus you join an intimate, highest level possible business networking while enjoying the benefits of a global large scale event.

Here you can see a full list of the confirmed speakers at Webit.Festival Europe 2018, while here you can get all the information you need about the tickets for the event. Removing the fiction from science-fiction, the UK-based inventor has thrown away the rule book with his suit powered by six small jet engines. Founder of human propulsion technology start-up, www.Gravity.co, Richard (The real-life Iron Man) has pioneered his innovative idea into a reality, taking flight in Spring 2017.

“The dream was to re-imagine an entirely new authentic form of human flight leaning on an elegant collaboration of mind and body augmented by leading edge technology. Gravity has to date been experienced by over a billion people globally with video views alone running at more than 60M within 7 days of launch.”

Richard's vision is to build Gravity into a world class aeronautical engineering business, challenge perceived boundaries in human aviation, and inspire a generation to dare ask ‘what if…’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JinhIHIF8Eo

“The way you have to balance is pretty much the same stance Tony Stark has in the film,” Browning says.

Richard also broke the record for fastest speed in body-controlled jet suit – he reached 32.02 mph and made his mark in the pages of Guinness World Records. He hopes that in the future he will smash it again.

“As the engine starts pulling up, it starts to build you can sense the energy and the moment the ground leaves your feet and you’re actually in the air it’s a pleasure and joy.”

Browning says that this is just the beginning of this technology journey. The next big thing his company is planning is adding wings to the suit, that will allow the person wearing it, to fly further, faster and higher and also use a lot less fuel than now.  

Apply for our Founders Games and get the chance of being among the 200 startups presenting their innovative idea in front of investors, business leaders and all attendees of Webit.Festival 2018. Corporates & startups. Two forces of the business world which are as much different as they need each other. Brian Collins (AngelHack), Jonas Jacobi (IBM) & Matthias Schanze (Siemens) put some light on this complex relationship Mr. Schanze described as”Dancing with an elephant”

The open API (Application Programming Interfaces) revolution took of 5 years ago

A familiar example of APIs in action is the ability to sign into different accounts or services with our Facebook login. We can log into Pinterest, for example, by using our Facebook login credentials. That revolution was built on the idea that corporates could start opening up their technology for developers & startups. By doing so they were able to find a whole new strategy. In that way, the strategy shifted. It shifted from a B2B or a B2C focus to a Business to Developer focus. As such, innovation programming quickly went on the rise. Corporates began looking at developers and startups as a whole new strategy to their strategic plans and in doing so they’ve started working and finding ways to engage with startups & developers at an earlier and earlier stage.

Why the relationship between startups & corporates is important

Big companies have more than enough funds to put in place and do their own research. What these companies have noted is that a lot of innovation occurs outside the company itself. That’s one of the main reasons companies like IBM, Siemens and others of this size have been involved in the startup ecosystem for quite some time already. Startups do set trends and it’s important for large corporations to always keep an eye on new trends and new technologies that are emerging fast. So what are these companies looking for? Big ideas. Great technologies. And innovations. Innovations that disrupt industries and possibly create new markets. Transformation, not only for the company itself but for its clients as well.

Value proposition to the corporates

Corporates are well aware that they cannot invent everything by themselves. Co-creation and co-innovation with startups is a key point of their development. The transition is turning from internal Research & Development departments inside of corporates towards creating an external community, a liquid R&D force in essence. There’s the notion that most big corporates engage with, acquire or invest their funds in startups that already make some millions of revenue but in reality that is not the case anymore. The practice of an early engagement has grown immensely and that calls for more fair chances for more startups.