We Are Human partners with Slush on the release of a new “Entrepreneurship Redefined” whitepaper, to drive future European success stories by diverse teams, purpose-driven businesses, and revolutionary innovation through collaboration.
Helsinki’s Slush is the world's leading startup and tech event. It's a student-led, not-for-profit movement on a mission to create and help founders change the world.
We have attended and spoken at Slush every year since 2014; including presenting Kahoot! as part of the Nordic showcase in 2015, launching EntrepreneurShipOne internationally in 2016 and discussing values-based entrepreneurship at Slush Tokyo in 2018 (videos below).
Our values continue to be aligned, and following the launch of We Are Human Nordics, we are proud to partner with Slush alongside other values-based companies on the launch of their new whitepaper 'Entrepreneurship Redefined’ - focusing on the future of entrepreneurship in Europe.
Together, we believe the next generation of founders and talent are driven primarily by purpose, and that diversity and effective collaboration will lead to the discovery of the impactful solutions people and the planet need to thrive.
About the whitepaper
The following is taken from Slush’s own press release:
There’s a lot to be proud of in the European startup ecosystem. However, there is no cause for complacency. Sizable inefficiencies and inequities still keep Europe from reaching its full potential.
As the world is going through turmoil, the time is ripe for some introspection. Now more than ever, the world needs founders; people who embrace uncertainty, see patterns in chaos, and fearlessly build technologies that take humankind forward. To maximize the depth and scale of these technologies, we need to address the shortfalls of the last decade. In short, we need to redefine entrepreneurship.
We believe that diversity enhances and expands the ecosystem’s problem-solving capacity. People working in European tech still represent a very limited subset of the continent’s population. This holds true across a number of factors, including gender, ethnicity, education, and income level.
We believe that the next generation of founders and talent is driving a shift towards purpose. Companies that acknowledge their greater responsibility towards shareholders, employees, society, and the planet will attract the brightest talent and emerge as the winners of the next decade.
We believe that entrepreneurs, academic researchers, government officials, and creatives should work together instead of in silos to generate the revolutionary innovation that humankind desperately needs. Without exception, history teaches us that true innovation is the outcome of a collective effort.
Together, these topics define Slush’s and our collaborators’ view of how companies in the 2020s should look different from those of the decade gone by. Amid Europe’s stellar rise, it’s been easy to forgo engaging with the inefficiencies and disparities that hold our ecosystem back. Now, as that rise has ground to a temporary halt, it’s time to have these difficult discussions. That’s why Entrepreneurship Redefined -whitepaper was created.
The whitepaper is based on three avenues of novel quantitative research:
- A wealth of analysis of the various data sets that we gathered in relation to Slush 2019. These include:
- - Company data on the 3,500 startups and 2,000 investors that got accepted to the event
- - Individual data on the nearly 10,000 people who attended the event from these entities
- - Meeting data on the 10,000 pre-booked meetings that these people engaged in with one another
- A new look at the 5,000 survey responses that we collected for the State of European Tech in 2019.
- Novel data that we’ve generated together with our data partner Dealroom on the European ecosystem.
The whitepaper is conducted from 58 anonymous expert interviews and used them as the basis of our own analysis. Our sample was comprised of 28 founders, 20 investors, 8 operators, and 2 “other” people from the ecosystem. 32 of the interviewees were based in the Nordics, 16 were from Europe, and 10 from outside Europe. 34% of the interviewees were women.
We Are Human at Slush
Johan Brand presents Kahoot! as part of the Nordic Showcase at Slush, Helsinki in 2015
Johan Brand shares how Kahoot! has become a cultural phenomenon, whilst also launching EntrepreneurShipOne internationally at Slush, Helsinki 2016
Johan Brand hosts the Nordic Showcase alongside Natalia Brzezinski at Slush, Helsinki 2017
Johan Brand discusses values-based entrepreneurship at Slush, Tokyo 2018
Slush is a student-driven, not-for-profit movement on a mission to create and help founders to change the world. On top of our world-class startup events, we run an online media called Soaked by Slush, a weekly newsletter with 70k+ subscribers, research, and much more.
We Are Human builds and invests in values-based technology-enabled companies. Established in London by Johan Brand and Jamie Brooker in 2010, WAH is most notable for co-founding Kahoot!, a LearnTech company whose game-based platform has surpassed 4.4 billion cumulative players as people are learning, working and socialising remotely during the pandemic. Since 2017, WAH has refocused efforts on early-stage companies. Tim Moore and Sindre Østgård have joined as Managing Partners in London and the Nordics respectively. WAH has directly or indirectly invested in more than 120 companies across #LearnTech, #OceanTech, #HealthTech and more.
