2023 SLUSH Review

• The event was held from November 30 to December 1, 2023 at Messukeskus, Helsinki. Messukeskus is a huge convention center which is the largest in Finland. As far as I know, SLUSH started with a group of students from Alto University, and it was amazing that the event was started by univesity students.

• The layout of venue is above. Primarily there are four main stages: Founder Stage, Builder Stage, Startup Studio, and Horizon Stage. Each stage hosts ongoing investor relations (IR) sessions or panel discussions related to its theme.

• Additionally, various organizations and institutions set up their own IR stages within booths, thus simultaneously small-scale IR sessions are held. so it's impossible to attend every event within the time. 😯 And it never becames dull or lacking in things to see, thanks to this setup.

• Large meeting zones were also established, and small working spaces were scattered around. So participants can make detail discussions with potential partners anywhere.

• The presence of free coffee corners was also good point to keep attendees engaged at the venue.

• All seats were filled even though there were such a large-scale stage and seats suitable for it. There were many people outside the auditorium watching the stage standing.

• In addition, the center of the venue is crowded with so many people, so I thought that I could really get lost in the venue.

• All seats were filled even though there were such a large-scale stage and an auditorium suitable for it. There were many people outside the auditorium watching the stage from standing seats.

• In addition, the center of the venue is crowded with people coming and going to the booths of various companies and organizations, so I thought that I could really get lost in the venue.

My SLUSH Application

• What caught my eye at SLUSH was the system in place to systematically run events on such a large scale.

• One of them was "My Slush," a dedicated mobile application.

• This is a dedicated application linked to the SLUSH website that allows you to check personal profiles, event schedules, and coordinate meetings among participants. Based on the participation application information, you can check the affiliation information of startups, investors, and companies, and the desired contents of the meeting… etc.

• If the two sides agree, the meeting will be arranged according to the time slot within the event's operating time in real.

Impressive scenes

• It is a group booth of German startups, and it has installed its own pitching stage and conducted IR.

• Throughout the SLUSH event, it was the most crowded booth, as many as four main stages, and there were a number of significant Deep-Tech startups.

• The fields was various such as Cleantech, SaaS, and AI, and the most stood out company personally was GEMESYS, an NPU developing startup.

• GEMESYS aims to develop an analog AI chip that is closer to the human brain based on Memristor, a neuromorphic device.

• One of the main stage panel discussion lineup startup. It was impressive that develops/operates a platform that connects many operating rooms digitally.

• The founder, Nadine Hachach-Haram, talked about how she started her business, the company’s goal and how medical start-ups should move forward.

• Proximie enables doctors to refer to each other's surgical processes on video or build up surgical knowledge in the form of collective intelligence, and it already supported over 13,000 operations from 2021 to the half of 2022 and has product references at more than 100 countries.

 

• The booth was promoting already familiar products like Google Cloud.

• One standout product was the generative AI image service, Exactly.AI. By this service, you can get desired image with some text input and selection of styles.

• However, honestly, I didn't feel that the printed images fully captured the intended message as much as I had hoped..

• Deloitte was the most surprising. Unlike other companies that attended wiht small booths, they showed large-scale booths and on-site discussions.

• It seemed to be because of one of Deloitte's services, “27pilots”.

• According to the article, 27pilots is a company of the same name that Deloitte acquired early of 2023, a consulting company specializing in venture companies. ”Deloitte snaps up Munich-based venture client services provider 27pilots”