Previous Speakers
A line-up to startle your innovation spirit
Meet the speakers who are building what's next:
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All topics
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Product
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Growth
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Team
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Founders
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Leaders
Ryan
Singer
Product Builder, Advisor, Author @ Shape Up
20+ years in product building and pioneering design & development processes, 17+ years as ex-Head of Strategy at Basecamp - now on a mission to get tech teams unstuck, and build by the principles of Shape Up.
Darren Chait
Head of Growth Marketing @ Calendly
Savvy growth marketer, ex-founder, and recent author, Darren leverages his work culture passion into our day-to-day products
Stephanie Musat
Senior Staff Product Manager @ Warner Bros. Discovery
Seasoned PM, with more than 10 years experience in large scale direct-to-consumer media organizations, like CNN, Refinery29 and Complex Networks
Irina Haivas
Partner @ Atomico
Irina is a Partner with Atomico based in London, where she focuses on investments in AI, software and infrastructure.
Janna Bastow
CEO & Co-Founder @ Prodpad
Janna founded ProdPad in 2012, a widely-used product software for roadmaps and product backlogs, and co-founded Mind the Product, global series of events and a community of 300.000 product people.
Ton
Wesseling
Growth Expert
Evidence-based growth expert & international speaker on Conversion Optimization. Ton is the brain behind the A/B testing mastery course at CXL Institute & Legend of Experimentation 2023 award winner.
Andrew
Davies
Chief Marketing Officer @ Paddle
Andrew currently serves as CMO for Paddle, the complete payments infrastructure serving over 4,000 software companies that has raised over $295m and acquired ProfitWell.
Ioan Iacob
Founder & CEO @ FLOWX.AI
Ioan is the founder and CEO of FLOWX.AI, a revolutionary AI Application Modernization Platform, which raised in May 2023 the largest Series A globally in the industry in the last two years to bring AI to the enterprise at scale.
Christopher
Osborne
Vice President of Product @ DeepL
Christopher has extensive experience in scaling high performance product organizations and grew the German AI language translation unicorn DeepL to 1bn users.
Robin Wauters
Founder @ Tech.eu
Top European tech journalist, Robin has been the Founding Editor of the region's premier information portal and market intelligence platform, Tech.eu since October 2013.
Zachary
Gleicher
Applied Product Manager @ Google DeepMind
Zach focuses on foundation models in Google products, and has been in the Google DeepMind Applied team for over 6 years. His team is responsible for taking DeepMind’s AI research and applying it across all of Google.
Hristo Borisov
Co-Founder & CEO @ Payhawk
Builder of the first Bulgarian unicorn & one of the fastest-growing companies in Europe
Staffan
Helgesson
General Partner @ Creandum
General Partner with early stage VC at Creandum looking for amazing entreprenurs with the ambition to disrupt global industries. Investor in Bolt, Epidemic, Spotify, Monta, Enode, Twaice, Neo4j, Trade Republic, Kahoot, iZettle, small Giant Games, and many more.
Mada
Seghete
Co-Founder & CSO @ Branch.io
Co-Founder of the mobile linking platform Branch since 2014, Mada has been leading their marketing and evangelism efforts globally, as well as many of Branch's award-winning global culture initiatives, post a Series F round and $4 billion valuation.
Joe Leech
Trusted Adviser & Executive Coach
Joe works with CEOs at start-ups, high growth to IPO to public company to the big exit; helping define what it means to be a leader, how to create impact, how to grow alongside the business and how to change the world all while enjoying every part of that journey.
Gloria
Bäuerlein
Founding Partner @ Puzzle Ventures
VC turned operator and angel investor, Gloria raised her own €21.5M fund in 2022, one of the first in Europe to be led by a female solo GP, focusing on B2B SaaS and fintech companies across Europe.
Xenia Muntean
CEO & Co-Founder @ Planable
Marketer turned tech entrepreneur, building the future of content collaboration, in a startup that thrives in a busy niche. Forbes 30U30, Webby Awards judge, and Techstars alumna.
Maya Zlatanova
CEO & Co-Founder @ FindMeCure
Clinical research expert and renowned pharma industry speaker, building on her experience as CEO of FindMeCure, patient navigation platform, and TrialHub, data-intelligence platform for clinical trials.
Karolina
Mrozkova
General Partner @ Credo Ventures
At Credo, Karolina loves connecting with ambitious and talented founders from the CEE region, sharing common history, humor and culture, while being able to provide help, perspective of a Series A investor and a bridge to North America.
Felix
Martinez
Principal @ Seedcamp
Principal at one of the global top-performing seed funds, expert in evaluating & supporting the best early-stage startups in Europe
Claude
Ritter
Managing Partner @ Cavalry Ventures
Claude co-founded the European early-stage venture capital fund back in 2016, currently focusing on pre-seed and seed stages with EUR 260+ million in assets under management.
Cristina
Riesen
Board Member European Innovation Council @ European Innovation Council
Founder of Educreators, a for-purpose organization suporting transformative innovation in education. Board Member of the European Innovation Council, Europe’s flagship innovation programme to identify, develop and scale up breakthrough technologies innovations.
Sebastian Gabor
Founder @ Digitail
Founder of Digitail, Romanian startup with the mission is to give veterinarians the ability to provide smarter, more effective, and personalized treatment to pets, that has recently raised $11M in an Atomico-led round.
Allen
Taylor
Managing Partner @ Endeavor Catalyst
Based in Northern California, Allen is part of the global leadership team at Endeavor, a mission-driven organization focused on supporting high-growth companies in emerging and underserved markets.
Karol
Szubstarski
Partner @ OTB Ventures
Venture investor with over a decade long experience in both, traditional and corporate VC firms. Always on the lookout for top founders that dare to distort reality with deep tech solutions.
Diana
Koziarska
Founding Partner @ SMOK Ventures
Founding Partner at SMOK Ventures, US fund investing 100k-1M in CEE startups, focusing on early stage software and gaming companies.
Ilya
Leyrikh
Product Lead @ wise
In 8 years, he aided Wise's growth from a 5-team startup to managing 10B EUR x-border transactions, saving 150M EUR monthly. Built cards from scratch, now leading FinCrime, Support, and Finance product teams.
James
Mayes
Co-Founder & former CEO @ Mind the Product
Expert in building high-performance tech teams & product-led growth. Initiator of the biggest product community in the world.
Márk
Pálfalvi
Principal @ PortfoLion Capital Partners
Mark is an early-stage technology investor at Portfolion Capital Partners, a USD 500 million Europe-focused VC fund manager firm.
Randy
Silver
Product Management & Leadership Coach @ Out of Owls
Randy’s held a variety of roles at start-ups, scale-ups and enterprises, across many sectors - including utilities, the arts, online education, media, retail, and financial services.
Claudiu Cioba
Founder & CEO @ Videowise
Experienced product designer turned founder, Claudiu is now leading the ultimate video platform designed for Shopify brands to engage consumers with interactive shoppable video experiences.
Alin
Stanciu
Partener @ Catalyst Romania
Alin is a Partner at Catalyst Romania based in Bucharest, where he focuses on investments in software, e-commerce and media/telecom.
Robert Hegedues
FOUNDING PARTNER @ FIEDLER CAPITAL
Robert started doing pre-seed investments in 2014, following a decade-long career in Management Consulting across Europe, Middle-East and Asia, and he was instrumental in getting companies such as Bitrise & SEON off the ground as their first investor.
Ivan Brezak Brkan
Director of Developer Content @ Infobip
Director of Developer Content at Infobip, Ivan is also the Founder and Editor of Netokracija, the ‘Techcrunch of the Balkans’, acquired by the Croatian unicorn Infobip in 2022.
Julija (JJ)
Jegorova
Founder @ Black Unicorn PR
JJ is a seasoned PR Pro with 13 years of international experience. She founded Black Unicorn PR, focusing on European tech startups and scaleups.
Andy
Carvell
Partner @ Phiture
Full-Stack Marketer and Mobile Expert with 20 years experience in the mobile industry and a deep interest in technology, strategy and execution of ideas.
Ivan
Ivanković
Co-founder & COO @ Fonoa
Prior to co-founding the Croatian-Irish startup Fonoa, the first to develop a cloud platform for the automation of tax calculations on a global level, Ivan led Southwestern European operations at Uber.
Dan Lupu
Partner @ Earlybird Venture Capital
Investor in technology companies such as UiPath, FintechOS, Photoneo, Minit, Sessions. Computer science and business background.
Andrew
Michael
Host @ CHURN.FM
Andrew Michael is a SaaS leader with a deep focus on retention-led growth. With over 14 years of experience spanning marketing and product development, he has co-founded multiple venture-backed startups and played key roles in hyper-growth companies like Hotjar.
Sonia
Damian
Head of Platform @ Crew Capital
Head of Platform at Crew Capital - a community-driven venture capital firm, founded by Daniel Dines (co-founder UiPath) & Brandon Deer (CSO UiPath), investing in entrepreneurs building category-defining B2B technology companies.
Voicu
Oprean
CEO & Founder @ AROBS Transilvania Software
Entrepreneur focused on building software solution in travel, automotive, GPS, Navigation and Mobile with extensive experience in outsourcing for automotive, travel and hospitality industry.
Irina
Obushtarova
Co-Founder & CEO @ The Recursive
Entrepreneur and journalist, helping innovative ventures from Emerging Europe scale internationally.
Todor Breshkov
Founding Partner @ LAUNCHub
Investment banker turned early-stage investor, co-founder of the leading VC fund in South Eastern Europe.
Ondrej Bartos
General Partner @ Credo Ventures
Early stage investor, with investments in UiPath, PriceFX, Productboard and many more.
Alexandru
Ivana
Product Manager @ Adobe
Product manager thriving in a dynamic environment, collaborating with multiple geographically dispersed teams within Adobe Analytics' vast enterprise B2B and B2C big data ecosystem, catering to the needs of valued customers.
Andreas Munk Holm
Founder & Host @ The European VC
Andreas is Europe's LP hypeman, aka founder of The European VC - the go-to podcast and connector of the European venture industry.
Bogdan Iordache
General Partner @ Underline Ventures
Bogdan is the General Partner of Underline Ventures, a venture capital firm that partners at the earliest stages with Eastern European founders building high-growth startups with global ambitions.
Ruxandra Pui
Founder & CPO @ Digitail
Founder & CPO of Digitail, a Romanian startup with the mission to give veterinarians the ability to provide smarter, more effective, and personalized treatment to pets, which has recently raised $11M in an Atomico-led round.
Zuzanna
Czapinska
Investment Manager @ HV Capital
Zuzanna is an early-stage investor at HV Capital, one of the leading European VC funds. She focuses on fintech & software infrastructure investments across Europe.
Akis
Bratsos
Principal @ Lakestar
Akis focuses on investment opportunities in enterprise software and digital health. Based out of Lakestar's London office, Akis has been involved in Lakestar's investments in Builder.ai, Neko Health, Nelly, Validio, Pitch, Accurx and Tesseract among others.
Apostolos Apostolakis
Co-Founder & Partner @ Venture Friends
Apostolos is an entrepreneur turned investor in the technology sector. He was a cofounder at e-shop.gr, e-food.gr, (acquired by Delivery Hero), Doctoranytime and an early investor in Beat (acquired by Freenow)
Karol Lasota
Principal @ Inovo Venture Partners
Ex-founder and operator of VC-backed B2B marketplace and deep tech startups now joined the VC side.
Alexander
Theuma
Founder @ SaaStock
Alex started SaaStock in 2015, currently the biggest B2B SaaS Conference in Europe with five major conferences a year in five countries and many more local events.
Kaan Eren
Principal @ 500 Emerging Europe
Early-stage VC under the broader 500 startups network. Investor in Agave Games, Altogic, Ango, Arf, Cypher Games, Datapad, Freeflow, Gesund, Integrated Finance, Layer, Permify, Refine, Synnada, the Village, Kalder, Ddosify, The Swarm, Lonca, Kubeark & Frantic Games
Alex George
Principal @ Point Nine Capital
Alex is a Principal at Point Nine, a seed fund focused on B2B SaaS/B2B marketplaces and an earlier backer of companies like Algolia, Contentful, Revolut, Typeform, Loom, and more.
Jacek
Łubiński
Partner @ Market One Capital
VC investment professional with computer science background. Focused on Marketplaces (SaaS based) and B2B Software.
Diane
Wiredu
Founder @ Lion Words
Messaging expert and founder of Lion Words, Diane helps scaling SaaS and B2B businesses achieve message-market fit. So they can stand out from the crowd, market more effectively, and sell more.
David
Bizer
Director @ Key Search
As a talent, recruitment, and team culture expert, David has collaborated with 100s of emerging startups throughout Europe to scale their human capital since he began this journey in 2010.
Daphne Tideman
Growth Advisor & Consultant @ Daphne Tideman | Growth Advisor & Consultant, Growth Waves
Daphne is helping Founders and Head of Growths navigate various challenges - from scaling channels to finding product-market-fit. Frequent workshop trainer at well-known brands, like TikTok and ING.
Ioan
Istrate
Advisor to the Minister @ Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitalization
With over 10 years of work experience in various fields, ranging from consulting and entrepreneurship to policy and social impact, his core competencies include new business development, analytical skills, and geopolitics.
Robin
Haak
General Partner @ Robin Capital
With a varied career portfolio, Robin has acted as an entrepreneur, operating executive, investor, and advisor to a broad spectrum of private and public companies. These include Algolia, Aircall, Axel Springer, and many more.
Elena Vrabie
Country Lead @ The Recursive
Country Lead at The Recursive with over +10 years of experience as a storyteller based in Bucharest, Romania. She is forging connections among the regional pioneers, and propelling CEE into the global spotlight as the dynamic tech hub that it is.
Jordan
Bocskov
Partner @ Fiedler Capital
Entrepreneur turned investor, with a keen eye on evolving business in CEE.
Nikola
Pavesic
Director of Startups @ Infobip
The director of startups at Infobip, a company that is a global leader in omnichannel engagement powering a broad range of messaging channels, tools and solutions for advanced customer engagement, authentication and security.
Cezara
Panait
Government Affairs & Public Policy Country Lead for Romania @ Google
Young professional in EU digital policy and human rights lawyer with comprehensive knowledge of legal, policy and regulatory issues, acquired in both public and private sectors.
Vlad Andriescu
Editor-in-Chief @ Start-up.ro
The editor-in-chief of start-up.ro —the coolest place to find out about the most interesting startups. He has 10 years of experience in the media landscape and he's constantly looking for founders who are not afraid of making mistakes and changing the world.
Dan Mihaescu
Founding Partner
@ GapMinder Venture Partners
Investor and adviser in early-stage technology companies. Recently invested in some of the newest high-growth tech startups from CEE - FintechOS, TypingDNA, DruidAI, Cartloop.
