At Slush on November 17 and 18, around 12,000 visitors will meet, including 4,200 startups and 2,200 investors. As in previous years, the themes of the future will be discussed on the stages of the Helsinki Expo and Convention Center. This year, speakers will include Ev Williams (co-founder of Obvious Ventures, Twitter and Medium, among others), Emmett Shear (co-founder and CEO of Twitch) and Mette Lykke (CEO of Too Good to Go). Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin and Mariya Gabriel, EU Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, are also expected.
This year, right in the middle of Slush’s neon-colored hustle and bustle, there will also be a booth where Munich Startup, together with the partner cities of the Startup Champs (Hamburg, Cologne and Berlin), gives innovative startups a stage. Four startups from Munich are participating.
Farminsect
Farminsect enables farmers to produce animal feed from insect larvae. To do this, the startup has developed automated fattening systems that farmers can operate on their farms. They fatten the young larvae constantly provided by the startup themselves. The locally produced insect larvae are intended to completely replace soy and fish meal as animal feed. This is intended to increase resource efficiency and value creation for farmers and reduce CO2 emissions.
Co-founder Thomas Kuehn looks forward to the event in Helsinki:
“FarmInsect is going to Slush with the expectation of meeting cool investors and great people.”
Fernride
Since fully autonomous logistics vehicles are still far from practical deployment, Fernride wants to bridge the gap by combining already available autonomous technology with human teleoperators. The human staff takes over remote control of the semi-autonomous vehicles in situations where the AI reaches its limits. To do this, the Munich-based company equips vehicles with the necessary technology and connects them to their teleoperations center. Teleoperators sit at a workstation modeled after a vehicle cockpit and intervene in critical moments. In the medium term, one teleoperator should be able to support fleets of up to 50 autonomous vehicles.
Co-founder Hendrik Kramer says:
“At Fernride, we have built Europe’s best team in autonomous electric trucking in Munich and this year launched our product in live operation with some of the best customers such as Volkswagen and DB Schenker. Fernride and Slush share a passion for the best technology and groundbreaking entrepreneurship. We look forward to inspiring an international audience with our success story, and we are equally excited to be inspired by all the other amazing startups there.”
Justt
The media startup Justt is developing a platform that applies the concept of YouTube, Spotify and Co. to written content. Content creators such as publishers, independent journalists and bloggers are to be brought together with users of quality content from around the world. An AI-based recommendation engine is intended to directly match both user groups, so that only verified quality content finds its way to global user groups.
Co-founder Felix Braune wants to use Slush as a springboard for international expansion:
“Justt is designed from the outset as a globally scalable platform: we bring creators (publishers, independent journalists, bloggers, etc.) and users of quality written content from around the world together through technology. That’s why we’re expanding throughout Europe and to English-speaking countries soon. Slush is the perfect place to reach international partners and investors who want to accompany us on this journey.”
Mily Technologies
Mily Technologies is developing analytics software to optimize last-mile delivery processes. The startup wants to help delivery companies uncover inefficiencies, improve the performance of their couriers and make better decisions.
Aleksander Buha, co-founder of Mily, says:
“Logistics is perhaps one of the industries most affected by the increasing technological innovations of the past two years. Since Slush is the leading startup event for technology-oriented companies, we want to use this opportunity to present our contribution to the logtech revolution. We look forward to meeting experts from complementary industries and sharing our knowledge with other successful startups.”
