Yet another post about Slush.

Because the Internet needs another post about Slush.

Last week Jason and I went to Slush in Helsinki. It lived up to the event name, in that it snowed and the snow then melted, creating Slush. It did this several times.

Slush is a remarkable show. Several fascinating speakers, lots of meeting options, panels that work well: Slush uses professional journalists to moderate the panels. You get good questions, and the moderator merely moderates. I wish other events did the same. Moderation is a skill that requires practice.

There are so many sessions on offer, you need to really plan your event beforehand. I didn’t do this quite as well as I should have, so there were sessions I wanted to attend that were full. Next time I’ll be better organized, especially for the investor day. The match-making app was useful for meeting start-ups, but for specialist firms like ours, we need a bit more granularity.

I managed to get a perforated eardrum on the flight in, so I experienced the excellent Finnish healthcare system the evening and morning before the investor event started. I spent most of event partly deaf and nicely drugged up. I'm all good now.

The main event is dimly lit, with lots of cool green lasers and strobe thingys. There are many young people clustered around coffee bars and queueing to get into the cool presentations, and sometimes the loos. Walking around I couldn’t help feel like a Dad lost in a disco seeking his errant teenagers, except all the men are wearing gilets and branded puffer jackets. Male Founder and VC fashion is generally grim, Slush was a sartorial frozen tundra.

The nap-pods were popular. Very popular.

The big name tags are an excellent idea. It means you don’t need to peer too closely figure out who you are talking to, and you can discover people you want to meet from a safe distance.

The main stage discussion with Martin Mignot from Index Ventures and Nikolay Storonsky, the founder of Revolut was excellent. Well worth a watch.

One thing I find is that the most successful founders spend a lot of time talking and thinking about culture, people, hiring, firing, developing, organizing etc. This occupies them more than nifty technology or perhaps even customers. Revolut has built quite a bit of its own HR Tech. I’m not convinced this is entirely efficient, but it is an indication of how seriously Nikolay focuses on HR matters. I discuss this in an earlier post (see insert).

I also got to meet up with several FoW / HR tech investors, was cool to see Iskender in person at last, and catch up with our coinvestors from Felix, Eurazeo and Headline.

I also met Eynat, the CEO and co-founder from Papaya, we talked about the joys of payroll integration. We have talked several times in the past, but never face to face. I can see collaboration opportunities for several of our portfolio companies with Papaya.

On the final morning we attended an investor breakfast, we connected with a bunch of folks we’d only seen on zoom, or at other events. One of them had been out til 4.00am, and had lost her voice. Given my hearing challenge, we resorted to sign language. We are working on a deal together, so let’s see where that goes.

One useful moment of serendipity, I shared a taxi ride with a leading tech journalist, John Thornhill, (FT and Sifted founder). He is charming company. We discussed a bit about the history of computing. Here is his colleague, Amy’s, take on the event.

We had a couple of excellent meals in central Helsinki, one involved traditional Finnish cuisine, served very elegantly and the other was at a Mexican restaurant. We were joined by Jack, the co-founder of OysterHR, one of our portfolio companies. The Mexican food was better than I have had anywhere outside of Mexico. Jack is lovely company. His company is doing really well too.

Speaking to other VCs, next time around I’ll focus more on attending the side events than the main show floor, and plan my agenda a little better. Nevertheless it was well worth the trip, and we will be back.

It is easy to moan about what is wrong in the European start up scene, but I found the energy of this event really uplifting. Just like Sibelius.