The yearly Slush conference planned for November 19—20, 2020 in Helsinki has been cancelled “due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the organisation announced in a press release. Instead, Slush is planning to “pursue our mission of helping founders in new ways this year,” said Miika Huttunen, the CEO of Slush who started on this position earlier this year.
The organisers haven't opened ticket sales for the 2020 event yet, so they won't have to deal with refunds.
“In addition to the well-being of people, it would have been irresponsible to overlook the possible financial ramifications not only to Slush but also to our community of partners, vendors, and visitors in case that we would have been forced to cancel the event closer to November,” Huttunen said.
The team is planning to bring the physical event back in 2021 and keep working on online products in the meantime.
"Moving forward, we'll focus all of our efforts on finding the best possible ways to help founders in this challenging situation,” Huttunen said. “For example, we are already working on new ways to connect startups to investors and facilitate corporate-startup collaboration. We want to be here for startups even in the toughest of times, and help is needed now perhaps more than ever before.”
One of Europe's largest tech startup conferences — and one of the tech.eu team's favourites, — Slush's main event has been held yearly in Helsinki since 2008. Over the years, the team has added satellite events in Japan and China, as well as smaller gatherings all over the world; none of them seems to be planned for this year, judging by the conference's website.
In February, we interviewed Miika Huttunen for our podcast. Give it a listen:
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