Hello Wicked people! 🐇 

Last week Wicked was at Slush along with 13,000 founders, investors and tech enthusiasts. Since it is such a major event we created the task for ourselves of observing Slush from an Impact lens. We also added YouTube links to all of the impact-related sessions from main stages.

How is the topic of impact present at Slush?

Opening panel of the event features two tech rockstars, Harry Stebbings from 20VC and Claire Hughes Johnson from Stripe. The two confirm something they discussed backstage which is that “every single minute a business makes their one-millionth dollar using Stripe”. The discussion segues to the next topic before adding “Hard to imagine more impact than that”.

To that I say… time to try harder…

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There’s no doubt that Slush is the most founder-focused event on earth and provides so much value in inspiration, connections and learnings to all attendees. Slush also manages to gather great people. In this respect the event is a resounding success year after year. So a big kudos goes to the organisers and volunteers once again! 👏

The positive impact of this in itself is worth celebrating because at the end of the day the world needs entrepreneurs who are building solutions to our most pressing problems – and doing that is really, really hard.

Impact at Slush

Slush has a core value to “redefine entrepreneurship”. When I read it, I observe that the purpose of tech entrepreneurship, according to Slush, is essentially to change the world at scale and solve the most pressing problems we face (see below).

Is this purpose being reflected at the event?

Only 11 out of 71 (15.5%) of sessions on the two main stages of Slush, Founder stage and Horizon stage, were related to this purpose or featured a relevant founder.

Climate, impact and deep tech topics which align with redefining entrepreneurship were left to the fringes of side-events rather than taking center stage. Nothing wrong with side-events, but everyone knows where the gravity is. If the goal is to redefine entrepreneurship and support mission-driven founders, then these topics must be put right in the core of the event.

The Positives

1. Founder-focused

   Connections and concrete tools on how to build startups, which is hard regardless if your addressing climate change or optimising ad-spend, should always be at the center. For this the Builder stage is brilliant.

2. People

   Slush is an event which makes for interesting encounters that you could never even imagine. As the Silicon Valley saying goes, it’s more about the connections you miss out on by not being inside the ecosystem. Whatever the program lacks in substance is made up for by the amazing people that join.

3. Energy and optimism

   I fundamentally agree that we should be enthusiastic about the future rather than dreading it. We should channel this towards catalysing the solutions the world desperately needs rather than waiting to see what pops up as the next hot trend.

4. Showing by doing

   Slush is leading by example in sustainability. Carbon removal offsets, vegetarian food, up-cycled t-shirt materials, wood-based cloakroom cards by Woodly and operating a closed-loop circular economy waste solution with Kamupak (fun fact: I pioneered the pilot of Kamupak’s solution at Arctic15 event in June 2023 😉 ).

5. Side-events

   Side-events shows that there is an appetite for certain themes that people are willing to invest into. It is a positive sign that there are many impact related side-events (see list by Wicked).

What’s missing?

1. How to Build Deep Tech

   Most of the solutions to the most pressing challenges of our time will come from science and research. There was little focus on how research commercialisation happens and how to do it.

2. Pressing Problems for Entrepreneurs to Tackle

   It would be important to lay out the context of where the world is and which problems entrepreneurs should tackle. 6 out of 9 planetary boundaries have been crossed and many social needs are unmet (see Doughnut model below) – which presents opportunities for founders across industries.

   

   Image: Kate Raworth and Christian Guthier/The Lancet Planetary Health

3. More impact entrepreneur role models

   Where are all the founders of great impact companies from Europe and US? There were a few like Marty Odlin, Running Tide and Marc Tarpenning, Tesla – but many are missing. Think Climeworks, BioNTech, Northvolt, Lilium, H2 Green Steel, InFarm, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Redwood Materials, Apeel, Solugen, and more.

4. Enterprise design

   There is a growing movement around the world about alternative enterprise design, such as co-operatives and steward-ownership, that is completely missing from Slush. Patagonia, OpenAI, Ecosia, Zeiss, Robert Bosch and Signal are all examples of companies with an alternative ownership structure. These models enable founders to lock-in their mission and maximise their impact while making profit.

As I was walking past the Builder Stage I overheard a thought-provoking anecdote. It was a quote from Henry Ford, “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”

The customer obviously did not want a car because they did not know it existed. Your customer does not know what the future will look like. So one of the jobs of a founder is to find a secret–find out what will change in the next years that will make your product a great investment for them now.

Business-as-usual is the horse and buggy. Impact is the car.

YouTube links to Impact-related sessions on Slush Main-stages…

• Navigating Through Change - The Founding Story of Swappie

• Diversity in Tech – Moving From the Why to the How

• Beyond Tesla – How to Build the Next Big Thing

• Harnessing the Power of the Sun — The Story of Aurora Solar

• Psychedelics — The New Psychiatric Frontier

• Power and Responsibility — Data Privacy and User Trust in Health-tech

• Dawn of a Surgical Renaissance

• Climate Tech, Sink or Swim

• CRISPR — Going Small for Big Solutions

• Climate Action for Non-Climate Tech Companies

• 1KOMMA5°'s Path to Live on Wind & Sunlight 4e, 4free

What did you think about Impact at Slush? We would love to hear from you so shoot your thoughts to us at [email protected] 🐇 .

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Wicked Community News

Run For Impact 🏃❄️

We did it. We organised a charity run in the most impossible conditions–charity, running in -6c, saturday, day after Slush parties– and a few people actually showed up! We were able to raise some cash Charity Entrepreneurship incubated charities fund, raise awareness on their work and get a nice workout in.

• 7 runners + 3 volunteers taking care of runners and providing Glögi

• €500 raised for Charity Entrepreneurship: Incubated Charities Fund

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