1.200 people from all over Europe participated in this year’s Pirate Summit in the rusty scrapyard Odonien in Cologne.
On Wednesday Pirate Camp, the new event format, kicked off with sunshine and great expectations. Besides startup founders, aspiring entrepreneurs, investors, freelancers, hackers and students joined this first time meeting. Together with the team of Founder Centric from London, Till Ohrmann and Manuel Koelman had organized a day full of insights, discussions, innovative session formats and activities such as upcycling and graffiti to keep energy and creativity flowing.
Pirate Summit on Thursday lived up to the day before, being more intimate. International startups, more than 120 investors and speakers such as Klaas Kersting (flaregames), Mike Butcher (TechCrunch) and Evan Nisselson (LDV Capital) came to meet, talk and connect.
Pitch startup viblast convinced the jury most also won over ProSiebenSat1 accelerator and is being accepted into their program: 25.000€ for 5% equity.
Exec I/O, an event series started by the pirates in 2013, was the third and last happening of Pirate Week. Focusing on the topic “mobile”, founders and executives from hand-selected startups, active investment managers as well as experienced corporate executives discussed current trends in terms of mobile innovation, strategy, technology and design.