Pomp and substance as Slush 2016 opens

It was a display of meticulous planning and organization as the Slush team welcome more that 17,000 guests including 2,336 startups, 1,146 investors and 610 journalists to the 2016 edition of the event.

Slush CEO, Marianne Vikkula and President and Executive Producer, Nicolas Dolenc opened the day with welcoming remarks coupled with amazing light show and fire eruptions which was the theme of this year’s event.

All the six themed stages had amazing content delivered by renown speakers and entreprenuers. Some of the founders, CEOs, and partners that spoke were: Lowercase Capital’s Chris Sacca, Spotify’s Daniel Ek, Sherpa Foundry’s Lisa Barnett, Kleiner Perkins’ Arielle Zuckerberg, and StackOverflow’s Joel Spolsky. Prestigious appearances were also seen on stage at Slush, when the Crown Prince of Norway Haakon and Prince Constantijn of the Netherlands bestowed their presence among excited guests.

Notable launches were announced at the event. Clue, a leading female health app, announced a $20 million funding round led by Nokia Venture Partners. TeliaCompany CEO, Johan Dennelind, and Co-Founder of Fair, Johannes Hirvaskoski, launched the first peer-to-peer insurance service. Users of Fair are able to vote on which damages will be compensated, and subsequently share the reimbursement. Hatch, a company spin-off of Rovio, released a social game provider and streaming service. In this “Netflix of games,” users can easily play and share over 100 games.

During Day 1, startups participating in the Slush 100 Pitching Competition battled for the twenty semifinal spots. The semifinalists will continue their chase at the pitching stage tomorrow morning, with only four among them prevailing to the final round held at the Founder Stage later on the day 2.