Web Summit 2022 Review

Automated Transcription

Hello. Hello. Hello. Tyler Bryden here. I hope everything is going. Well. I’m back from Portugal. I’m back from.

Web summit? I’m fat. I ate way too many. Portuguese tarts I wish I didn’t even know. They exist now.

After all that, running and everything before but. What I wanted to do in this video is a little bit of a post analysis. And review of. Web summit. And no, I’m not going to give Web summit, you know, a.

Score. At the end of this, this is just some insights perspective. From someone who attended what I learned. Lessons, and maybe some things. To to think of if you’re considering.

Going in the. Future maybe as a founder, as an investor, just. As a general attendee, as someone who’s. Interested in tech? And all this stuff, maybe a couple.

Things to consider So what is Web summit? Massive conference. I sort of said sort of like the Burning Man for tech nerds. About 70,000 people were there and 70,000 people is a lot of people. I went.

To collision here in 2022 in in June and it was 35,000. People. And already that was a. Lot. And so I don’t always think that quantity equals quality. It was crowded. In some cases it felt a little bit.

Overwhelming. And sometimes there were too many people to talk to and sort of focus in on these niche groups. And what I think that this, you know, led to is maybe some dilution of the impact of the content. For it and. So while super exciting and amazing to see that many people in the same place, in the same facility and then the city which created.

A lot of. Electric energy and excitement sometimes. It was hard to find. I found sort of talks, especially. Speakers that were.

Sort of. Penetrating through and. Being, you know, exclusively. You know, relevant. To you and.

That’s not really their. Fault. It’s just them, you know, with these big crowds making sure that their content is, you know, generally. Available and. Accessible and maybe not to directly to someone in say my.

Stage, etcetera, etcetera. And so as an example, we have an event coming. Up founder con. Through Techstars and it’s. Tailored much more to companies.

Who are you know? Much, much. Closer to our stage. And so then the content, the speakers, everything is. Tighter around that.

And I think that’s, you know. That’s a really. Beneficial thing depending on. The way that you’re interacting. With event and.

What you’re actually trying to get out of it, so. What I like though is. I mean there are there? Everything is very. Relatively smooth. It’s polished. They’ve obviously done this.

Before the event actually. In. In. Lisbon is pretty. Incredible. It’s altus. Arena which?

Helps houses about 20,000 people and then it’s all the rest of the places like around there that then, then then supplemented. So these, these basically these pavilions that you walk through and so there’s five pavilions, each of them are somewhat themed. There are. Stages on each of them. So that could be say, the venture, if you’re interested in venture capital, creative, if you’re interested in content, all these different sort of things. So why say that?

There’s some dilution in the content you can actually guide and walk over to a stage, so I spent a lot of time at venture SAS Monster. The growth. And so those. Were a little more tailored and focused. On topics and then you could spend there, spend your time there and you know down and the content to make sure that it’s relevant to you as best as it could be. And it again, it wasn’t always successful, but overall, you know.

They try to do their best. To make that possible and you can see it’s a very small image but. No that ohh Google lens I. Don’t need you that it’s a beautiful sort of spot in Lisbon. Here we go, you can see the water and everything around. And so that makes the ambience of a event a lot of fun. And I think.

There’s a reason why they. Pick Lisbon. It’s amazing, exciting place with so much. History. That’s super.

Inspiring. And then, you know. Good weather and a lot of. Benefits to hosting it there. So basically I have. A series.

Of LinkedIn posts. That I had. Printed up, just sort of quickly documenting. Uh, you know, couple things that I had seen. And so those were through pictures. And one thing I’d say right away is that the actual stage, center stage is just magnificent. These, they’re like basically jugs.

Full of water that are. Dynamically light generated and a lot. Of, sort of. Cool sort of. Insights and things came from this stage. This was the main driver was live streamed on YouTube. So you can watch that and you can actually watch these videos back on YouTube. Here you can sort.

Of see six hours. So the actual stream is available. And you know, they they they do this in super. Super high quality. You can see.

All. The tops and you know you can then get a little bit of feedback. Or sort of understanding of how people were feeling about it. So a couple things that I noticed. One talk that I liked are the theme was. Scale versus profit.

A. Lot of talk. About recession, during the second day, the interest rates I think got hiked and so that. Then stoked more. Conversation around that. Which was super.

Interesting deep mind was there. There was some great. Companies with presences. There all the big ones that you could think of. Doing talks and sort of keynotes and Apple and all these great things, a lot of them on center stage, but then.

Also people who are leaders. You know, breezing. Around and. Doing other stages which was super cool. What I loved and if you know me is talks on generative AI which.

Of those, there were many. And even here in this image, and I don’t know if I can do it, Chris Anderson from Ted Conferences. So who would, you know, developed this wonderful regimented approach to Ted talks and making them valuable? He was using Dolly. To illustrate stories and.

Concepts for his talk. I thought that was. Were fascinating and a lot of content. Now, as someone who spends a lot of time looking at this stuff, it’s pretty surface level and a. Lot of exploratory things, but overall still valuable. And I think just another signal that this is.

A new world that we’re heading into and when? A lot of people say, I would say venture capitals who have been successful ask, you know, where are you spending your time? Where you getting all these things? That was one of the space large language models, generative AI. A lot of talk.

About this so definitely while we started to see it in search volume, people are searching for it. It’s it’s in the mind. Of people who are very. You know, driving trends and adoption within technology who are? Have definitely have their eyes on this and are paying.

Attention and now sharing that with other people, I will say a couple cool things were the focus on climate change in sort of ESG and eco friendly companies and all of that and I. Was, you know, super happy to see some. Of that. So there you go. A future of AI image generator generation is the crater A. Couple of talks. That we’re sort of pushing back that.

You know the. Crater. You know, I guess or this conflict between crater and. AI generation where do we live? Our creators.

Done all these things so. That was super. Fascinating. Now I could talk. Great. Great to meet you too. Elia. Day two. This is. Yeah. As a source said, the interest rate started, so the recession talks.

Were in full force here today. Overall, I think paired with that, there was lots. Of conversations on. Sort of crypto. NFTS Web three but then with that.

A lot of. Skepticism, obviously. The market not doing so well. And these sort of. Risky assets.

And growth, whatever this class is of, of items really taking. A hit. And so lots of skepticism I personally felt. And maybe that’s some bias for me, for my own skepticism. But overall, definitely.

Sort of. Felt that throughout. The talks and conference. There more. Talks.

Continued social impact. ESG transparency. Ethics and privacy. And so. While everyone’s.

Super excited and hyped about the technology at Web Summit. A lot of this whole layer. Or current around these items which are obviously. Super important and while we you. Know fly forward.

With innovation, people who are trying to help make sure that that innovation is pointed. In the right direction and doing the right thing. So that was definitely what stuck out to me. And then the final day, I know. I’m breezing.

Through this. But I’m Howard. He had he minutes and I appreciated. If you stuck with. Me so far, it’s web summit day three. One of the things.

That I loved hearing was about the. Rise of multimodal artificial intelligence. So you know. Same thing with generative AI, but also the understanding of audio, understanding of video, understanding of text, understanding of language, preparing all those things together. To create really.

Incredible technology. Couple friends who Techstars Axel. Amazing job on stage doing a little talk. That then developed into late night. So the one thing I’ll touch on is.

That that the. Night Summit events were super fun, I posted. I think I had a couple of those. One of them was at Unicorn Factory, which was. Just a crazy.

Crazy place. And then another one is it was on Pink St in Portugal. And so I think those are definitely super interesting like sort of taking you from the conference in the event and and then bring you even away from it to historical impressive, beautiful places. To then meet with people in these. People it was.

Packed ton of fun music lights. Turned into more of the party. Atmosphere that then you see I think in this image. I was dancing. Here and I needed to. I needed to.

I needed to. Take my sweater off because I was getting a little hot and realized that the tech stars face on there. So I hope I’ve represented you well, tech stars. I love you. Thank you for that. And then on the last.

Day after a couple sort of rainy days. It was a very beautiful day, so. A lot of people lounging out, definitely. You know less. People attending the event and people had maybe stayed up the night.

Before and had a lot of fun. But. Overall, still a huge crowd with 70. 1000 people on that last day. Lot of why Combinator it was the pitch. Sort of final. So we have Summit does the pitch finals in that as a company called Theno one, which was a Y Combinator backed company.

And was. Product of the day, which then sort of auto generates API documentation using the systems that you’re developing and does. It in real time using. NLP and generative AI. Super fascinating.

Overall, really like the product. They did a great job pitching. There was some great. Companies in it. They were the winner.

Of that, so that final pitch took place on the on. The. Third day there. That sort of taking a look at and was. I think.

They deserved. To win in that regards. Couple other ones about gut Biome and. Some water, some really. Good companies.

In that so overall super inspiring. Thing. And I’m glad that I got to go. Definitely a lot of excitement, enthusiasm, inspiration. I would say a couple sort.

Of overall. Sort of notes was definitely more. Worthwhile if you are exhibiting I. Think in this. Regards. You know the we we had a couple of issues with visas and we didn’t know if we’re going to go, we’re going.

To the alpha program. And so we sort of backed out of that just because. We weren’t sure we’re gonna make it. And that left you sort of being an attendee and walking around and talking to people. And I think that’s OK, but not as valuable as actually getting a stand. So if you can or you’re in this, go get.

That it’s worth it. Yeah. There’s. A bit of a fee. But for a. Day you get a nice spot to stand. You get a lot of perks throughout the.

Conference and you get to talk and meet. A lot of people there’s. Lots of free food, lots of drinks that are fun that. You know that. The the side events that were.

Outside. Of the actual sort of official night set ones. Were really great. And everyone sort of pitching each other and trying to get each other to go to events and I. Think, you know, overall I like. The accessibility of content that Web summit did as well too. So you’ve got you know, the actual streams here you can check out. Looks like they are uploading someones more into clips and some of them are actually getting views. And there’s some, you know.

First Lady of. Ukraine and some really amazing. Sort of content. There and overall you know I’m. Super, you know, happy with the event. I I was lucky enough to go a couple days in advance, a couple days after, and spend some.

Time cruising through Portugal. And doing a. Lot of sort. Of touristy fun things that. Were there but the the work part was. Definitely. I think you know from a personal reflection I should have been a little more.

Aggressive or targeted, I talked to one person who literally. Spent the entire time, say outside the investor lounge. Got kicked out of that. Lounges, you know, but pitched 50 investors during that time, got a bunch of follow up calls. I think there was a lot of amazing hustling and stuff that I maybe wasn’t as good as what I had hoped at in the time. And so lots of lessons learned there. I think, you know, I can do better in it. It’s just that sometimes a a tough thing to do.

At the moment and you realize you got to push through, you got to. Be bold. You got to be strong, you got to be confident. You got to do the things that. You want to do to or you need to do to accomplish what your.

What your goals are and I would. Say, even setting some goals in. Advance are super, super important to make any conference, whether it’s with. Someone or not good at all. Couple things. I would say the.

Web summit Canada. Group. This was a. Picture that we were in, I think. Actually I don’t know if this is the same one. Realizing it now as I look at it. But there was.

A Canadian one that we did. I was looking for the damn image. I don’t think this is it. Actually, I’m laughing as I. Put it up. Basically, there was a great Canadian presence.

There that allowed us to. Sort of network and connect and then find opportunities to meet other people and stuff. And I think that’s great. There’s a lot. Of times, say.

You’re coming. From the United States or whatever country you’re coming. From there’s a bunch of people come from those countries who. Can connect. We were on WhatsApp group, we were. Talking we’re communicating that made the.

Event a lot more traversable. Understandable, and allowed us to then get the fun. Events or opportunities or things that we might not have gotten if we were. Not part of it, so I think. We got lots.

There, I got lots of links for you as always. I don’t know if I’ll be returning next year, but I enjoy the experience and filled with memories a lot. Of great speakers, really well organized the. Application was great, a lot of good stuff from it and I. Definitely learned a lot and have a lot of inspiration and for me now it’s back to work. Did you? If you?

Went to web summit. Love to hear what you think. Or if you’re. Going to send me a note, let me know do my best to sell, you know, send any resources or anything my your way thank. You for checking this out.

And I I. Look forward. To connecting soon. I’m glad to be back. Glad to be making videos. Love you all. Hope you have a wonderful rest of day. Bye bye.