Dinner

As the saying goes: what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. Anna has founded a total of six companies in ten years; which were her biggest mistakes, and what did she learn through them? Join this campfire to hear stories that are usually left untold; learn how to weather the perfect storm, sink your ship, and make it out alive.

At my company virtualQ we have grown the Development Team from zero to 12 developers and 3 data scientists within the last 6 months, and now have one of the best teams I have ever worked with. We have gone through hundreds of applications, lots of interviews, and many challenges during the process, for example - stemming a flood of unqualified applications from overseas - dealing with setbacks when the best candidates reject you last minute and how to prevent this from happening - advertise your job descriptions at the right places, and how - intentionally looking for remote devs and how to interview them and who to hire - presenting the right company culture to make your job attractive (e.g. "result only" work place?) In addition, I will extend the session with infos on how to "grow" a great agile development process, our focus being lean over process.

Let’s talk about mindfulness in life and at work! This Campfire is all about you, your mind and how to stay connected. Our world is hustling and bustling. At work and beyond we are constantly connected. So, when is the time to just be present and focused? How do we actually connect with ourselves? How does personal presence and focus contribute to our well-being at work? We would love to chat about your experiences in this area and will share our experiences regarding mindfulness as a pathway to more well-being, team spirit and creativity. We`re looking forward to meeting you at the Campfire. Kind regards Martina & Boris

Blackbeard was smart and calculated and did not rely on brutal force. He was a true leader, who had the blessing of his crew. Yet he is one of the most known pirates of his time. Those two elements - being smart and understanding people - are the key elements to a successfull pricing strategy. Given that this is one of THE most important tools to ensure your company is in the black, you ideally give it more than 5 minutes of your attention. Let’s discuss how Blackbeard would have sailed his business into the black by using a smart pricing strategy. Aye aye!

Speed-Networking - get to know the crowd of PIRATE Summit by participating in one of our famous speeddating rounds: 2 min 1on1 exchange with at least 10 new contacts. Meeting point will be at the Beergarden, just click participate here in Talque and come around on time

As the first generation of the maker’s movement ends - TechShop and Maker Faire are the main symbols to decline, from now on how can hardware startups build sustainable business? And how can founders take advantage of the current scenario to keep innovating in terms of business models with solutions that couldn’t have been developed a few years ago? This campfire will open a discussion about open possibilites for local ecosystems to support hardware startups that are already developing solutions that disrupt the way we live, just like Gutenberg did with printing media over 500 years ago.

There is huge potential to be unlocked in young, ambitious (tech) entrepreneurs. But what is the best way for them to leverage their potential? In this Fireside discussion, we want to discuss some of the challenges student/graduate founders face, the approaches they can take to raising funds, and the implications of deciding to take on VC financing at a very early stage. We also give some insights about the approaches of ASIF Ventures from Amsterdam and First Momentum Ventures from Karlsruhe, two young pre-seed Venture Capital funds, run by students.

We (PIRATE) are thinking about setting up a micro fund for #intheblack startups. We’d love to discuss: 1. Is there a need for this? What are the startups that qualify? 2. We think we should structure it as an Evergreen fund. However, there are a lot of challenges like the need for a secondary market. 3. In order to keep costs low we’d love to include successful founders as LPs and mentors. What are your thoughts? 4. How to sustain the fund. Fund size, management fee etc. 5. How to raise the initial capital. Crowdfunding... This is supposed to be a very open session. We don’t yet have many of the answers. If you are also currently setting up a fund or have already done so, please come by and share your experience.

In the early stages of a startup, the future looks bright and money is scarce. Why spending more than the absolute minimum amount of attention, time and money on legal aspects? The answer is: there's just too many examples where airy legal agreements have troubled massively, be it by competitors, customers or investors. P.S. This will be business talk, not legal talk.

This is a 10-min meditation guided by Martina Dopfer to create peace and connection. What could possibly be better to start a Pirate Summit day than to fully connect with yourself before connecting with all the great minds out there. This meditation will help you to get clarity on what is going on with you today and potentially also on what you want to get out of your days at the Pirate Summit. Come join. Love and light***