Enschede Slush’D: The founders of our coming start-up AgriBluBio visited the Start-up Fair Slush’D in Enschede

Today, Dr. Anne Vortkamp, Dr. Philipp Lemke, and Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher visited the Dutch daughter satellite event of the famous Helsinki Start-up Fair “Slush”, “the most founder-focused event on Earth” according to their website. Slush, which started in 2008, is a huge event today, with more than 10,000 attendees, and its enormous success has let to the foundation of smaller regional daughter satellite events around the globe, with 100-1000 attendees, starting in 2021 in Trondheim. In 2024, there were already 19 Slush’D events, from Europe to Africa and Asia. Competition in applications to stage a Slush’D is fierce, and it needs to be renewed every year. Enschede Slush’D started in 2023 with 300 attendees and grew to 550 this year, again organized by Novel-T (University of Twente) and REACH – EUREGIO Start-up Center (University of Münster). There was an amazing, vibrant, young atmosphere. Unlike at a scientific conference, networking in pre-arranged or spontaneous meetings between founders, investors and interested stakeholders of the EUREGIO Start-up community was clearly the heart of Enschede Slush´D. The Networking-Event was framed by presentations and discussions on the three stages - on one of which Anne was a stage host. There were successful serial founders, and there were former founders turned investors after having sold their start-up for hundreds of millions of Euro. The scale is staggering. “Big is not big enough”, seemed to be the motto, and “there is always a bigger.” As a small team of founders-to-be, we are looking for a jump-start next year followed by steady and healthy growth. But Enschede Slush’D clearly sparked our ambition for future growth and impact. Improving the world, one liter of chitosan at a time .