SLUSH17 – Home for Startups and tech-heads

Helsinki will be, again, home for 17,500 tech-heads on the Nov 30th – Dec 1st when SLUSH takes over the city. It’s by far one of the biggest events including 2,300+ Startups and 1,100+ Investors. Slush 2017 will be held at the Exhibition and Convention Center of Helsinki. The venue is located in Pasila, just one train stop away from the Helsinki city center.

Official program during 2 days consists of 4 Stages, 100+ speakers, 17 hours of official program, 150+ booths at Startup Square, Sponsor Demo areas, recruiting area, Founder studio, Round tables and 2 Meeting areas. All these with the 17,500 attendees make it important to prepare for the event. Startup Square is a great place to get a sneek peek on the newest Startup Innovations.

On Thursday the 30th, Pilvi has a booth in the Startup Square in the middle of the event area (see the map below). Visit our booth to get live review from your current online sales channel and to get insights from our Trial study earlier this year. Link to study (in Finnish)

SLUSH is all about startups, tech-heads and new innovations. With these 3 tips you’ll find the best of the best.

• Startup Sauna Demo Day Pitches will be on Thursday starting at 4:30 pm at the Startup Station stage. Selected 15 startups of the almost 1000 applicants went through a 5 week accelerator. This is the last time to see the teams before they fly out of the nest.
• SLUSH 100 Competition will start on Thursday and the finals will be on Friday from 4:35pm ->. These are the best teams SLUSH has selected to compete for the grand price.
• SLUSH Matchmaking tools is the place to find startups and investors to arrange a meeting. It takes time, so start way before the event.

SLUSH17 agenda has 100+ topics in 20 tracks and 4 stages. We at Pilvi help SaaS companies in creating and building better inbound sales channels. Last year we selected a full agenda for both of the SLUSH16 days. This year we found these 2 topics you shouldn’t miss if you are building a subscription business:

• Growth metrics and avoiding the Valley of Death: 12:40pm @ Startup Station. Peter Weed from Lumia Capital and Gisa Springer from McKinsey will talk about critical metrics to predict growth and product market fit.
• How to Build a Successful Consumer Subscription Business:  3:15pm @ Founder Stage. The co-founder and CEO of Blinkist, Holger Seim, will share his insights on building a successful consumer subscription business

To get the most out of the 3-5 days you’ll spend in Helsinki you have to set your personal goals for the event. What do you want to achieve during SLUSH17? Do you want to solve your challenges in productization or want to find best practices in customer success management or expanding your company to the US? Want to meet specific people, close your funding round or acquire new customers? When you know what you want to achieve, you can get yourself familiar with other attendees and speakers (topics).

• Be active on social media: Follow the @SlushHQ and #SLUSH17 on Twitter. Make the best that other attendees know why you’ll be at SaaStock and introduce yourself to the people you want to meet.
• Book meetings: Make the most to book meetings before the event. You can find sponsors, investors, and speakers from the SLUSH17 matchmaking. You can contact them via LinkedIn, Twitter or Email to request a meeting. If you don’t get a reply to your meeting request don’t give up.
• Prepare your pitch: What is your intro (one liner), 30sec “elevator pitch” or your pitch deck? Don’t rely on technology or notes. Do your website and social media profiles support your pitch?

Looking forward to meet you during SLUSH17. We’re there to help SaaS companies in trial, onboarding and online sales automation. Just contact us beforehand to fix a meeting or come to talk during the event.