Lisbon. The new first time of the Web Summit. The most interesting European fair dedicated to innovation and startups opens, after the forced pause of two years due to the pandemic. Over 1200 young businesses, 81 of which Italian, 700 investors, 1500 journalists, 40 thousand visitors expected and tickets already sold out 24 hours after starting. Without forgetting the 1000 conferences and round tables held by prominent personalities, starting with Frances Haugen, the source of the so-called Facebook Papers. And then Sir Tim Berners-Lee, considered as the “father” of the Web, Brad Smith, president of Microsoft e Nick Clegg, head of Facebook communication (sorry, Meta) who will respond on Tuesday to Haugen’s accusations. It’s still, Werner Vogels, which in Amazon decides everything on the present and future technologies of the e-commerce giant, up to Craig Federighi, Apple’s vice president with responsibility for the software part. All from 1st to 4th November.
But beyond the stars and the startups, what is striking about this out of the ordinary event born quietly in Dublin in 2009, is his having become an adult moving in 2016 to a forgotten capital like Lisbon. Thanks to innovative companies, which after the Berlin exploit have elected it as a favorite destination and with the help of the Web Summit, the city has changed its face in a few years. The Portuguese government moved quickly, helping the transformation by contributing, among other things, to the Web Summit with 11 million euros a year and receiving in return an induced amount of around 300 million. And if the organizers were to decide to move the fair elsewhere, the penalty to be paid would be three billion euros.
“These are the numbers”, he confirms Paddy Cosgrave, born in 1983, Irish, mind and soul of the fair. “The point is not so much to build an appointment that brings benefits for a week, as to have a wide-ranging and long-term strategy linked to the city. We have also received several offers from Italy, but Lisbon is going through a new renaissance and the Web Summit is part of it. Even if it might have been economically convenient for us to move to London, Paris or Milan, we have decided to stay ”.
He postpones
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The two most interesting trends of the 2021 edition, beyond the current fashion that goes by the name of “metaverse”, according to the organizers are two: climate crisis and Non-fungible token (Nft), the cryptographic system to make unique a virtual asset. These are the fronts on which some of the most promising startups are focusing. As COP26 takes place in Glasgow, 200 new businesses in Lisbon will showcase ideas and technologies to combat greenhouse gas emissions and preserve the environment.
On the other, blockchain and Nft. Here the number of companies involved is smaller, but with some spearheads that are already out of the ordinary. For example, among the guests of the opening night there will be Nicolas Julia, French, co-founder and CEO of Sorare. Founded three years ago in Paris, it is already worth 4.3 billion euros. It provides the technology needed for the sale of football-related virtual goods. In a short time he made deals with the German Bundesliga and the Spanish LaLiga. Wanting to simplify, Sorare offers a kind of fantasy football based on blockchain technology. And it works well: Soft Bank, together with today’s and yesterday’s footballers of the caliber of Rio Ferdinand and Gerard Piqué, have invested 680 million euros in the company.
The great mass of Web Summit startups, however, remains anchored to the business world, or to solutions for companies. The Lisbon fair is not so much a stage or a catwalk, but the ground to bring together new companies and financiers, they take advantage of the app created by Cosgrave and his team that works flawlessly as a sort of operating system to connect exhibitors together. , visitors, journalists and investors, to the point that the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas will adopt it starting from the next edition.
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“Three years ago right here at the Web Summit, Tim Berners-Lee said that the only possible future of the Net was in decentralization,” concludes Cosgrave. “I think he was right, and the variety of new businesses attending the Web Summit proves it. In Europe we are moving in the right direction: startups are growing exponentially everywhere and are raising ever more important capital as the case of Sorare demonstrates. Italy this year is present with 81 companies, like France and Germany roughly. It is the first time this has happened ”. And then there are phenomena such as Ukraine which has record growth rates, five times higher than the global average and now has 5,000 high-tech teams, 48 are those present in Lisbon, and 250,000 developers. Another small miracle that is happening in a troubled country that few connect, for now, to the idea of digital and innovation.
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