Live From Dublin: Web Summit 2014 Day 1 Coverage

In case you weren’t able to attend this year’s Web Summit in Dublin, Ireland, here’s the skinny on Day 1. In what’s being dubbed, “The Greatest Tech Conference on Earth” the first thing we learned upon arrival was that there would be no WIFI. We had to ask if this was joke. It was not. Fear not! There was enough dial-up modems for all, well at least for the press.

With more than 22.000 attendees, 2.000 startups, 1.300 journalists, 700 investors, 600 speakers and 11 stages in this behemoth, it’s kinda hard to keep track, so this is just a glimpse of what’s happening in Dublin today.

Paddy Cosgrove, Web Summit founder, kicked things off welcoming the masses to Dublin and stressing the importance of the social element where most of the successful deals originate.

Saul Klein, Partner at Index Ventures, told the audience how entrepreneurialism was becoming mainstream. ‘”Aim high and shoot for the moon,” he said,” Though it is a risky business.” Other insights from Klein included the advice that you can only learn by doing, you have to go for it yourself and the opportunities are endless so go out and start a company!

Jorge Soto described how from a personal family diagnosis of cancer, a way to decode disease and identify cancerous cells in their earliest stages may have been found.

John Collins of Stripe spoke of the rise of his online payment company and how it has disrupted the existing online payments ecosystem.  “The reason we started Stripe,” he said at Day One of Web Summit. ” Was we felt nobody understands the developer – you either had to use Paypal or build it yourself.  It’s a natural evolution for the process of buying online to make it simpler.”

On Bitcoin, he added, “I don’t think Bitcoin is a threat to Stripe.  And no, we are not investing in Bitcoin.”

Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, spoke about his company being an ‘anti-social network‘ and that ‘you should be able to say less and do more.’ Seven years into their 100 year plan, Libin explained that Evernote rejects all indirect revenue and doesn’t datamine user information.  ‘We make money when people tell us they love our product – people use us to make their lives work as good as possible.  Our motto is ‘it’s more important that you stay than you pay‘,” he said.

NASDAQ rang their opening bell at 14:00 local time to kick off the days’ trading!

And, last but not least, Eva Longoria, actress and businesswoman, spoke to Jemima Khan about the importance of women in business.  “Women start businesses at three times the average yet can’t get funding,” she said issuing a challenge to the women in the audience. “I want to challenge all the women here today to be mentors to younger women.

Follow Barcinno on Twitter for more action, but it might be a slow stream – no WIFI remember? Now, it’s off to the Pub Crawl!

For more live coverage and pictures of Web Summit 2014, check out the official Web Summit Flickr Page.

About Web Summit

Web Summit is Europe’s largest festival of ideas and has been dubbed “Davos for geeks.” Founded in 2010, the event has grown exponentially. This year, the Web Summit will host more than 20,000 attendees and guests in Dublin on November 4th- 6th. Over 1,200 journalists will attend the event from more than 70 countries

Over the past three years, Elon Musk founder of Tesla, SpaceX and PayPal, Niklas Zennström founder of Skype, Reed Hastings, founder of Netflix, David Karp, founder of Tumblr, Jack Dorsey founder of Twitter and Square, Steve Case and Tim Armstrong of AOL, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, co-founders of YouTube have been among a long list of speakers at the Web Summit.

Speakers confirmed for Web Summit 2014 include Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal and Palantir as well as the first investor in Facebook, Drew Houston, founder of Dropbox, Padmasree Warrior, CTSO of Cisco, John Sculley, former CEO of Apple, Brendan Iribe CEO of Oculus and Eva Longoria of the Eva Longoria Foundation. Over 600 speakers and some 20,000 attendees will gather in Dublin for this year’s Web Summit, the largest tech event in Europe.

image credit: Sportsfile Web Summit 2014