It’s so good to be back in Malta! Twelve months on from our first proper visit to Valletta, the EU-Startups Summit pulled us back to the Mediterranean Conference Centre for another two days of stages, side rooms, and the unmistakable hum of a few thousand founders, investors, and operators all in the same place at once.
We came in with a list of sessions we were not missing for the world and left with more notes than we expected, a few new client conversations, a podcast tease, and a small detour to Gozo. This year more than ever, it really felt like Europe was represented in this microcosm, meetings peeps from Italy to Hungary to Estonia, Portugal and even the US!
Here is how it went and how the ‘corns lived it.
JJ on Stage Three Times in One Day!
The core of our visit was always going to be JJ’s day one. A crazy intense day with not one, not two, but three panels! And three completely different topics and energies, all on May 7th. We were not sure what would happen or if JJ would survive, but JJ made it, not only acing the two sessions as a moderator, but with plenty of energy to go for her panel duties in the PR session. Each one came out feeling distinct rather than blurred and it’s safe to say the audience really enjoyed it.
Panel 1: Mental Health Tips for Entrepreneurs and Startup Teams under Pressure
The first was the mental health panel on with Magda Mazloum (Brighter Life Psychology), Karen Tierney (SilverCloud Health), Matthew Bartolo, and Irene Anggreeni. There is a small but obvious irony in JJ moderating a panel about founder burnout on a day with three speaking engagements stacked back to back, but we will leave the joke right there. That’s how agendas turn out sometimes! What stuck was the way each panelist gave a unique angle or insight, there was a true chemistry in the panel. There were analogies (the car that needs servicing, the bank account that needs paying into), metaphors and a healthy dose of breaking down issues into the basics and how founders could respond. It was also refreshing to talk about something founders are still oddly bad at discussing in public, especially at a time when many push the idea that competitiveness, success and almost our destiny are reliant on simply putting more hours into work. Things like shame, sadness, and the emotional weight of running a company were spoken about very candidly, making the room feel warmer than most. Our takeaway from this session: remember that YOU are the most important asset you have.
Panel 2: Future of Venture Capital: The Impact of AI, New Trends, New Approaches
The second was the future of venture capital panel on the Main Stage, with Alex Farcet (Startupbootcamp, Raspberry Ventures), Joe Seager-Dupuy (True Capital) and Pekka Mäki (3TS Capital). We have sat through a lot of VC panels over the years and most of them rhyme. This one did not (but that’s a good thing). It was easily one of the most genuinely informative VC conversations we have caught on a stage in a long time, with new takes on the changes AI is bringing. Practical, no-fluff advice, and that is exactly how it felt in the packed auditorium.
AI, inevitably, was the through-line. It almost has to be a component in any pitch now just to clear the excitement bar, but the panel was sharp on what gets dismissed as fake: AI bolted on for the deck, with no real product or strategic implication. What was more interesting was how the VCs themselves are working out what counts as meaningful in this market and what a genuine moat looks like in an AI-shaped category. It changes so much – experience and proprietary data are starting to look more like moats than features and tech ever did. Also interesting was the insight into how they are themselves quietly using AI in their own workflows to screen deals, stay across more companies, and do the analysis their associates used to do alone, including some self-created ‘solutions’. The thesis is being written in real time (or you could say, we’re building the plane as we fall after jumping off a cliff), and the panel was candid about that.
On differentiators of the future, Joe commented how taste will be one of the biggest, and that Europe has the best track record on that one (I wonder what our American friends say to that). Alex, asked about AGI, saying he would not want to be in the US or China when and if it arrives, which is something we hadn’t thought about, calming yet also alarming in some ways. The panel agreed that with AI, the founders that are the paranoid ones who treat every threat seriously are getting more points now. Pekka closed with a genuinely optimistic (more than we could have imagined) case for where European tech is heading, cutting against the more anxious media narrative the continent has been carrying for the past year.
Panel 3: PR and Branding Insights: How Startups Build a Brand People Talk About
The third was the PR and branding panel on Growth Stage at 15:55, where JJ joined Cathy White (CEW Communications), Clara Armand-Delille (ThirdEyeMedia), Kate McElroy (Manyone), and Kamilla Strausz (InnoMaker Partner). This one had a particular charge to it because it is the conversation we have with founders constantly and rarely get to have on a stage. It was also refreshingly open, blunt, and unpolished. Five people who do this work every day, saying what they actually think rather than the polite panel-friendly version of it. Raw PR power, basically.
The headline myth to bust: PR does not stand for press release. The second: branding is not logos, and you need to start thinking about it from day one. From there, the conversation moved through the modern tech media landscape and what AI has done to it, including some of the more unfortunate consequences. Silicon Canals, once a fixture of the European tech reading list, came up as a stark example of a publication that has tipped into AI slop and lost much of what made it worth reading. The panel did not soft-pedal it.
The other thread that landed hardest was the case for getting the basics right before chasing the shiny object. Too many founders, the panel agreed, are fixated on landing TechCrunch as if it is the only outcome that counts. A proper grounding in what PR actually is, how the media landscape actually works, and how much time the founder actually has to commit, would unlock far more for them than any single coveted byline. It is rare to get five people who do this work day in and day out in the same room, and the practical tips landed harder than any keynote could have.
Awards, awards, awards
Global Startup Awards
For this edition, the team got serious about awards! EU Startups teamed up with Global Startup Awards to bring the grand finale to Malta and inject some serious global flavour to the event. Winners included startups from the MENA region, North America, Central Asia and more!
The winners were:
🏆🇩🇪 Darya Kamkalova | Ecosystem Hero of the Year
🏆🇬🇧 Akansha Dimri | Diversity Role Model of the Year
🏆🇸🇬 Singapore Management University | Best Accelerator/Incubator Program
🏆🇪🇬 EdVentures | Investor of the Year
🏆🇷🇴 Rubik Hub | Best Co-working Space
🏆🇨🇿 Kardi Ai | Best Health Tech Startup
🏆🇨🇴 Monet – Crédito para todos (YC S21) | Best FinTech Startup
🏆🇹🇷 Dr.Medkit | Best Youth Startup
🏆🇺🇿 Catextra | Best GreenTech Startup
🏆🇮🇩 Bobby Y. Putra | Founder of the Year
🏆🇰🇷 bemyfriends | Startup of the Year
🏆🇺🇸 AmHyTech | Best Newcomer
🏆🇺🇿 Rakhima Nugmanova | People’s Choice
Check out Lelja’s LinkedIn post (from the GSA team, who kindly put this list together) for the full summary.
EU Startups Summit’s Pitch Competition
On Day 2, the pitch competition concluded with the victory of AlterEcho, who are developing a robotic embodiment platform for the life sciences sector. Check out the full article with more on AlterEcho and those that pitched on EU Startups here.
The only spoiler we can give? Think about out of body experiences…
The Sessions That Stuck
Beyond JJ’s run of panels, the breadth of the programme this year was the real story. You could go deep on one theme or stitch together a 360 refresher on where European startups are right now, depending on your choices. It was intense in terms of our own involvement, but we were glad to be able to catch some of the conversations on stage.
The bootstrapping thread ran through both days and was, for us, an interesting contrast to today’s focus on AI valuations exploding with huge rounds. I mean, AI can also help you scale better as a bootstrapped startup! Dimitris Vassos opened day two on Main Stage with five tactical lessons from two decades of building Omilia into an enterprise AI leader without burning through investor money. David Bäckström closed day two with the Profitable by Design fireside, walking through how seQura was built into a €200 million revenue, €28 million-plus EBT fintech without ever taking VC.
We also got useful updates on EU Inc, the proposal for a Europe-wide legal entity for startups, in the Main Stage panel with Iwona Biernat (Project Europe), Kay Jebelli (Chamber of Progress), Vasco Pereira da Silva (Allied For Startups), and Vazil Hudak. The conversation here is not new, but it seems that now it is advancing in the real world. Despite all the news and LinkedIn posts out there, it’s hard to understand what is real and what is rhetoric, and we know politicians love rhetoric. The panel did a clear job of laying out where the political will is and where the friction still sits. More on this, perhaps on The Runway pod in the near future…
Speaking of European-wide business… Andrea Lamperini repped WeRoad to talk about how they scaled to €130 million in revenue across Europe, in what are very different cultures and markets. Interesting to get the overview first-hand of validating such an innovative business model and the nuances of scaling it beyond the home market of Italy. And now, also in the US! PS: keep your eyes open for even more exciting news from WeRoad very soon.
Two Runs, One Boat, and the Reason We Keep Coming Back
The sessions are the spine of any event, but anyone who has done one of these knows the enormous value of what happens in the corridors, at the dinners, and on the way to and from the venue. EU-Startups in particular has always been good at making space for that this year.
This time we joined two morning runs. The first was with VCRunClub, started by Octopus Ventures’ Rich Bolton to bring VCs together in a different way than the pub (we secretly hope they open it up more offically also to other startup folks). More on them on Octopus Ventures’ blog, here. In this case, the run was led by Conor Moynagh, Head of VC at HubSpot for Startups, and also very involved with the club, and who later took the Growth Stage on day two with his Take AI-m keynote on focusing strategy in a transforming economy. A good way to meet a handful of founders before the day actually started and an excuse to have croissants without feeling guilty.
The second run was a WeMeet led by WeRoad’s Andrea on a route that worked in a tiny amount of sightseeing alongside the more challenging ups and downs of Valletta. Kicking off a Summit day with a run and a conversation, we have decided, is not a bad way to live (more of that coming too).
Beyond the runs, there were the dinners and the side conversations that always make Malta worth the early flight. An evening of Indian food with our client Soulmates Ventures turned into a long, sprawling conversation about investing in the future, Czechia, Slovakia, and a lot else besides. We will also be putting Naan Bar on the recommended list. Good to see Zoltan Vardy and Leo Burger again, both of whom we keep crossing paths with at events across Europe. Keep rockin’! And nice meeting fellow comms pros Bernhard Holzer and Kamilla Strausz, we had a nice PR and marketing chat that went longer, and deeper, than expected. Those are the best.
Bonus: food and free time
And then, because two days at the Mediterranean Conference Centre deserve a proper wind-down, we finished the trip with a boat outing to Gozo with our long-time affiliate marketing partner Viktorija Ratomskė: Crystal Lagoon, Blue Lagoon, a bit of cave exploration, before catching a plane back to London.
Some of our food recommendations from this trip:
Sliema – Trattoria del Mare: a true summit of its own, the peak of pasta-meets-seafood
Valletta – Aki: Michelin-recommended sushi at affordable prices
Valletta – Naan Baar: Sophisticated Indian with great cocktails, naan selections
Last but not least, a huge thanks to Thomas Ohr, Anastasiia Ponomareva, David Cendón García, and the whole EU-Startups team for another sharply organised, energy-packed Summit.
‘Til the next one!
More events we wrote about
🇲🇹 EU Startups Summit 2025, Malta
🇳🇱 TNW Conference 2025, Amsterdam
