Why go
Most of your deals will come from people you already know. Attending conferences adds three things your network cannot by itself. The cost is a ticket and two to four days, which is usually well worth it!
- Calibration. Forty pitches in two days show you what the market looks like right now: which teams are strong, which prices are being asked. It also hones your evaluation skills. An angel who sees ten cases a year has no baseline; a conference gives one in a weekend.
- Co-investors. Syndicates are built from people who have met, and most Nordic angels meet each other at the same few events. The investor day and the investor lounge exist for making the connections.
- Follow-on funds. The VCs who will price your company’s next round are also attending. They remember angels who bring prepared cases and might provide your exit.
The risk for an angel is committing to an investment on the spot. Take the deck home and run the first screen there. A term sheet signed at a conference is a term sheet signed without diligence.
Three habits make the trip pay:
- Buy the investor ticket. It admits you to the investor day and the matchmaking app, and often costs less than a general pass.
- Book meetings before you arrive. The apps open to investors a week or two early, and the calendars for good founders fill up fast.
- Choose by sector before size. Two days at a deep-tech summit beat four at a mega-conference.
Norway
There is no single Norwegian flagship. The year runs from an investor day in the north in spring, through a deep-tech gathering in the south in June, to an autumn cluster in Oslo.
| Event | When | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Arctic Investment Day | Tromsø, April | Invitation-only investor day by Norinnova and DNB NXT. Tech, space, health, ocean and dual-use pitches, with speed-date meetings. |
| AI+ Investors Day | Halden, late May | Opening day of the AI+ conference. Applied-AI deal flow and matchmaking for angels and VCs. |
| The Foundry | Mandal & Kristiansand, June | Formerly Mandal Slush’D. Applied AI, robotics, defence, space and ocean. Investor lounge and an LP and VC dinner. The most curated deep-tech room in Norway. |
| Innovasjonsuken OPP and Demo Day Vestlandet | Bergen, mid-September | Western Norway’s innovation week. Demo Day is a curated pitch morning; DNB NXT Bergen runs the same day. Free for early-stage investors by invitation. |
| Trondheim Tech Festival | Trondheim, late September | Formerly Technoport. Technology, AI and health AI, with Digs Demo Night for startup pitches. |
| Oslo Innovation Week | Oslo, late October | City-wide festival of around ninety events with a dedicated investor track. DNB NXT and the 100 Pitches final close the week. |
| ICE Kirkenes | Kirkenes, October | Arctic circular-economy and AI summits. Small and regional; go for the Barents network. |
Three industry fairs are biennial and carry startup pitching inside a large trade show: ONS in Stavanger (late August, even years), Nor-Shipping at Lillestrøm (June, odd years) and Aqua Nor in Trondheim (August, odd years). They are where an energy, maritime or aquaculture angel meets the corporate buyers who later acquire portfolio companies.
Smaller regional events of note: Future Week in Bergen (media tech, September).
The Nordics and the Baltics
These are the Nordic flagship events you should consider. The Baltic events are smaller and cheaper than the Nordic ones, which often means the networking is better.
| Event | When | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| sTARTUp Day | Tartu, January | Estonian early-stage festival of about 3,000 people and 200 investors. Investors-only day and a matchmaking app that opens early to investors. |
| Techarena | Stockholm, February | Sweden’s flagship for startups, VCs and corporates. Investor office hours, the TOP46 pitch competition, one-to-one matchmaking. |
| TechChill | Riga, March | The Baltic flagship in Latvia: about 2,000 people and 250 investors. Founders Battle pitch competition and early investor access to the matchmaking app. |
| GoWest | Gothenburg, April | Nordic venture capital forum, pre-seed to Series A. Investor day, LP and GP lunch, deep-tech deal-flow showcase. The Swedish angel and VC meeting point. |
| Iceland Innovation Week | Reykjavík, late April | Multi-venue festival leaning to climate and deep tech. Investor day and a pitch finale. |
| TONIK | Tórshavn, early-May | An especially intimate tech conference and art festival in the Faroe Islands, with a pitch competition and unique networking opportunities unlike any other. |
| Latitude59 | Tallinn, late May | Estonia’s flagship: about 3,000 people and 600 investors. Pitch prize pool in the hundreds of thousands of euros, funded partly by Baltic and Finnish angel syndicates. |
| Arctic15 | Helsinki, June | Built for meetings rather than talks: curated deal-room meetings, several hundred investors, an LP summit. |
| TechBBQ | Copenhagen, late August | Scandinavia’s flagship summit. Investor day the day before with several hundred VCs, corporates and angels; LP forum; investor lounge. |
| Startup Fair | Vilnius, September | Lithuania’s showcase. Pitch Battle with an investment pool above a million euros; Investor Camp for visiting investors. |
| Slush | Helsinki, November | The Nordic and global flagship: over 12,000 people, three quarters founders or investors. Investor-only day and a meeting tool. The investor ticket is the reason to go. |
Other relevant sector and regional events: NORDEEP (deep tech, Espoo, September), Nordic Fintech Week (Copenhagen, late September), Stockholm Fintech Week (February or March), Nordic Tech Week (Stockholm, September), the FiBAN and DanBAN angel-network calendars, and Nordic Innovation‘s thematic investor delegations.
Europe
Two European conferences are built for angels, and both are EBAN’s; which NorBAN’s members can access through our affiliate EBAN membership. SuperReturn is the fund industry’s own event. The rest are huge tech shows with an investor programme inside, and they reward coming with a plan.
| Event | When | Focus | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| EBAN Annual Congress | A different city each year, late May or June | Angels | The European angel federation’s flagship. Most of the room is angels and angel networks. Member ticket terms through EBAN affiliation. |
| European Angel Investment Summit | Brussels or Luxembourg, October | Angels | EBAN’s autumn summit with the European Commission on cross-border angel investing. Programme pass free; networking passes a few hundred euros. |
| SuperReturn International and SuperReturn Venture | Berlin, June | VC and LP | The private-equity and venture fund industry’s meeting: thousands of LPs and GPs, tens of thousands of booked meetings. Relevant if you invest in funds or run a family office. |
| 4YFN | Barcelona, early March | General tech | The startup show inside Mobile World Congress, about a thousand startups. Investor zone and curated matchmaking; investor pass by application. |
| Hello Tomorrow | Amsterdam, June | Deep tech | The deep-tech summit: science-based startups, industrial corporates, research centres. Investor day and GP and LP sessions. |
| VivaTech | Paris, mid-June | General tech | Europe’s largest tech show, over 100,000 visitors. A three-day business angel track run by France Angels, reverse pitches, office hours. |
| Bits & Pretzels | Munich, late September | Founders and VC | Founders festival that ends in an Oktoberfest tent, well over a thousand investors. Investment speed dating and a one-to-one booking platform. |
| Sifted Summit | London, early October | VC and growth | Scaleup founders and funders, Series A and beyond. Go to meet the funds that price later rounds. |
| Web Summit | Lisbon, November | General tech | Europe’s largest tech conference, around 70,000 people. The standard investor ticket is free and includes the investor meeting area. |
There are also some European angel-network events open to visitors: UKBAA’s Early-Stage Investment Summit (London, late autumn), the Angel Investor Summit (Brighton, September) and the ESIL annual event on angels and deep tech (Brussels, spring).
How to Choose
As a beginner, pick the flagship event most relevant for the region or sector your are focusing on in your portfolio, and go regularly. When you are starting to widen your scope or build a broader Nordic portfolio, start at Slush with the investor ticket, and make sure you don’t forget the side-events!If you have a specific sector focus, do that sector’s event before any flagship. For those angels building a syndicate, EBAN’s congress is where to go because everyone there has the same problem. Everything else is optional, but well worth a visit to build out your network.