Slush (event)


Slush is the world's leading startup and tech event. Slush facilitates meetings between the founders of startups and investors such as venture capitalists, accomplished with events such as matchmaking and pitching competitions. Slush aims to build a worldwide startup community. The event is held annually, in late fall, in Helsinki, Finland. In 2019, Slush gathered 25,000 attendees, with over 3,500 startups, 2,000 investors and 600 journalists coming in from over a hundred countries to participate together in this global networking festival.
Since 2015, Slush also run events throughout the world under Slush Tokyo, Slush Shanghai and Slush Small Talks events.
In 2019, Slush started producing a startup media called Soaked by Slush and running its own entrepreneurial education program, Slush Academy.
The company's turnover is more than ten million euros.

History

The founders of Slush were Peter Vesterbacka, then working at Rovio with Angry Birds, together with Timo Airisto, a lawyer. In 2011, Miki Kuusi became the CEO, and together with Atte Hujanen and Jenni Kääriäinen organized the event at Kaapelitehdas, with 1500 attendees. The event was staffed mainly by student volunteers from Aaltoes of Aalto University.

2019

Slush 2019 was organised on November 21-22 and it attracted 25,000 attendees, including 3,500 startups and 2,000 investors, to Helsinki. The stage program showcased 200 speakers, including the legendary venture capitalist Michael Moritz and Stripe Co-founder John Collison.

2018

2018 Slush event was organised December 4-5, in Helsinki, Messukeskus. The event had over 20,000 visitors. Speakers included Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon, Justin Rosenstein, Co-founder and Head of Product at Asana and Julia Hartz, CEO of Eventbrite. It was stated, that over 16,000 meetings took place in Slush 2018 event.

2017

The 2017 event was organized between November 30–December 1, 2017 in Helsinki, Finland. 20,000 attendees gathered together, including 2,600 startups, 1,500 investors, and 600 journalists from over 130 countries. Speakers included Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States, Martin Lau, President of Tencent, Ilkka Paananen, co-founder & CEO of Supercell and Daniel Ek, co-founder of Spotify.
Hottest industry trends included data analytics and artificial intelligence. In 2017, more than 7000 "matchmaking" meetings had been set-up between founders and investors.

2016

Over 17,500 people from 130 countries, including 2,336 startups, 1,146 venture capitalists and investors, and 630 journalists gathered together at Slush 2016, on November, 30 – December, 1. The speaker list had names like Chris Sacca, Founder & Chairman at Lowercase Capital, Steve Jurvetson, managing director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Joel Spolsky, CEO & Co-Founder at Stack Overflow, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Founder & CEO of Klarna and Danae Ringelmann, Co-founder of Indiegogo, on it.

2015

In 2015, Slush was organized on November 11–12 in the Helsinki Exhibition and Convention Centre. Key speakers included Caterina Fake, Co-founder of Flickr & Hunch, Martti Ahtisaari, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Niklas Zennström, Co-founder of Skype & Atomico, and Ilkka Paananen, Founder & CEO of Supercell. Slush was also awarded The Internationalisation Award of the President of the Republic in December 2015.

2014

In 2014, Slush moved from the Cable Factory to the Helsinki Exhibition and Convention Centre. The event, again, doubled its size from the previous year with 14,000 attendees. Out of the attendees, more than 700 were investors. The event was attended by journalists from 45 different countries. Speakers included Wang Yang, Vice Premier of China, Martin Lorentzon, founder of Spotify, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Philharmonic Orchestra in London, and Leland Melvin, an American engineer and NASA astronaut. In 2014, Nokia also launched its Nokia N1 7.9" tablet at the main stage of Slush.

2013

The 2013 event was attended by 7,000 people, including 1,200 startups and 120 VC firms, and it was featured in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Speakers included Taizo Son, Founder and CEO of Mistletoe, Jian Wang, Chairman of Technology Steering Committee of Alibaba Group, Niklas Zennström, founder of Skype and Atomico, and Taavet Hinrikus, and Co-founder of Transferwise.

2008

Founded by Helene Auramo, Kai Lemmetty, Ville Vesterinen and Peter Vesterbacka. First event was held in Korjaamo with two stages, one for business and one for technology.