Nine years ago, a small group of visionaries managed to get 40 local startups together and they called it Slush – an event for startups by startups, and the rest is history. A couple of weeks ago, the world’s leading startup and technology conference was sold out, gathering up to 20 000 attendees from over 130 countries including 2 600 startups, 1 500 investors, and 600 journalists in Helsinki.
Without question, one of this year’s highlights was the debut of Slush Y Science, an official vertical event of Slush held on December 1st and organized by Slush, with the University of Helsinki and HiLIFE as the main organizing partners. Slush Y Science was also fully booked, combining those enthusiastic about science, business, and the future where a different way of thinking could create new world-changing possibilities. Among many others, this kind of thinking was presented by life sciences accelerator RebelBio:
“Programming life has huge potential, both commercially and scientifically – and it’s better than science fiction because it’s real.”
Another great example of a truly science-based company solving highly scientific problems was Blueprint Genetics. Their CEO Tommi Lehtonen summarized the atmosphere in the room perfectly with his last statement: “We love science”.
The direction was set this year and the number of attendees at Slush Y Science indicates an increasing interest in the possibilities of science-based business. We are looking forward to seeing what will the scale be in the coming years!
