It’s been a few days since we joined the HowToWeb 2022 conference in Bucharest and now that we’ve had the chance to wrap up our minds around the tons of ideas we’ve taken back home from the event, we decided to share our thoughts.
What we loved about it
The Spirit of the New Beginning
Having one of the best Tech Conferences in South Eastern Europe back offline, bringing people together to mingle, talk and network feels reassuring that things are getting back to normal after Covid19.
One could hear the place buzzing from all the talks, laughs, and music. The event’s atmosphere totally passed the vibe check as everything was screaming that it’s time for new beginnings. Congrats to the H2W team – you did it again!
The Venue
This year the conference was held at the Face Convention center in Bucharest and the venue was definitely one of the contributing factors to the success of the event. The place seemed as if it was specially built for that conference and the overall venue design, lighting, and sound were outstanding. It all made us feel as if we were inside a very exquisite bubble of space and time.
Takeaways
Deep Tech Winning Investors’ Hearts
Starting with the moto of this year’s conference – Its Time to Build, the topic was The Product – how to build and improve it. From all the 61 agenda sessions, 38% were on Product. The rest were distributed as following: 34% on Founders, 25% on Growth, and 2% on Innovation.
The Product was the centerpiece and in particular deep tech products. According to Wikipedia, deep technology or deep tech is “a classification of organization, or more typically startup company, with the expressed objective of providing technology solutions based on substantial scientific or engineering challenges.”
Following the trend from the Valley, the investors present at the event also openly expressed their preferences for the new-edge sector. Hereby, it comes as no surprise that the worthy winner of the startup pitching competition was Bright Technologies, a company that offers software for customer behavior analysis designed to change the approach to customer risk assessment by employing AI-powered behavioral analysis across various industries.
This shift in the focus, together with the bold credos of some VCs, such as the Berlin-based Lunar claiming that they “care about your code, not your sales pipeline”, contradict the focus on traction, client acquisition, and growth that was common for investors during the last few years, but it seems soothing that the spotlight is getting back to where it should be – the Product.
Bruce McCarthy Makes Everyone Fall in Love
On the second day of the conference, Bruce McCarthy delivered one of the most memorable keynotes – Make Everyone Fall in Love with your (product dev) Plan and he made us fall in love with his ideas.
He shared his decade-long experience with all the ups and downs and particularly how critical it is to make sure that all stakeholders are on the same page when it comes to product development roadmaps and vision.
What we would add
The overall vibe of the event was positive and maybe this is one of the reasons why no one felt the urge to talk about the elephant in the room – the crunch times just around the corner. The rising inflation marred by stagnation in industrial output and the upcoming energy crisis in Europe, will have a strong effect on the private sector. That means hard times raising money, hard times signing clients, and hard times attracting talent.
However, we at Sensika believe that genuinely great ideas, marred with systematic execution, find their way to success no matter what, especially when businesses have an awesome product to stand for and if they prioritize sustainable profitability over growth at all costs.
It’s time to build so keep calm and do your thing, success will follow!
