This year TechCrunch Disrupt Europe will be on 18-21st October, in London. Saturday and Sunday will feature the legendary TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon, followed by two days of interviews and panels with Europe’s best entrepreneurs and VCs. Grab a ticket and ran before they sell out and are still in Early Bird mode.
We have some major speakers coming, from Saul Klein of Index Ventures to Daniel Waterhouse (Balderton Capital), Philippe Botteri (Accel Partners), Maëlle Gavet (Ozon), Tine Thygesen (Everplaces), Michael Acton Smith (Mind Candy), Jason Goldberg (Hem, Fab) and many, many more.
Among them we will have investor and entrepreneur, Morten Lund.
Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, Lund has founded or co-invested in more than 100 high-tech startups in the last 15 years, including Skype, ZYB, Zecco.com, Polar Rose (facial recognition), Maxthon, Bullguard, Tradeshift, AirHelp, Itembase, LundXY and OnlyXO.
He was also a co-founder and managing partner of LundKenner, a venture capital firm focusing on technology ventures.
Lund has a fascinating history.
His most notable investment was Skype. It’s said that he put in around $50,000 and made around $50 million when it was bought by eBay for $2.6 billion in 2005.
Not long after that he invested much of his personal money from the sale of Skype, into a free newspaper venture, “Nyhedsavisen”. But when that venture failed he was declared bankrupt in January 2009. Through sheer grit and hard work, he managed to make it back from bankruptcy by April 2010, which was something of a personal journey to re-establish his reputation.
Lund has invested in a wide range of sectors spanning the internet, telecommunications, health and alternative energy industries.
His first major venture was Neo Ideo, a web consultancy founded with friends in 1996. This became one of Denmark’s top three agencies before its eventual sale to advertising giant Leo Burnett in 1999.
From 2007 he has also fronted the startup catalyst LundXY. In May 2008 Lund sold the Danish site ZYB to operator Vodafone Europe BV, for a sum believed to be in the region of $49m.
More recently, it emerged that online payments service PayPal had acquired a stake in Tradeshift for around €12 to €15 million.
In late February 2014, Tradeshift received a further $75m from Singapore’s Scentan Ventures, which the company said it would use to expand its business in Japan and China, where many of its customers have suppliers.
Aside from such great speakers, of course TechCrunch Disrupt Europe will also bring the Startup Battlefield and Startup Alley to London.
Startup Battlefield competitors pitch their companies live and on stage, competing for a prize of £30,000 and the Disrupt Cup. Previous Battlefield competitions have launched companies such as Dropbox, Mint.com, Yammer and Fitbit. You may have heard of them. Startup Alley features about 200 invited startups.
Find all the latest information on the Disrupt Europe website.