As a joint endeavor with our friends at Tech Nation, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and the Department for International Trade, Awen Collective’s CTO, Jules, attended Slush 2019 in Helsinki.
Awen Collective was invited alongside other Tech Nation alumni companies, including People Matter, Good-Loop, Wordnerds, Dream Agility, Hark, Heliocor, WorkInConfidence, See.Sense & Sano Genetics.
We began with a warm welcome at the British Embassy in Helsinki, offering an excellent opportunity to network with the other cohort companies, plus the Tech Nation, DCMS, DIT and British Embassy teams. The British Government is particularly adept at assisting UK companies with making relevant and helpful contacts within foreign countries to make conducting business there easier, and Finland is no exception.
On arrival at the venue for Slush 2019, the scale is hard to appreciate. With headline numbers including 25,000 attendees, 3500 startups, 2000 investors, 4 main stages and countless exhibitors and side-events, it’s a lot to take in. The entire event is conducted in near darkness, giving the feel more of a top-end nightclub than a conference - although you’re not missing a huge amount of daylight outside in Helsinki in November either!
Add to this the amazing lighting throughout, plus pumping music throughout the venue, and it all can get quite overwhelming! Thankfully the Secret Garden was a welcome tranquil chill-out space, including interior waterfalls!
There we’re brilliant opportunities to meet with like-minded entrepreneurial spirits at every turn, and a combination of headline speakers you’d struggle to find anywhere else on earth. Thankfully, you too can experience many of these though the magic of the internet - relive Slush 2019 here!
We’d like to thank Tech Nation, DCMS, DIT, the team at the British Embassy in Helsinki, the organisers of Slush 2019, the fantastic cohort of companies who joined us, and of course, the wonderful city of Helsinki, for a fantastic few days in Finland which we’ll never forget!
If you’re considering attending or exhibiting at Slush in the future, we can 100% suggest you do!