Think of Lisbon and no doubt it’ll conjure images of explorers setting sail in centuries past across the ocean, the hills that climb across the city, pastel de nata and salted cod… Of course, there is much to Lisbon which cannot be summed in a sentence of “highlights”. In recent years, Lisbon has also been the host of the Web Summit, billed as the world biggest event for tech startups. This week, I attended the event for the first time.
The first thing to strike you, is the sheer scale of the event. Tens of thousands of people attend the event and it can be somewhat dizzying at times. The event is both an exhibition and a collection of presentations, talks and interviews. Attendees range from folks working in startups, to larger firms, investors and also well known musicians and footballers. Turnleaf Analytics exhibited as part of the Beta program for tech startups, with myself and Joel Scanlon presenting our product to attendees, namely economic forecasting using machine learning and alternative data. I’d like to thank everyone who visited our stand and gave us feedback on our product. The event covers a multitude of different verticals ranging from fintech (the domain of Turnleaf Analytics) to travel to health and so on. It was impressive to see the multitude of startups exhibiting across all these different domains. Some previous startup exhibitors have gone on to become very successful, such as Revolut.
In this article, I’ll try to write about a few of my takeaways from the event, and the various talks I went to at the event. Whilst it’s impossible to be fully comprehensive given the scale of the event, I hope it’ll still give an impression about the event.
The Turnleaf Analytics team at Web Summit, myself and Joel Scanlon
Pharrell Williams Interviewed by Frank Cooper
I also managed to attend a few of the discussions during the week. Amongst one of the highlights was an interview of Pharrell Williams by Frank Cooper from Visa on the opening night. The interview touched upon how Williams got into music. Cooper asked if there was some origin story to Williams’ success. Williams replied that he’d wish that he wished there was an origin story. He was kid filled with imagination. He came from a background where he couldn’t afford much. He daydreamed and sketched. His imagination for music worked out, but he didn’t know he’d have a career in music. His town Virginia Beach had no music industry. Williams continued “All of a sudden a producer comes and parks his studio next to my school… had a talent show and got discovered.. wished I had a responsible story”. He was “deluded by ambition, and loved music”. He later continued on this topic, noting that strong faith, a tablespoon of delusion helps you stay focused, and hear it (your goal). “When you don’t have that (delusion), you don’t have conviction” he added. In a sense, it’s difficult to disagree. The path of least resistance is not to rock the boat (if you’ll excuse the pun). Trying something different in your career, whether it’s creating a startup, changing career path totally, where in finance speak the delta might be lower, but the subsequent reward greater is not the common path.
Pharrell Williams interviewed by Frank Cooper, Visa
Country strategies for startups
If we think of many of the largest companies in the world, many of them came to fruition over the past 30 years, such as Google, Meta, Nvidia, Tesla etc. What is clear is that the many of these companies are US companies, which have spread globally, as opposed to the other way round. Whilst this article is too short to delve into this topic, perhaps it’s not surprising that other countries see startups as an opportunity for economic growth in their own countries. Indeed, at the event, there were several company specific stands, promoting startups from their home country, including Qatar, Germany, Brazil and many others. On the subject of Qatar, there was a panel on startups in Qatar, and the measures that were being taken to welcome them. More broadly the development of the country in recent years, noting how it was transitioning from a more energy economy to a more diversified one, with manufacturing, logistics, tourism and IT/digital services. Qatar had a strong ecosystem, and was close to fast growing regions, notably the GCC.
Impact of AI
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were many discussions around the impact of AI on society. On the opening night there was panel on the future for AI with Nicholas Thompson (The Atlantic), who interviewed Thomas Wolf (Hugging Face) and Max Tegmark (Future of Life Institute). The panel began with Thompson asking where we would be in 10 years time (on AI)? Tegmark noted that whilst the prospect of a wrong turn when it comes to AGI could be troubling, a correct turn, to quote him exactly could be “awesome”. He noted the importance of controls, when it came to the prospect of AGI. The key point he made is that we are not bystanders, and could influence the path. There was also a debate about open source vs closed source AI, and the panel was broadly supportive of the idea of a more open environment. Wolf noted that next year could be the year of AI in robotics. Tegmark chimed in that intelligence has been a barrier for robotics. In essence we are biological computers and we are building this future. At the same time, we shoudn’t necessarily delegate to machines.
There was a panel on how AI was impacting the media with Jennifer Strong, Pulitzer Centre and Yale Fellow interviewing Zach Seward (New York Times) and Matthew Garrahan (Finanical Times). Seward noted that there are tools such as Tremedia to evaluate media information, but he had given up trying to identify text misinformation. It was possible to do visual investigations, using tools like satellite imagery and cell phone footage. It did bring to mind the way that alternative data is often used in many forms to aid financial investors. Garrahan also discussed the potential issues with AI generated imagery, in terms of copyright. However, they both noted the opportunities in media when it came to AI. It enabled them to crunch through hundreds of hours of video footage to create transcripts which could help journalists put together stories. Seward said the human had to be first and large in the chain.
Matthew Garrahan, FT
Along similar lines discussing the AI angle, but more from a political direction was Democracy Manifest, with Kalev Leetaru, founder of the GDELT Project, Ben Colman (Reality Defender) and Sabrina Palme (Palqee). The panel moderator was Ed Fraser, Channel 4 News. Leetaru noted that he hasn’t observed seeing a flood of AI related images recently. However, what was happening was real photos, which were being used out of context. There was also the question of what is misinformation, sometimes it can be difficult to define he added.
The creator of the GDELT news dataset, Kalev H. Leetaru and myself
Fintech
On the funding side there was a panel of VC talking about the future of fintech funding. Laura Noonan (Bloomberg) interviewed a panel with Mike Sigal (Sigal Ventures), Itxaso del Palacio (Notion) and Kamran Ansari (Headline). Sigal noted that financial services is the most profitable of industries. He suggested that a lot of fintech for retail had been done, and the opportunities were in other areas, such as corporate banking, asset management etc. even if these were more challenging. Noonan asked the panel if they had observed any successful pivots in their investments. Del Palacio talked about a firm which was originally started to help people switch banks. It successfully pivoted towards document management. Ansari suggested that payments was attractive in B2B. There was also a discussion of how startups could move fast.
Conclusions
So what were my main conclusions from Web Summit? It is somewhat to make some conclusions, given the event was so large, and my experience was a very small snapshot of the event, but I’ll try. There are a lot of exciting tech startups in the works, some doing extremely novel things. The advent of AI is providing a lot of opportunities for automation, but there also need to be checks. Whilst hardly a scientific poll, the general mood was positive, amongst participants I spoke to about the tech scene in general. Will I be at Web Summit next year? Let’s see, in the meantime here’s an image of Lisbon to brighten today!
Lisbon sunrise in during the Web Summit 2024