The European Pirate Summit - Cologne, August 26-27th 2013

…Ok, ok it was November 2010 when 3 highly motivated students with rudimentary knowledge about the entrepreneurial life, experienced through some own small “projects” sat together with an insane (in an absolutely positive way!), experienced entrepreneur from Cologne and discussed about the disappointing coverage of Cologne and North-Rhine-Westphalia in the startup world, though it’s the most highly populated state in Germany with huge educational institutions and ass-kicking pirates, so all in all a lot potential for world-changing ideas.
And what’s more qualified for creating buzz than establishing a top-notch startup event?!

Even if we couldn’t wait to take off with the planning for the event, we were concerned if we could make it on our own. Due to none of us would have been able to run the project as a full-time job, we decided to board a couple more talents. After we could add 3 more pirates to the advisory board, we were looking for adding a squeaker to the crew, so we could fight each other on a fair footing. With the “signing” of the last one, we knew we seeded something great.

And after several months going through sleepless nights, getting in touch with horrible German bureaucracy, struggling relationships to our girlfriends, including all the negative aspects…, the Pirate Summit launched on September 20th.
But wait! There was also a bunch of days on which we ran through our flats and jumped higher than Michael Jordan in his prime – maybe not that high but it felt like this! Especially this cloudy and windy day in September was overwhelming, when approx. 250 pirates arrived at the wicked Odonien and put Europe and especially Cologne on the startup map!

We really appreciated your coming and hope you enjoyed it as much as we did, even if it felt for us like the most ARRRsome dream ever.
We’d like to continue the saga in 2012 – this time on 2 days, September 10-11th and would love to welcome you in Cologne.
We’ll keep you in the loop about everything, so stay tuned and spread the word!

Btw the Pirate Summit, respectively the Pirate Movement is about pirates and we’re aiming at something like “for the community, by the community”, that’s why we’ll reveal by and by features to integrate you more and more.