We knew very well that our debut at one of Europe's largest startup conferences had to start with a bang: Enter Fabian Bodensteiner. Bodensteiner is a member of the founding team of Tools of Humanity, the company behind Worldcoin, an ambitious project co-founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman that’s trying to build the largest payment and identity network in the world. With his keynote speech titled "Worldcoin: Getting to 1 Billion Users," the entrepreneur outlined the vision of succeeding on a global scale. The startup aims to provide digital identities by using eyescanners and linking these IDs to a crypto network. As exciting as that is, it’s also drawn a lot of controversy, especially from data privacy activists. This even led to bans of the technology, most recently in Spain. Still, the leadership team around Altman and CEO Alex Blania remains optimistic. "We see this as constructive criticism. It helps us improve," said Bodensteiner. Going forward, a new concept around data protection will enable Worldcoin to no longer store biometric data of its customers in the cloud or on company servers. Instead, Worldcoin introduces the concept of Personal Data Custody, where the data will only be encrypted and stored on the smartphones.

With a successful start, everything was prepared for many exciting talk. Up next was a very different approach to making the world a better place: Forbes Under 30 listmaker Anna Gracia Herbst explained to our host Carolin Roth why she quit her marketing job to make a contribution to a better world. She co-founded the startup Buy Food with Plastic, which enables the population in Nicaragua, Ghana, and India to pay for warm meals by collecting plastic bottles. The plastic bottles are then recycled into new products to close the loop and fulfill the organization’s aim of helping to create a circular economy.

Closing the morning of the first day, Leif-Nissen Lundbaek took the stage. His Berlin-based startup Xayn offers an AI for lawyers that can analyze, review and summarize legal documents. It does so while ensuring compliance of confidentiality in handling client data and European data protection. Following Lundbaek was the giant in the room: Hemant Anand, Chief Innovation Officer at Google Cloud Alps, participated in a panel organized by Google Founder's Story. Anand was excited to be part of the program: “There’s so much energy and inspiring personal stories from our panelists." He was joined by Gianmarco Bonaita (Co-Founder & CEO, Alpian), Bettina Hein (Co-Founder & CEO, juli), Eugenia Balysheva (Co-Founder & CEO, Dotphoton) and host Hans Tran (Industry Lead Digital Native, Google Cloud), discussing “How Digital Native Companies Disrupt Industries Through Technology”.

The afternoon continued “tech-heavy”: Vanessa Foser, co-founder and Chief Customer Officer of the AI Business School, outlined practical training offerings for executives, businesses, and individuals on the topic of Artificial Intelligence. Then, Jannis Kirschner, shared his experiences protecting companies and government agencies from cyberattacks. The ethical hacker is also representing Switzerland as team captain at the Hacker European Championships.

One of the highlights of the program came next: the AI Pitching Competition, hosted by Forbes, Merantix and START Summit. In less than three minutes each, a total of twelve startups pitched their mission to the jury composed of Janette Wiget, CFO & Member of the Management Board at Merantix, Philipp Boksberger, Managing Director Forbes Switzerland and Tristan Post of Technical University Munich. In the end, Patrick Dendorfer  was able to convince the jury and won the competition with his startup Futurail, where he’s co-founder and CTO. The company wants to make self-driving trains a reality. The prize includes a spot on the shortlist for the upcoming Forbes AI30 list, a feature in Forbes magazine (Switzerland edition), a personal introduction/sit-down with a top-tier VC fund, and a free week of co-working space at the Merantix AI Campus in Berlin.

Day 2: Sustainability, Tech, Negotiation
On the second day of the event, we had the privilege of hearing from more fascinating individuals and their stories, successes, and innovations. After welcoming words by our host Olivia Kinghorst, Jessica Farda came to the stage. During her studies in International Relations and Affairs at the University of St. Gallen, Farda discovered her interest in algae as a sustainable alternative to plastic. Since its founding in 2021, she has been developing an algae-based packaging alternative to plastic films with her company Noriware. Max Zeller is also trying to drive sustainability forward, but from a different angle: With Carbon Removal Partners, he tries to find relevant companies to invest in. Then, Laura Stocco, co-founder and CMO of Openversum, spoke about the company's mission to make clean drinking water accessible to everyone.

Next on stage came a tech solution to a highly relevant business trend: Influencer Marketing. Branko Markovic, co- founder and co-CEO of Vienna-based startup influence.vision, explained how his platform assists brands in finding, booking, analyzing influencers, and effectively executing campaigns. To simplify this process, influence.vision has built a marketplace solution to service both sides of the transaction. Sebastian Beetschen, Under 30 listmaker and recent Forbes cover star, received considerable attention from the audience as he appeared onstage wearing Artificial Reality glasses, manufactured by his company Almer Technologies. The startup offers industrial companies an opportunity to conduct remote training and troubleshooting using its glasses.

Next, Marcel Dévény delivered practical advice with his session "Negotiating your Worth for Founders". He helped the audience understand how to receive better outcomes in negotiations that can make or break your company’s success. Following that, Charlie Cotton, co-founder and CSO at Cambrium, discussed how his Berlin-based startup focuses on applying generative AI to protein design and synthesis, successfully completing a collaboration with Ginkgo Bioworks, a company building the leading platform for cell programming and biosecurity. The final ride of day two came with "Germany's Biggest Unicorn": Remy Lazarovici, Managing Director DACH for Celonis, discussed the development and implementation of software for Process Mining. Celonis was most recently valued at $13 billion, making it not only Germany’s most valuable unicorn but also one of Europe’s. Lazarovici joined the company as its very first employee and climbed the rank to now lead the DACH region, a strategically important region for the tech company.

With that, two days full of inspiration, pitches and handy advice came to an end. We’ll be back at START Summit 2025 with much more worthy speakers and stories. Stay tuned!

Photo credits: Sören Funk