Cloud & Big Data Summit – catch the opportunity!

In Others by Sébastien FluryLeave a Comment

Every year in November, the Tech Tour stops by in Lausanne region to match web & mobile startups with investors community. Since 1998, this association has organized more than 55 events throughout Europe and so has a wide reach and awareness among investors.  

Around hundred of investors (among ones the top notch Index Ventures, Doughty Hanson, Iris Capital or Sofinnova Partners) will carefully listen to 25 entrepreneurs presenting their case around the theme  ”Cloud & Big Data” on November 21-22 in Lausanne Palace.

Cloud computing is becoming ubiquitous and now people understand what it is (3 years ago, that was… a bit different!). More and more, we are adapting to this new standard and storing a huge amount of data in the cloud. And all these information can be a goldmine, as it opens the way to analyze and interconnect them to bring more business intelligence… or completely change some (all?) industries?

The European TechTour’s ambition is to present unique insights from high profile insiders of the industry to people attending, to celebrate and give awareness to the 25 selected companies and help connecting them to professional who can help them in their journey to conquer the world.

Lastly, The European Entrepreneur of the Year 2012 will be awarded during the gala evening (invite-only, or for attendees).

The program is quite intense with the 25 companies pitches, panels on specific topics like the ups and down of cloud computing,  and entrepreneur’s journey presentation (Ed Bugnion, founder of WMware). 
Canton of Vaud is sponsoring the event and is giving a slot to local startups to pitch the audience just before the announcement of the 25 selected companies (yeah, TechTour doesn’t disclose the selected presenting companies beforehand – you have to be in the room to learn who you’ll be watching afterwards!).
I’ve been at the event 2 years ago and I think it’s an interesting opportunity to network with all these investors. You won’t get funded there (don’t dream!) and my feeling is that investors are not that greedy to find new deals…and the deals presented are more at a Serie B stage than seed stage. But anyway, can be a top notch VC really hungry to discover exciting new deals? If he has a strong reputation (like Index has for instance), he’ll source the better deals without too much efforts… and probably not because you’ve pitched him at the coffee break. That’s tough, but realistic. I think however that this kind of event is good to build relationships early on (not being aggressive with funding when you’re too early for them) – a half joke in the startup world is:

Ask for advices, you’ll get money. Ask for money, you’ll get advices.

Think about it… try to excite them on the idea or at least just get their honest feedback on it (be prepared, it can really hard!).

I’ve managed (again!) to have 3 discounted entry tickets. You’ll be able to get it for EUR 990.- (+VAT – normal price: EUR 1’650.-). First come, first served… So ask me a discounted ticket right now!