The Next Web took place last week in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With more than 3,500 participants, it’s one of the biggest technology conferences in Europe. This year marked the 10th anniversary for the conference, a conference that now has more than half of its attendants coming from outside the Netherlands.
The second day of the conference, started with Christina Riesen from Evernote, talking about trends and the direction of the industry. Exponential growth is one fact. The new 10,000 users are now 1 million users. Augmented intelligence will become the new norm. On-demand economy will become even more common. Life-work balance will evolve into Life-work integration as the two blend in together with the on-demand economy in place. Finally, this is no zero sum game. It can be a win-win situation for all stakeholders in the global economy.
Oleg Gutsol, co-founder of 500px shared his story. His takeaway is that you can start with a small team that can do miracles, you need an early and loyal audience and you need to focus on the face of limited resources. Also, an MVP is just not enough nowadays. The initial product may be a simple page, but the user experience needs always to be a first class citizen.
Deborah Magid, Director of Software Strategy, IBM Venture Capital Group shared her view of the Venture Capital trends for the years to come. There is a need for smart tech, with the example of food being thrown away as a problem to be solved by smart tech. We are now having more connected devices than people and this affects the browsing patterns worldwide. Information is being captured from everywhere, constantly. We have arrived at an era that we can store all this information and process it. Internet of Things will play an ever increasing role in the future. Finally, agriculture technology will become even more important in the future. IBM’s global entrepreneur program is one of the initiatives IBM has taken to help entrepreneurs develop innovative solutions.
At the Boost startup pitching competition, Teamleader was the winner, taking home the 100 thousand Euro prize. Teamleader, coming from Belgium, is a unified CRM, invoicing and project planning SaaS.