Tom Peruzzi's thoughts on digital, innovation, IT and operations

I was on websummit and pioneers festival in 2014 and did some comparison about those 2 last year. Even if I truly considered not going there again it somehow happened, that’s my personal review of summit2015:

• around 30k people is a lot, infrastructure was bad last year and didn’t become better over the year
• a mobile app enforcing social interaction is a good idea but doing so the wifi should be really good
  • wifi was as bad as 2014
  • no wifi coverage beween buildings and in the food court area
• more summits than ever
• an angel summit the day before
• the concept of allowing startups to show their portfolio/potential for one day stayd the same
• what really drove me crazy was the fact that you had to pay a 20 Euro extra for food, which didn’t include a desert at day 1 (changed the second day). Still, a yogurt, a bottle of water and an original Irsish Hot-Dog for 20 Euros is way too much.

The first impression was fully blown away. There was simply no way to go through an area with an Investor badge without having seen minimum 5 business cases 🙂 They really liked to engage, saying no to e-commerce didn’t stop them showing their hyper-cool shop.

Interaction at all levels. As meeting possibilities were as rare as last year people met all over the place, you could listen to business-case internals, numbers and pitching strategies even on the restroom. Summits as far as I have seen attracted a huge amount of people, some where as fulll as last time or even worse. The better/ the more known the speaker, the faster you had to get in.

My first impression after day1 was a smart “F*ck”, I really considered not going there the second day. My final thought after 2 1/2 days is:

• If you are a young startup still in finding your mode go there, talk to as many as you can
• If you are a startup, be there for one day at a mini-booth, take enough food and beverage with you, you don’t have any time to go off
• If you are a Product Manager, VC, Angel: use it for trend scouting, really useful and much better than google queries

Will I be there next year in Lissabon? Potentially yes, as a few of the companies I advise potentially will have their booth for one day. And yes, for trendscouting in 2016.

Btw: have a look what Felicity wrote about the event, really worth reading!