Arctic15 Is Live: First Speakers Announced.


    Our conference, the Arctic15, is coming up the 26th and 27th of May and it’s exciting to be announcing the first batch of speakers!

    But before we get to that, when we talk about Arctic15, we also want to tell you the philosophy behind our conference and events in general. We travel to a ton of startup events around Europe, and for some of them we have to ask, “what is the real value the attendees are getting here?”

    That’s why we’ve built Arctic15 to be an event focused on value for attendees – if you’re going to pay for a ticket and give us two days of your life, we want to entertain, inform, and really connect you.

    Naturally, you will have to work for it too – we can’t put everything in your lap. But we’ll be helping along the way both before and during the event.

    Prior to the event, you will receive plenty of tips on how to attend events and plan for them. This will include specific advice on reaching out to investors and selecting the best ones for you, finding them at the event and optimising your time. Basically, we will tell you exactly how to hack Arctic15 to get the most out of it. Those who register early will receive more tips, by the way.

    Prior to the event, you will also get access to our matchmaking tools, giving you plenty of time to set-up pre-arranged meetings at Arctic15.

    During the conference, you will have the chance to listen to our speakers, attend topic specific workshops, spend hours in The Deal Room, attend Digital Health and B2B tracks, enjoy the Nordic Startup Awards Gala reception, reenergise with great food, ‘relax’ at the after-party and much more. Naturally the event will be optimised for serendipity meetings, so you can expect an easy way to detect speakers, investors, startups, corporates and media.

    Today, we have launched the website and are announcing the first speakers, who will come from all-over the world to give a presentation and to meet all of our attendees. If you have attended last year, then you know that the goal of the event is to make sure that everyone can network, this includes the speakers. We asked all of our speakers to spend at least one hour doing one-on-ones, and most of them will be available throughout the day as well.

    TOP SPEAKERS

    For us, speakers are not just about selling tickets. We want to gather people that will provide real-value to our attendees and who will be happy to stick around to meet you. That being said, we got the top names already and a couple of surprises later down the road. Today we are announcing six speakers:

    Nicole Glaros – Partner and Managing Director at TechStars. Entrepreneur.com names Glaros as one of the seven most powerful women to watch in 2014 as she was launching 10-20 startups a year and previously started a successful e-commerce business.

    Brian Fargo – If you are from the gaming scene, Fargo needs no introduction. The man behind many games loved by millions, including the Fallout series and Wasteland. He also recently ran a very successful crowdfunding campaign for Wasteland 2, raising close to $3 million, the third most successful video game campaign.

    Mattias Ljungman – Quite a legend in the Nordics. Since founding Atomico, together with Nicolas Zennström, Ljungman was involved in the Supercell deal with Softbank, The Climate Corporation being sold to Monsato and Xobni to Yahoo, amongst others.

    Kevin Hale – There are not many entrepreneurs in the world who have applied to Y-Combinator, then exited their company and joined YC as a partner. Hale is one of them, as he was the founder of Wufoo that was sold to SurveyMonkey for $35 million in 2011 while only raising just over $100k.

    Marvin Liao – Big executive, turning to the startup world. If there is anyone who can give amazing advice, it is Liao. Partner at 500 startups, while at the same time serving as mentor in close to 20 accelerators, he knows it all when it comes to the startup world.

    Adriana Gascoigne – Adriana is the founder and CEO of Girls in Tech, a non-profit organization. They work on helping women in technology entrepreneurship and have grown rapidly, with close to 50 local chapters all over the world. The Finnish one will be launched at Arctic15.

    SAVVY INVESTORS

    Last year we had a total of 74 investors at Arctic15, representing over $35 Billion of funds under management. This year we are planning to increase that amount of investors significantly and looking at the speed of sign-ups, this is definitely going to happen. We already have many great names on the list: Atomico, Accel, Balderton, Inventure, Open Ocean, Rubylight and much more. Also, a good group of deal-hungry local and international angels already registered.

    WORLD CLASS MEDIA

    We hate to say it, but last year we did not have enough outside media attending Arctic15. This year we will not make the same mistake and we already have some of the best reporters from TechCrunch, Tech.eu, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, QZ, Nikkei and more attending the event. Naturally there will be plenty of our own from ArcticStartup & Co-Founder, but we’re not greedy with visibility.

    LIMITED TICKETS & DEMO STANDS

    This year, we are ready to take the event to the next level and to make sure everyone get’s maximum value out of it. To optimise networking, we will have a maximum capacity of 1200 attendees, so the sooner you get the tickets – the lower the price. At the moment the Early Bird price is EUR 229 with the final price going up to EUR 499. The next level will be in effect on Friday the 6th, so get yours before the price goes up.

    When it comes to Demo Stands, those are in extremely limited supply, so if you want one – send us an application as soon as possible.

    THE VENUE & ATMOSPHERE

    We have been thinking for a very long time on how to optimize the venue and decided to move the event to The Cable Factory, which is close to the hearts of entrepreneurs in Finland. The location is perfect to host our guests and we are going to do our best to optimize it for networking.

    For the general atmosphere, we are shooting for a lounge type of feeling with plenty of space to meet people and to sit down for a coffee in sofa’s and chairs that will be spread around the venue. It will be dark enough to feel fun, but at the same light enough to hold meetings and talk business. If you have any ideas and tips, feel free to send us an e-mail. Meanwhile, check out more information on the website and get your tickets here.