30 Secondsessions – The Big Squeeze 2021

This event had it all. Company “booths”, 1-on-1 sessions – neatly facilitated through Conversation Starter – and live sessions with Industry experts.The sessions themselves were split up into four different umbrella categories (Research and Development, Go Global, Finance and Funding, and HR), each of these divided into different topics in a continuous spree of awesome content.

The experts, as you would expect, definitely delivered.

Topic wise, I’ve chosen to focus more on the “HR” track of the event. Cloudoki’s core strength is our family and we are always looking for ways to improve this, especially during challenging times such as the one we’re living at the moment, which keeps us a lot more distant than we’d hope for.It was great to get validation on key points such as our approach to maintaining our culture going during and after the pandemic, but also on the value of a trust-based work culture, and how to build on this.

A culture is based on values, and those com from the founders. This is why it’s essential for founders to know everyone and to really be involved in the recruitment process.- Peter Geiregat – Ex CPO Showpad

I also couldn’t resist to squeeze Arvin De Coster’s class in on “How to grow a startup globally” and got great insights on how to (and how not to) breach new markets. Both the Project and Product side of Cloudoki (API Suite) got a lot from this session.

Lastly the day ended with announcing this year’s winners:

• Scale-up of the Year: Wooclap
• Student Startup of the Year: Symplicy
• Disruptive Innovation of the Year: Sunrise
• Startup of the Year: Verbolia

Huge props to all the nominees!

In conclusion, it was a hectic and busy half day that seemed to last only 1 hour but at the same time felt immense, due to the amount of relevant content provided. Juggling between classes, planned in 1-on-1s with a splash of ad-hoc ones, left me with the closest feeling I’ve had in the past 14 months of actually attending an event.

A job well done.

PS: Shout-out to Conversation Starter for delivering the venue experience as they do, through their platform. Game changer.