The busiest startup at Web Summit?
Was Exo the busiest startup at Web Summit?
In preparing for Web Summit, we largely hoped that by having our CMO Mel taking to the stage on the first day, and having our exhibition stand on the last day, we'd drum up enough interest to meet some interesting people, maybe find some partnership opportunities, and mainly just get the Exo brand out there for all to see.
However, to our surprise, we suddenly had an influx of official meeting requests, and in the week before Web Summit we quickly confirmed 14 meetings.
This was amazing to see the interest in Exo spike so close to the event, and we realised that perhaps we were going to be quite a bit busier than we initially thought.
On the Friday before the big week, Web Summit released a list of their 'most in-demand fintechs', and to our excitement, Exo was on it.
Having not attended the event before, we hadn't realised the demand for meetings with Exo was considered high. But, as you can imagine, we were happy to take such a great bit of promotion from Web Summit themselves.
From the article being published on the Friday, to the team arriving in Lisbon on the Monday, that 'demand' only grew.
Those 14 meetings quickly became 30!
And that's just the ones we could confirm and accept. Sadly there were countless other requests that we either couldn't accommodate due to timings, or the suitability for those meetings weren't right at this stage of our journey.
The Tuesday marked the first official day of Web Summit, and we kicked things off with Mel taking to the Growth Summit stage to talk about the democratisation of wealth, following it with a panel discussion.
We may be a tad biased, but she absolutely smashed it.
With a group of people wanting to chat afterwards, we had to quickly split up to help accommodate both the the post talk chats and needing to dash off for our first meetings.
The rest of Tuesday and Wednesday quickly became a blur of official meetings, chatting to other startups, checking out what we could of what else Web Summit had to offer, and even meeting former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino at one of the awesome Night Summit events.
We partnered with our old friends Graham and Mark from The Startup Van, who after launching at Night Summit back in 2015, were returning to take over the streets of Lisbon each night to meet the next great startups and entrepreneurs, while spending the days getting some of the biggest names at Web Summit into the van for an interview.
With our goal being to democratise wealth, and being a tech company at our core, we've built Exo with partnerships and integrations with other companies in mind (and very much on our agenda).
So by partnering with The Startup Van team, we knew there'd be a nice crossover in meeting great people that we'd both be able to work with.
You can check out everything The Startup Van got up to at Web Summit here, and why not take a look back through their Twitter to see what they got up to each day.
They also interviewed Mel for a catch up on what Exo has been up to since we were initially on their show and how Web Summit had been for us - give it a watch here and it's also at the bottom of this page for you.
The final day of Web Summit was upon us, and that meant just one thing - exhibition time for Exo.
After setting up our stand, mainlining some coffee and filling up our water bottles, we were as ready as we'd ever be for the day ahead.
Needless to say, we were barely ready at all.
People often joke about being 'non-stop' all day, but we quite literally were. Nick from our Marketing team manned the stand all day while others sped off for meetings, and other than sitting down for 15 minutes for lunch, he became the definition of non-stop.
Every time we finished a conversation with one person, we'd turn round to see another waiting to talk to us.
We had everyone from fellow fintechs, to investors, to networkers, to major news outlets and even a few large scale private banks and financial institutions eager to learn about Exo.
When they day finally came to an end, we were exhausted in the best way possible, and hilariously Nick had reverted to sounding like a teenage boy after losing his voice and now just squeaking out the odd word.
Did we 'win' Web Summit?
Technically not. There were startup pitches and other competitions going on that had winners and prizes and presentations and balloons (we assume).
But in our books, we'll take our week in Lisbon as a win!
We chat with Exo Investing CMO Melanie Palmer. Exo Investing were partners of Startup Van for our first trip back to Web Summit since we launched!
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