S&P Adventures: TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin
The first December days had our focus on one of the most significant European conferences, TechCrunch’s Disrupt Berlin!
With such a great list of speakers, one could not think of not attending it. We believe that it put some matters into perspective, with talks going from ‘how to build sustainability as a business’ to ‘how to scale your startup globally.’ They even went big on the Fintech sector, having discussions on ‘creating a global payment network’ or ‘how to build for the virtual economy.’
Disrupt Berlin has all that one could ask for when speaking of a conference experience: great panel discussions, exciting topics, an in-house hackathon, and even a Startup Battlefield.
What made an impression on us at first was the excellent quality of the participants and startups present there, even though you could say we were expecting a more significant number of attendees. Disrupt is a great event for someone who is looking to get in contact with investors, partners, the media, or to get some feedback on their product.
Also, we were thrilled to attend a full pavilion dedicated to Romanian startups for the first time this year at an international conference.
We were delighted to meet up with friends from Beez and SocialBee, startups which started in Romania and are now performing on the global market.
In terms of the speakers, we were looking forward to seeing Daniel Dines from UiPath on stage. It was the first time we saw him speaking, and it was nice to see him talk with such openness and authenticity about the challenges of building the first Romanian unicorn.
‘Before starting UiPath, I used to work Microsoft in Seattle. But I wasn’t feeling so comfortable there on the West Coast. And I had a crazy idea to start the company. I thought that going back to Bucharest, Romania would be the best, which is a stupid idea.’ (Daniel Dines, UiPath)
When asked what appealed to that idea, specifically, Dines said that he knew the culture and was able to hire engineers without the crazy salaries. He also added that ‘it was really before knowing anything.’
‘I made all the stupid mistakes possible in building a startup, like failing to slow, or keeping a product too much. It’s been a disaster. But, somehow, we created the technology under the umbrella of computer vision and kept going. We were also fortunate to find a massive market.’ (Daniel Dines, UiPath)
UiPath’s success is the story of how important it is to have a vision when building a product and never to give up, no matter the hardships coming along on your journey.
Attending this conference reconfirmed to us the fact that, to succeed, you have to be open to the idea of failing, and that giving up is never an option.
One has to be ambitious, always keep going, learn from his mistakes, and every day to try to do things better than the previous one. Continuous improvement and an optimistic mind is, we think, the key to success.
TechCrunch’s Disrupt Berlin is an excellent conference for every individual who works in the tech industry, especially those working on their product. It allows one to learn and be inspired while also connecting with possible investors or partners.
We are going to see you next year, Disrupt Berlin!
