From Wolves Summit to Web Summit

Our Jam-Packed Startup Event Schedule, 

12th December 2018

This season has been a busy time for tech conferences; the Arkley Brinc VC team have travelled around Europe to meet the hottest IoT startups on the scene. In October, our Partners Piotr Wasowski and Bryony Cooper attended Wolves Summit right here in Warsaw, at the Palace of Science and Culture. In addition to speaking on a panel, Bryony joined Pawel Lipowski of PFR on stage to talk about successfully raising funds from PFR Starter.

One of the best things about this conference is the 15 minute speed-networking meetings you can schedule in advance. This gave us an opportunity to find the teams working on IoT innovations, and meet the founders one to one. Also, thanks to the manageable size of the event (around 1500 attendees), you’re able to walk around the exhibition area easily and view each stand.

November took Bryony and our COO Marta Proksa to Lisbon in Portugal to attend Web Summit, along with 40,000 other tech enthusiasts! Our objective was threefold:

1. Look for early/seed stage IoT startups as potential investment opportunities
2. Meet with global investors who can potentially join us as co-investors
3. To spread the word that Arkley Brinc VC is up and running!

To make the most of an event like this, it’s important to plan well in advance, so you know who to meet whilst you’re there. Seriously, use the app to create an agenda, otherwise you could end up lost in an ocean of irrelevant connections. The arena is huge, and many people will fill up their time slots in advance, so best to do it sooner rather than later.

One thing that Web Summit knows how to do especially well is throwing parties! The nightlife is non-stop throughout the conference week, so make sure you pace yourself. You can always recognise those first-timers who go too hard on the first night and suffer the next day! Saying that, social events make for the best networking opportunities; people tend to be more relaxed and open after a drink or two. Many great conversations took place at Night Summit, so we recommend utilising that time wisely too. Although Web Summit can be overwhelming due to its vastness, and some say it’s over-hyped, it is a great opportunity to meet industry players from around the world, all under one roof. We definitely made some worthwhile connections and forged new business relationships - from startup founders to investors and accelerators.

Two weeks ago, Piotr and Bryony flew to Hong Kong for Brinc’s Fall 2018 Demo Day. 12 ambitious teams pitched their startups from 2 of Brinc’s accelerator programs: ‘IoT & Connected Hardware’, and ‘Drones & Robotics’. Over 200 people attended the event at Hong Kong’s Trade Exchange, HKEX. As one of our key partners, we’re always excited to see which amazing innovations come through Brinc!

Last week, Bryony was in London on Thursday 6th December to participate on the panel at Hardware Pioneers as a special guest Investor. She offered her insights and feedback to the 15 teams pitching, as well as testing out some of the cool IoT products and prototypes in the exhibition area.

This week, we will be at Brinc Poland’s Demo Day in Poznan, on Friday 14th December. The event marks the graduation of the first batch from Poland Prize - a special accelerator focused on Design for Manufacturing, which provided grant money to 6 hand-picked connected hardware startups.

If you have an event you’d like us to attend or would like to invite our Partner Bryony as a speaker, drop us a line on hello@arkleybrinc.vc.