South Summit 2023
About South Summit…
As one of the largest start-up events in the world, South Summit brings together entrepreneurs, investors, corporates, and policymakers to showcase the latest developments in the world of entrepreneurship and technology. To date, according to the official website, it has supported 25,000 start-ups, hosted 23 international and sector-specific events, and invested $12 billion into its finalists.
We were honoured to be a part of South Summit Madrid 2023, spending 3 days among inspiring leaders in the field of tech, attending fascinating talks, listening to pitches from the start-up competition finalists and engaging with businesses across the tech sector to understand their future opportunities and challenges.
Event highlights…
We spent a busy few days attending talks and engaging with businesses, our particular highlights included:
Empowering Women Entrepreneurs - Success Stories of Female Startup Founders,
Scaling to HK and Beyond - Jayne Chan from StartmeupHK delivered an impactful presentation about the Greater Bay Area. Key statistics along with a survey of start-up companies, start-up industry breakdown along with a list of the Hong Kong Unicorns Club, left the audience convinced of the opportunities in this region.
Start-up Competition - this was our opportunity to hear the very latest and exciting developments - with new ideas ready to disrupt markets and revolutionise the way we operate. This was a global competition, with the 100 finalists coming from 21 different countries. We spoke with India/US based Legal Tech finalist Avinash Tripathi to hear more about how amto.ai is looking to revolutionise the legal sector.
The future, opportunities, challenges…
The businesses we spoke to shared insights in to how Artificial Intelligence is going to revolutionise the way we work, there was a common interest in having a positive impact in the world - promoting sustainability, and there was a focus on the importance of connecting - the importance of using communication to form new connections and collaborate. We heard about the challenges companies have faced from language barriers, to difficulties understanding accents, and the importance of overcoming these challenges to expand and reach new markets. As one business founder told us - you can have the best product, but if you can’t communicate - then you will not be successful.
We had fascinating discussions and enjoyed keeping up with the latest developments and learning how we can better help firms to achieve their goals for growth. We’re already looking forward to the next South Summit in Brazil 2024!