Pirate Summit is Europe’s largest invitation-only conference for early-stage startups, investors, and corporate executives. With about 1.000 attendees, our crowd is a mix of 650 founders, 200 investors, and makers and shakers of the digital and tech scene. We have 80 pitches,  attendees from over 70+ countries, and over 60 speakers.

Ultimately, Pirate Summit’s mission is to create meaningful connections and to celebrate authentic entrepreneurship.

This year’s Pirate Summit will take place in Cologne this 6th and 7th of September. You can find the agenda here.

Pirate Summit will take place at Odonien in Cologne, Germany. The address is Hornstraße 85, 50823 Köln, Germany. The closest train station is Nippes. 

Early stage startups, investors, and a few corporate executives. We are expecting about 1.200 participants for this edition. 

To ensure the high quality of participants, all attendees need to apply for a ticket. You can get your own here! 

Even though the conference is hosted in Cologne, we have an incredibly international crowd. Therefore, the event’s official language is English and all sessions and activities are in English.

You should arrange and organize your travel and accommodation yourself. Here is a list of potential hotels/hostels: Click here. 

Food and drinks are included with your Pirate Summit ticket during both days. All you can eat, all you can drink, all day long.

You can find the agenda here and the speaker lineup here.

The night of the 6th of September we have the biggest party starting at 10 p.m., but you don’t want to miss the Burning Ceremony at 9:30 p.m. This is in Odonien (where Pirate Summit takes place) and you don’t need an additional ticket. You just need to get some drinks and enjoy. There is no dress code, just come as you ARRRe.

No ties. Whatever you want, but no ties!

You want to suggest a speaker or you want to speak yourself? Follow this link and click on `suggest a speaker´. We will contact you in case your application is successful. 

If you have over 50 employees or your growth rate is below 10% then probably you are a corporate.

Someone whose main goal is to invest in business opportunities. E.g. someone from Google Ventures will be an investor while someone from Google will be a corporate. We also welcome angel investors, accelerators, incubators and similar in this field.

To ensure the quality of participants that Pirate Summit is known for, we check every participant’s application before releasing the ticket. Therefore, an application or invitation is obligatory. Participation is open for executives from corporations, startup founders, and senior staff as well as active investors (VCs, Accelerators, Business Angels).

Pirate Summit is an application/invitation only conference. You can apply to participate here . You will only be billed once we accept your application. 

Check the ticket prices here.

Pirate Summit offers convenient credit card payment for all tickets. After applying you will get redirected to our payment gateway to store your credit card details there. We will only charge your credit card when you get selected to attend. Declined applications don’t result in a credit card payment.
If any problems occur, or credit card payment is not available in your country or company, you always have the chance to reach out to us after applying and we’ll find a way for you.

Tickets need to have a name but name changes within the same company can be done later. If you have any changes please contact mone@piratesummit.de.

No. Since the buyer will “consume” our service in Germany, we have to add the tax to the invoice according to the tax legislation in Germany.

Please contact mone@piratesummit.de. Give your full name, nationality, passport number, passport issue and expiry dates, passport issue place, as well as the date of birth so we can provide the invitation letter. We give invitation letters only to ticket holders.

Please bring your ticket in printed form or digital form. We will scan your ticket at the entrance and then give you the badge immediately.

Pirate Summit strives to connect early-stage founders and investors to create meaningful connections. All participants are handpicked from thousands of applications or personally invited to offer networking on the highest possible level of influence and quality. As a startup, you have the possibility to pitch in front of a great number of VCs or get to know them via our different networking opportunities. You will meet like-minded people and celebrate entrepreneurship with your next potential business partner, investor, or friend.

The applications for the pitch competition closed the 20th of July. However, your startup can still apply to attend as a visitor. As Pirate Summit is an application/invitation only conference, you can apply to participate here. You will only be billed once we accept your application.

All pitches are taking place on Pirate Summits’s first day, September 6th. You will be informed about your exact time and place by email a couple of weeks before Pirate Summit.

You will receive an email from our team.

Each startup will have 3 minutes to pitch and 2 minutes to answer Q&A from the judges. 

We will take the winning startup of the “Walk-the-Plank” pitch competition on a fully-paid trip to the startup capitals of the world: London and San Francisco. And best of all: we’ll pre-arrange 1-on-1 meetings with the best investors in town. For the Bay Area, we have confirmed the following investors: Accel Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), General Catalyst, Happiness Ventures (new $480mm seed/series A SV fund) and Mighty Capital. More will be announced soon.

Judges evaluate the startups based on the following categories: Business Model, Traction/Growth numbers, Innovativeness, Market, and Team.

Please apply for a kiosk here. You will get a response within 48 hours after you’ve applied for a Kiosk ticket.

The booths are sized at 2×1 meters. They come with a table, lighting, and power supply. When planning your exhibition kiosk, we kindly ask you to avoid too much paper as we try to be as environmentally friendly as possible. You’re more than welcome to replace the papers with digital content.

In the same place you apply for your single tickets you can apply for a bundle, here.