This week saw the return of the annual Dublin Web Summit. Now in it's fourth year, the Web Summit has become one of the most important events in the international Tech calendar. The brainchild of young Irish entrepreneur, Paddy Cosgrave, this year's Submmit has had over 10,000 delegates from more than 97 countries in attendance. Described by Cosgrave as a "dating event between early-stage tech entrepreneurs, investors and large industry players, all looking for opportunities to work together". Part of the main draw of the event is, the very impressive speaker lineup. This year's lineup is the strongest to date with presentations and talks from Tech Industry titans such as:
•Elon Musk - Tesla, SpaceX, Solar City and Founder of PayPal.
•Drew Huston - CEO of DropBox
•Tim Armstrong - CEO AOL
•Phil Libin - CEO Evernote
•Jimmy Myman - CEO The Huffington Post
•Kevin Rose - Partner Google Ventures
•Eric Wahlforss - Founder Soundcloud
In total the event had over 60 speakers discussing a range of topics from entrepreneurship, venture capital, the future of the web and technology leadership. To coincide with the event, trading on the NASDAQ was opened live on the main stage, by Irish Prime Minister, Enda Kenny and NASDAQ's executive vice president Bruce Aust. Also a number of companies used the event to announce European expansion plans with high number of jobs committed to Irish shores.
But one thing that makes this event really special is, the natural mingling that is happening between very early stage tech CEO's sharing ideas on how they propose to make their visions a reality. Corridors are packed with potential investors receiving full-on pitches for seed funding by opportunistic promoters. Rumors a rife about multi-million Dollar funding deals sealed everywhere.
It's really hard to believe that just three years ago, the first Dublin Web Summit had only 500 delegates made up mainly of tech heads. This year's event has been referred to as "Davos for Nerds" - and is estimated to be worth about 25 million dollars for the Irish economy with spin-off events happening allover the city.
One thing is for sure The Dublin Web Summit is on an amazing trajectory and I really believe it will be the premier event in tech startups of the future.