NOV 30—DEC 1, HELSINKI
THE WORLD'S LEADING
STARTUP EVENT
Connecting founders with what and whom they need while building a new, inclusive, and more purposeful culture of entrepreneurship.
HELSINKI, FINLAND
SLUSH 2023 COMING NOV 30—DEC 1.
5,000 startup founders and operators.
3,000 investors.
300 media representatives.
A gathering of 13,000 curious minds at the Helsinki Expo and Convention Center.
What happens at Slush?
Slush brings the global startup ecosystem under one roof. In cold, dark November, a curated group of speakers from across the globe, showcases, and unique networking opportunities are all in Helsinki.
With hundreds of Side Events happening across the city throughout the Slush Week, the fun flows out of Messukeskus and into the streets.
Matchmaking
4,600 startup founders or operators and 2,600 investors are joining us at Slush this year. Make the most of this crowd by using our Matchmaking Tool – scroll and filter through attendees, book meetings, and chat.
We have a separate Meeting Area at the venue with dedicated tables that can be reserved when booking through our tool.
10,829 meetings were booked through the Matchmaking Tool in 2021. Imagine.
Side Events
Originally a two-day event, Slush has now become an entire week of exhilarating program around the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. You can expect to see Side Events popping up across the city from Monday to Friday (Nov 27 to Dec 1, 2023), with most of the action happening towards the end of the week.
In addition to the events organized by Slush, including our Official Slush Side Events, there is a wealth of industry and theme-specific gatherings all adding up to the Slush experience.
You can now see the kinds of Side Events we had at Slush 2022 down below.
SIDE EVENTS
Day 0 Events
Founders Day
An exclusive side event offering startup founders hands-on mentoring and advice, as well as meaningful encounters with peers, who are most likely going through similar struggles. You can find out more information about Founders Day here.
Investor Day
The event for all you investors coming to Slush. At Investor Day, you can dive into the most investor-focused stage program Slush has ever seen and join your peers in engaging roundtable discussions, one-on-one meetings, and casual networking. Read more here.
Media Day
An event exclusive to journalists attending Slush. Media Day will give you a sneak peek at the upcoming event days, story tips, highlights from our program, and meaningful encounters with peers. Read more here.
SPEAKERS at Slush
A snippet of who’s taken the stage
John Collison
John Collison is the President and Co-founder of Stripe, the software company that is expanding internet commerce by making it easy to process transactions from anywhere. John and his brother Patrick Collison started Stripe in 2010 while John was studying physics at Harvard. Their goal was to make accepting payments online simpler and more inclusive, after learning firsthand how difficult it was. Today, the 1500-person (and growing) Stripe team powers online businesses around the world.
About Stripe
Founded: 2010 | HQ: United States | Funding: €89B | Industry: Financial Services
Renate Nyborg
Renate Nyborg is CEO at Tinder. With over 15 years experience building mobile and subscription businesses, Renate joined Tinder in 2020 to lead its European operations. Now Renate is the first female CEO at Tinder.
Renate joined Tinder from Headspace, where she built and led its first international product and marketing team. She previously spent four years at Apple, where she led the App Store subscription business in Europe. Renate is also the founder of Pleo, a human-centric app design studio, and was the first-ever Global Director of Mobile at Edelman.
Renate is of Norwegian and Dutch origin and has worked in London, Silicon Valley, Stockholm, Paris, and Switzerland. She is a Philosophy graduate from the University of Cambridge. Renate currently lives in Europe with her husband, whom she met on Tinder and her three stepkids. She loves food, her piano, and music, and can often be found hiking or Nordic skiing around the Alps.
About Tinder
Founded: 2012 | HQ: United States | Funding: €682M | Industry: Social Media
Ev Williams
Ev is co-founder of Blogger, Twitter, and Medium. For the last twenty years, he has helped shape the modern internet.
Starting in January 1999, Ev co-founded Pyra Labs, which created the blog-publishing service Blogger (and coined the term “blogger”) and was acquired by Google in early 2003. He then co-founded Odeo and Obvious Corp, which gave birth to Twitter in 2006. Ev was Twitter’s co-founder, lead investor, and former CEO.
In 2011, Ev, along with Biz Stone and Jason Goldman, restarted Obvious Corp and began a mix of start-up investing and incubation. His investments have included Beyond Meat (IPO May 2019), Blue Bottle Coffee (acquired by Nestle), and others. Ev co-founded Obvious Ventures in 2014 with James Joaquin and Vishal Vasishth.
Ev started Medium, in 2012 and served as CEO until 2022. He is currently the Chairman of Medium.
Ev grew up on a farm in Clarks, Nebraska.
About Obvious Ventures
Founded: 2014 | HQ: United States | Stage: Seed-Growth
Mar Hershenson
Mar is Pear’s Founding Managing Partner. As Pear’s co-founder and managing partner, Mar brings operational and technical expertise to the investment team.
After earning a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, Mar developed a groundbreaking technique of optimizing the design of analog semiconductors. Since then, she has accrued over 13 years of founder experience, co-founding three startups in mobile/ecommerce, enterprise software and semiconductor industries and has registered 14 separate patents.
Mar is based in the Bay Area and holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. She has been recognized by MIT Technology Review as a Top Innovator Under 35, named a Champion of Innovation by Fast Company, awarded the Digital Automation Conference’s Marie R. Pistil Achievement Award, and currently #29 on the Forbes Midas List.
About Pear VC
Founded: 2013 | HQ: United States | Stage: Seed-Growth
Emmett Shear
Emmett Shear is the CEO and Co-Founder of Twitch, an interactive live streaming service for content spanning gaming, entertainment, sports, music, and more. At any given moment, on average, more than 2.5 million people come together from all over the globe to interact around this distinct form of entertainment that is created by the shared interactions of millions.
Prior to launching Twitch in 2011, Mr. Shear co-founded live streaming service Justin.tv in 2007. He is also a part-time partner at venture capital firm Y Combinator where he advises startups on product and strategy. Mr. Shear graduated from Yale University in 2005 with a degree in Computer Science.
About Twitch
Founded: 2011 | HQ: US | Industry: Streaming
Sanna Marin
Sanna Marin is Prime Minister of Finland, appointed in December 2019. Sanna is the third female Prime Minister of Finland and the youngest prime minister in Finland’s history. Sanna will be taking the Slush stage with Eerika Savolainen, CEO of Slush.
Since 2006, Sanna has been actively engaged in politics. Sanna was elected to Parliament for her first run in 2015 and in August 2020, Sanna was elected as Chair of the Social Democratic Party. Previously, Sanna also served as Minister of Transport and Communications in Rinne Government. She is a member of the Tampere city council, which she chaired from 2013–2017.
Sanna lives in Tampere and Helsinki with her husband and their daughter. She holds a Master’s degree in Administration Sciences from the University of Tampere.
Daniel Ek
Daniel Ek is the Chairman and CEO of Spotify, where he sets the company’s overall vision. Daniel oversees Spotify’s business and product strategies and is responsible for building a progressive, forward looking global organization. Daniel was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden where he founded Spotify in 2006.
About Spotify
Founded: 2006 | HQ: Sweden | Funding: €1.96B | Industry: Audio Streaming & Media Services
Amrapali Gan
Amprapali Gan is CEO of OnlyFans. She oversees OnlyFans’ mission to revolutionize creator and fan connections by building the world’s safest social media platform where creators can maximize control over and monetize their content. Before taking over as CEO, Gan served as Chief Marketing and Communications Officer as OnlyFans experienced exponential growth. Gan is focused on leading OnlyFans and providing unparalleled opportunities for its community.
Gan’s background is with rapid growth companies and fast-moving consumer industries. She was Head of Brand Communications with unicorn Quest Nutrition, and worked for Red Bull Media House. More recently, she helped launch the first cannabis restaurant in the US as Vice President of Marketing.
She currently resides in Miami with her rescue dog, Fox.
About OnlyFans
Founded: 2016 | HQ: United Kingdom | Funding: – | Industry: Social Media
Andrey Khusid
Andrey is Founder and CEO of Miro, the world’s most popular visual collaboration platform, funded by leading investors like Accel, Iconiq and others. Miro has more than 1400 employees in 11 offices across the globe, over 30 million registered whiteboarding fans. It is used by 99% of Fortune 100 companies for brainstorming & ideation, research & design, agile ceremonies and much more.
Prior to Miro, Andrey was Founder of Vitamin Group, an award-winning creative agency.
About Miro
Founded: 2011 | HQ: United States | Funding: $476M | Industry: Enterprise Software
Kate Ryder
Kate Ryder is Founder and CEO of Maven, the largest virtual clinic for women’s and family health. Maven offers virtual care and services across fertility, maternity, and pediatrics, and operates the largest women’s and family health telehealth network globally. With Maven, employers and health plans can see improved maternal outcomes, lower costs, and attract and retain more parents in the workforce. Maven has raised more than $200 million in capital from investors, including Sequoia Capital, Oak HC/FT, Dragoneer Investment Group, and Lux Capital.
Kate founded Maven in 2014, reimagining healthcare for women and families from the ground up after seeing first hand how the lack of access to care impacted those starting a family and returning to work as new parents. Prior to founding Maven, Kate worked in venture capital and as a journalist, writing for The Economist from Southeast Asia, New York and London and for The New Yorker. In 2009, she worked with former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, helping him write his memoirs about the financial crisis.
Kate has been named to Fortune’s 40 Under 40 and to Fast Company’s “Most Creative People.” Kate received her B.A. from the University of Michigan and her MSc from the London School of Economics. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and three children.
About Maven Clinic
Founded: 2014 | HQ: United States | Funding: $287m | Industry: Healthcare
Max Levchin
Max Levchin is Founder and CEO of Affirm, a financial services technology company, co-founder and Chairman of Glow, and co-founder and general partner at SciFi VC. All three companies were created and launched from his innovation lab, HVF. Max is a serial entrepreneur, computer scientist, philanthropist and active investor in more than 100 startups.
Max was one of the original co-founders of PayPal, where he served as Chief Technology Officer until its acquisition by eBay in 2002. In 2004, he founded Slide, which he sold to Google in 2010. Also in 2004, he helped start Yelp, where he was the first investor and Chairman of the Board from 2004 until 2015. He has served on several boards including Yahoo!, Yelp and Evernote.
About Affirm
Founded: 2012 | HQ: United States | Funding: IPO | Industry: Fintech
Edith Harbaugh
Edith Harbaugh is Co-founder and CEO of LaunchDarkly, the leading feature management platform. LaunchDarkly serves 2,000+ global customers like IBM, Atlassian, and Intuit.
Edith has more than 15 years of experience in engineering, product, and marketing with both consumer and enterprise startups, including TripIt and Concur. She is co-host of “To Be Continuous”, a podcast on software trends.
She holds two patents in deployment. Edith earned a B.S. in Engineering from Harvey Mudd College.
About LaunchDarkly
Founded: 2014 | HQ: United States | Funding: $330m | Industry: Software
Doug Leone
Doug Leone is Partner at Sequoia Capital. He focuses on software investments aimed at the enterprise market. He is a Director of ActionIQ, Cyera, Island, Nubank, strongDM, Trade Republic, and Wiz. Doug was involved with Sequoia’s investments in numerous companies including Aruba (ARUN), Hyperion/Arbor Software (HYSL), Infinity International (SDS), International Network Services (ALU), Medallia (MDLA), MedExpress, Netezza (NZ), Plangrid (ADSK), Rackspace (RAX), RingCentral (RNG), and ServiceNow (NOW).
Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 1988, Doug held sales and sales management positions at Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Prime Computer. Doug holds a BS in mechanical engineering from Cornell University, an MS in industrial engineering from Columbia University and an MS in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
About Sequoia
Founded: 1972 | HQ: United States | Stage: Seed-Growth
Julianna Lamb
Julianna Lamb is the Co-Founder and CTO of Stytch. Stytch is the platform for user authentication. Prior to founding Stytch, Julianna was a software engineer at Plaid and Strava and a product manager at Very Good Security.
Julianna and her co-founder Reed McGinley-Stempel both worked on fraud and authentication at Plaid. They were frustrated with the tools out there for developers when it came to building user authentication. To solve this, they built Stytch, a developer-first platform that focuses on passwordless authentication to help companies elevate both their security and user experience.
Julianna graduated from Standford University with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with History as a minor.
About Stytch
Founded: 2020 | HQ: United States | Funding: $126m | Industry: Enterprise software
Tony Fadell
Tony is Principal at Future Shape, an investment and advisory firm coaching deep tech startups. Currently, Future Shape is coaching over 200+ startups innovating game-changing technologies.
Tony is an active investor and entrepreneur with a 30+ year history of founding companies and designing products that profoundly improve people’s lives.
He is the founder and former CEO of Nest, the company that pioneered the “Internet of Things.” Tony was the SVP of Apple’s iPod Division and led the team that created the first 18 generations of the iPod and the first three generations of the iPhone. Throughout his career Tony has authored more than 300 patents. In May 2016, TIME named the Nest Learning Thermostat, the iPod and the iPhone as three of the “50 Most Influential Gadgets of All Time.”
About Future Shape
Founded: 2014 | HQ: France | Stage: Series A–Series B
Nadia Singer
Nadia Singer is Chief People Officer at Figma, where she leads the people and talent teams.
Before joining Figma, she led recruiting for the Pete Buttigieg 2020 campaign. Prior to that she worked in venture capital and at Quora.
About Figma
Founded: 2012 | HQ: United States | Funding: $333M | Industry: Enterprise Software
Cameron Adams
Cameron Adams is Chief Product Officer and Co-founder of Canva, an online design and publishing tool which makes graphic design simple for everyone.
Since launching in 2013, Canva has grown to over 15 million users across 190 countries, with more than 1 billion designs created – that’s over 33 designs per second! Today Canva is growing from strength to strength, with over 600 team members working together on a mission to empower everyone to create beautiful designs.
Cameron is responsible for heading up the design and product teams, as well as playing a key role on future product directions and innovations.
Prior to joining Canva, Cameron ran his own successful design consultancy, before joining Google, where he found himself working closely with Lars and Jens Rasmussen (co-founders of Google Maps) to realise the design vision for Google Wave.
He then moved on to build email startup Fluent, before meeting Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht and deciding to bring Canva to the world.
With a strong design background, Cameron has also authored five books on web design and regularly speaks at conferences around the globe.
In his spare time, Cameron enjoys spending time with his two kids, playing music or DJing. And you’re also likely to find him relaxing with a nice cup of hot chocolate!
About Canva
Founded: 2012 | HQ: Australia | Valuation: $40B
Nikolay Storonsky
Nik is the Co-founder and CEO of Revolut. The mission of Revolut is to transform the way we spend and transfer money abroad. Launched in 2015, Revolut is one of the Europe’s highest ever valued tech companies.
Since its inception, Nik has put Revolut on the path to becoming the world’s first truly global bank, changing the way we do all things money. Prior to launching Revolut, Nik worked as an equity trader.
About Revolut
Founded: 2015 | HQ: United Kingdom | Funding: $1.7bn | Industry: Fintech
April Koh
April Koh is Co-founder and CEO of Spring Health, a comprehensive mental health benefits platform for employers.
April has received honors from the American Psychiatric Association and has been featured in numerous news outlets such as Forbes 30 under 30. She is also a Yale Entrepreneurial Institute Fellow.
About Spring Health
Founded: 2016 | HQ: United States | Funding: €269M | Industry: Health
Sebastian Siemiatkowski
In 2005, Sebastian Siemiatkowski co-founded Klarna in order to provide safe and smooth online payments. He currently serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Over the past decade, he has overseen the company’s rapid growth across Europe and North America. Klarna is a now fully licensed bank with over 60mn consumers, 130,000 retail partners and 2500 employees. Sebastian has received multiple awards for his leadership and holds a master’s degree from the Stockholm School of Economics.
About Klarna
Founded: 2005 | HQ: Sweden | Funding: €3.47B | Industry: Fintech
Max Rhodes
Max is Co-founder and CEO of Faire. As a former small business owner, Max is passionate about the positive impact of local commerce on society, and has made it his mission to help independent retailers and brands build thriving businesses and grow stronger communities.
Prior to co-founding Faire, Max was Founding Member at Square Capital and Early Product Lead at Square, where he worked on Cash App, a product that helped more than 230,000 merchants access capital to grow their businesses.
Max holds a BA in history from Yale.
About Faire
Founded: 2017 | HQ: United States | Funding: $1.5bn | Industry: E-Commerce
Cal Henderson
Cal Henderson is the co-founder and CTO of Slack. He led the technical development of Flickr from its founding, pioneered the use of APIs, and created the basis for oAuth and oEmbed, now used by YouTube, Twitter, and may others. Cal has a Computer Science degree from the University of Central England.
About Slack
Launched: 2013 | HQ: United States | Funding: €1.31B | Industry: Business Communication
Al Gore
Former Vice President Al Gore is a co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management. He is a senior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and a member of Apple Inc.’s board of directors. Gore is also chairman of The Climate Reality Project, a non-profit organization devoted to solving the climate crisis.
Gore was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976, 1978, 1980, and 1982 and to the U.S. Senate in 1984 and 1990. He was inaugurated as the 45th vice president of the United States on January 20, 1993, and served eight years.
He is the author of the best-sellers Earth in the Balance, An Inconvenient Truth, The Assault on Reason, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, and, most recently, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change.
He is the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and a new film premiering in July 2017, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. Gore is the co-recipient, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, for “informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change”.
Julia Hartz
As Co-Founder and CEO of Eventbrite, Julia Hartz has helped drive the company from an innovative ticketing solution to a comprehensive event technology platform that today powers millions of events around the world. Since the company launched operations in 2006, Eventbrite has generated more than $10 billion in gross ticket sales.
Under Julia’s leadership, company culture and workplace performance has remained an integral part of Eventbrite, which now boasts over 1,000 employees in 11 countries across the globe. Eventbrite has been recognized multiple times on Fortune’s Best Workplaces lists, including the Bay Area (2017 and 2018), Women, and Millennials and was also named a best company to work for in San Francisco by the San Francisco Business Times the past nine years running. In the years since founding Eventbrite, Julia has been honored as one of Fortune’s 40 Under 40 business leaders (2015 & 2017), Inc.’s 35 under 35 (2014), Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs (2013), and has been profiled for her leadership and impact in top publications around the world.
Julia landed in Silicon Valley via Hollywood where she began her career as a development executive at MTV and FX Networks. In today’s digital age, Julia believes that real-life, human experiences lead to individual happiness and strong global communities. This belief continues to fuel her passion while running Eventbrite today.
About Eventbrite
Founded: 2006 | HQ: United States | Funding: €521 8M | Industry: Event Management
Justin Rosenstein
Justin Rosenstein is the co-founder of Asana, the fast-growing work tracking app for teams. Asana’s mission is to help humanity thrive by enabling all teams to work together effortlessly. He’s also a featured author in Wavelength, an online publication for teams who aspire to do great things together—through a mindful, purposeful approach.
Justin has driven the development of products that billions of people use daily.
At Facebook, he co-invented features such as the Like Button and Facebook Pages. At Google, he managed several products in the communication/collaboration division including Google Drive, and helped create GChat. At Asana, he’s helped build one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies, most recently valued at $900M in Series D funding led by Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management.
Justin majored in Math and got part way through a Master’s in Computer Science at Stanford. He is a devoted student of yoga, meditation, and cats.
About Asana
Founded: 2008 | HQ: United States | Funding: €428M | Industry: Software
Jessica Schultz
Jessica is Partner at Northzone and Co-founder of HelloFresh. At Northzone her main focus is DTC and consumer internet. Her portfolio includes Red Points, Na-Kd, Matsmart, Klarna, Outfittery, Flink and Fyndiq.
Prior to joining Northzone, Jessica co-founded and was CMO of market-leading meal-kit service HelloFresh, spearheading the global marketing operations.
She started her career in consulting at LEK, and holds an MSc, Economics and Business from the Stockholm School of Economics.
About Northzone
Founded: 1996 | HQ: United Kingdom | Stage: Seed-Series B
Why Attend?
See the audience-specific opportunities below.
You spoke, we listened
Matchmaking Tool ’22
Last year, we decided to fix Matchmaking at Slush and set the world’s best meeting experience as our North Star goal. Here we present you with the best Matchmaking Tool we’ve ever built.
At Slush, you can use our Matchmaking Tool to build your funding round, discover the investment no one is looking at yet, and find leads, customers, users, advisors, and mentors.
To Matchmaking
Now available on App Store and Google Play
Download Slush App
As wandering around the event venue by holding your laptop in your hands would be inconvenient at the very least, we created the Slush App.
It grants you access to all important information ranging from Side Events to the Matchmaking Tool and from practicalities to stage program. You can also create your personalized agenda on the app.
Check out the Slush App to prepare for Slush 2023.
Web3
Our Slush 2022 stages featured the brightest minds in Web3 today, from MoonPay and Sorare to Chainalysis and Blockchain.com.
Open Protocol, our Official Web3 Side Event, brought together 300 leading Web3 actors for networking, panels, and an electrifying by-insiders-for-insiders atmosphere.
What’s more, every Slush 2022 ticket holder had the opportunity to mint their own NFT.
Read more about Web3 at Slush
WHO’S AT SLUSH?
INVESTORS
MAIN PARTNERS
KEY PARTNERS
