We’ve just confirmed that Morten Lund, possibly the quintessential European tech entrepreneur/investor – will be keynoting at this year’s GeeknRolla in London on April 20.
An entrepreneur from Copenhagen, Denmark, Lund is a talismanic figure on the European scene. While many tech players in Europe are accused of being too timid, this is a guy who – like many Silicon Valley players – bets a lot of chips at once. Indeed, his story reads like a roller-coaster ride in European entrepreneurship.
Wikipedia describes Lund as a startup ‘ideologist’ and ‘visionary’ who has founded or co-invested in more than 40 high-tech start ups in the last decade, most famously Skype. In May 2008 he exited Danish social networking and mobile backup site ZYB to operator Vodafone Europe for around $49m.
But it’s not been plain sailing. Last year he was declared personally bankrupt last year after losing 10M Krona in an investment into a Danish newspaper, which was admittedly debt generated mostly under the previous ownership.
At the time he came out with a statement reminiscient of Eric Cantona’s famous ‘trawler’ quote: “It’s like superman getting his suit stolen – I’m shaken and don’t really wanna talk about it. I will come back again with full power, i just need to wash my suit.”
At Le Web in 2008 he gave an amazing talk about the highs and lows of being an entrepreneur which impressed several commentators.
His appearance at GeeknRolla is quite simply not to be missed. I will also be taking him to task about his next moves and his involvement in the controversial new startup, Tradeshift.
We’ll be rolling out the rest of our speaker programme next week.
We are looking for speeches which enliven the European startups scene and teach something tangible. You can pitch me your idea on email with the subject line ‘GeeknRolla”. But just saying you’d like to speak is not enough. You must have a real idea for a subject. Speakers do not get to talk about their company. They must impart real knowledge.
If you are a startup in stealth, private beta or early alpha and want to launch at GeeknRolla, then fill out this form.
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