How the Startup Wise Guys Investors Summit is preparing to set the foundations for an exciting year of 2025 in the Venture Capital Investment space.
The Startup Wise Guys team has been organizing Getaways for their portfolio founders and their fund LPs for 7 years already. The purpose of these gatherings has been to materialize the relationships that being an early-stage investor and accelerator creates, and foster a physical environment where attendees can strengthen their relationships, find new and improved ways to collaborate, and celebrate achievements made under the SWG brand. See it as a tech conference mixed with a Startup Festival—an essential stop in the Investor Summit calendar.
This year, we are setting a clear focus for our Investors Summit: engaging our broad network of investors and VCs/CVCs to discuss, shape, and align on the exciting next few years of investment in the European startup ecosystem. If you’d like to be a part of this unparalleled networking opportunity, take a look at our event website and register for an invitation.
Two event names for one event? Surely not!
You’ve read the above, right? The last few years, our events have mainly been focused on nurturing our portfolio founders. As exciting and powerful as that has been in the past, we’ve realized a few things:
- We have mountains of knowledge and lucrative connections to share and create respectively from our 12 years in the venture capital business.
- The strength of our community lies in founders AND investors (Angels, LPs, VCs, CVCs).
- Investors also want in on the fun!
Therefore, we have decided to create an exclusive investor track. Not by simply sprinkling a few investor side events on the side, but rather by having a dedicated investor day, on the 12th of February. An experience focused on knowledge exchange and activities for investors to build meaningful relationships and learn from pioneers in the VC industry.
What hasn’t changed is the concept of the event: a medium-sized conference focused on creating opportunities to build meaningful connections through activities and around thematic talks.
An investor event experience à la Wise Guys.
Since 2017, the Startup Wise Guys team has been exploring events, from our accelerator batch graduations to Founders Getaways. We know our value when it comes to events: creating experiences where each persona feels relevant, can give the best of themselves, and work on developing relationships. This has been proven to us in our 2023 Getaway edition, where we saw fundraising startups find investment, investors find long-term partners, and founders find mentors.
Our philosophy for the 2025 edition of the Investors Summit is to keep it relatively small. We believe that having 100 attendees is ideal. This number enables shared discussions on keynote and panel topics, structured investor roundtables, and startup 1-on-1s, as well as an intimate investor dinner discussion (on February 11th). The event is all-inclusive for investors to ensure you experience the best local food, drinks, and culture in Bilbao while enjoying unparalleled networking opportunities..
Check how it all went in 2023…
This year, like the last, we will be hosting our event in Bilbao. Why Bilbao? Why Bilbao Again?
Bilbao is a beacon of innovation. We have been working there with their local government agency BEAZ and their powerful institutions for the last four years. BEAZ supports us in our mission: “To help founders become entrepreneurs & build sustainable international tech companies.” By opening up their facilities, giving access to their local partners, and creating synergies between the local players and our international assets, BEAZ has helped position Bilbao as an innovation hub.
For this reason, we will be hosting the Founders Getaway and Investors Summit at the San Mamés Football Stadium and the Bilbao Acceleration Tower on the 11th and 12th of February 2025.
Thematic Talks? Who? What?
Indeed, many of you have registered and purchased your flights to come to Bilbao. This, we hope, is because you trust that both the people who will attend and the speakers who will be on stage will align with your expectations for the Investors Summit.
Oliver Holle, of SpeedInvest, will open the investor day (12th of February at 10 am) to talk about his view on the state of venture capital in the evolving European market
He will then be joined on stage by Benoit Vandevivere (EU/ACC; panelist); Patrick Newton (Form Ventures; panelist), and Cristobal Alonso (Startup Wise Guys; panelist). Charlotte Palmer (Integra Advisors; keynote) will then dive into the Eastern European perspective on the changing VC environment in the European context. Later in the morning, deeptech/AI pioneers Martin Salo (Hansa Assets; keynote), Martin Rand (Pactum AI; panelist), and Armen Vidian (Recode Ventures; panelist) will discuss their views on the pivotal role of deeptech in the coming years.
A Wednesday morning of content-filled talks and relationship-building activities between the leading European VCs will warrant a nice long food, drinks, and coffee break.
Following, Nicholas Nelson (OffsetVC; keynote) will dive into the defense and cybersecurity implications of deeptech.
In the afternoon, we will enter a more thematic-based agenda, diving into the Startup Wise Guys verticals. Firstly, you will hear from Nicholas Nelson (OffsetVC; keynote), who will unpack the defense and cybersecurity implications of deeptech. Then, the spotlight turns to our latest Web 3.0 batch, as they take the stage to pitch their graduating startups to investors. This exciting session will be expertly moderated by Gilles DC, showcasing the cutting edge of blockchain innovation. The day will finish with cocktails where you can engage in founder-investor conversations, as well as meet local investors and corporations.
