1. finance
2. investing
3. venture capital

WELCOME TO
OUTLOOK 2015
KEY FACTS & KEY STORIES
MAY 28 & 29, 2015
HOFBURG IMPERIAL PALACE
VIENNA, AUSTRIA
OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY FACTS
ATTENDEES.
PIONEERS FESTIVAL IS STRICTLY LIMITED TO
2,500 PARTICIPANTS. WE DON’T WANT TO GROW
IN QUANTITIY BUT IN QUALITY.
STARTUPS
ENTREPRENEURS
INVESTORS
CORPORATES
GOVERNMENTALS &
DECISION MAKERS
DEVELOPERS & ENGINEERS
DESIGNERS & MARKETERS
U25 & HI-POTENTIALS
INTL. PRESS & MEDIA
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY FACTS
MEDIA.
200+ ACCREDITED JOURNALISTS AND
16 BROADCASTING STATIONS, COVERED PIONEERS FESTIVAL
LAST YEAR IN 1000+ ARTICLES WORLDWIDE, WHICH CAUSED
1,2 BILLION UNIQUE PAGEVIEWS ON ONLINE ARTICLES.
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY FACTS
ELEMENTS.
THE FESTIVAL DAYS MAY 28 & 29, 2015 PROVIDE 100 HOURS
OF HANDCRAFTED CONTENT & EXQUISITE NETWORKING.
FOR UPDATED INFORMATION, PLEASE GO TO:
pioneersfestival.com/Festival-Days
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
At Pioneers Festival we host two main stages where we invite The Who’s Who
of Tech & Sciencepreneurship to inspire and empower the audience of 2,500
Entrepreneurs and Innovators from around the world on disruptive Future Tech,
as well as hands-on Startup Know-How.
The following pages will give insights into highlighted stories and content of this
years Pioneers Festival.
EUROPEAN PREMIERES
The Hyperloop
STARTUP KNOW-HOW
Building global Hardware Startups
Athos
Sales for Startups
Robo Wiz-Kid from the Mid-West
A perfect Investor Meeting
ARENA HIGHLIGHTS
ACADEMY HIGHLIGHTS
A real pioneers: Anousheh Ansari
Venture Design for Startups
Health Data: from DNA to API
How to crack AngelList
Agtech, Food & Biotech
ROASTED!
INTERVIEW REQUESTS
All our Top-Speakers will be available for interviews.
For that we provide a dedicated Interview Area at Hofburg Imperial Palace.
Please approach: Andreas Roettl
andreas.roettl@pioneers.io / +43 664 305 78 74
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
A TRUE PIONEER
AND LIVING LEGEND.
Anousheh Ansari
PRODEA SYSTEMS
Anousheh Ansari – the fourth ever and first female private
spaceflight participant live on stage.
A serial entrepreneur, Anousheh Ansari is co-­‐founder and chairman of Prodea Systems. She became the fourth ever, and first female, private spaceflight par>cipant when she flew to the Interna>onal Space Sta>on (ISS) in 2006. During her eight-­‐day stay onboard the ISS, Ansari performed a series of experiments on behalf of the European Space Agency, including consequences of space radia>on on crew members and different species of microbes on the ISS. Ansari is now a “Space Ambassador,” seeking to create public awareness for space explora>on and promote peace and explora>on among na>ons. #livinglegend
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
THE HYPERLOOP.
Dirk Ahlborn
HYPERLOOP TRANSPORTATION TECHNOLOGIES
Disrupting the future of transportation –
Dirk Ahlborn is a German-­‐born American entrepreneur. He is the CEO and co-­‐founder of JumpStartFund, an online crowdsourcing plaTorm for entrepreneurial projects. He is also the CEO of Hyperloop Transporta>on Technologies, a project ini>ated by Elon Musk and incubated using JumpstartFund’s crowd collabora>on process. #FutureTech
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
EUROPEAN PREMIERE
WEARABLE TECH
FOR FITNESS.
Dhananja Jayalath
ATHOS
What began as a passion for making smarter better connected
prosthetics turned into a revolutionary wearable EMG fitness
technology.
The research DJ collected for prosthetics innovations paired
with his sewing and engineering skills crossed over perfectly as
he sought to seamlessly integrate bulky EMG models,
previously limited to Olympian and professional athletes, into
affordable, weightless training apparel.
DJ reengineered lab sized technology and condensed it to the
size of a credit card and literally built it into interchangeable
garments.
We have already seen it live in action. Instantly we had to push
the “Order Now” button. #takemymoney #getinshape
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
EUROPEAN PREMIERE
FROM OPENSOURCE ARTIFICIAL
LIMB TO UNLIMITED
TOMORROW.
Easton LaChappelle
UNLIMITED TOMORROW
The Wiz-Kid from the Mid-West. At 17, Easton founded his own
company, Unlimited Tomorrow, which is developing a new
concept of an exoskeleton to help paraplegics walk again. The
company is also creating open source robotic arms that can be
used from prosthetics to a robotics learning platform.
But Easton is not only working on prosthetics, but some new
innovations which he will unveil live on stage at Pioneers Festival!
#robowizkid
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
HOW TO ROCK ON
ANGELLIST.
Gil Penchina
Investor Extraordinaire
Gil? He is the investor you definitely want to talk to!
Gil Penchina is a serial entrepreneur and prolific angel investor.
He is the largest angel on AngelList where he runs 10
investment syndicates and is backed by over 2,000 other
angels. He is a co-founder of Fastly, and board member at
Vouch Financial. Previously he was CEO of Wikia, now a top 50
website and was a member of the pre-IPO team at eBay. Before
eBay, Gil worked at General Electric, Bain & Co. and started two
small technology companies. He has a Bachelors in Engineering
from the University of Massachusetts and an MBA from Kellogg.
In addition, Gil has been an active angel investor in 70
companies over the last 12 years including firms such as
LinkedIn, Paypal, AngelList, Datanyze, Contactually, Indiegogo,
Evite, ZipRealty, Plusmo, Couchsurfing, Songpop, Wealthfront
and many others.
#JoinMySyndicate!
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
DISCOVERING
NEW WORLDS.
Bobak Ferdowsi
NASA JPL
Bobak Ferdowsi is a member of the Mission Engineering team
on the Europa Clipper study at NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory. His prior positions have included Engineering
Systems, Mission Planner and Integrated Launch and Cruise
Verification and Validation Engineer on Mars Science Laboratory
Curiosity, as well as Science Planner on the Cassini mission. In
addition he served as Flight Director during Curiosity operations.
Bobak became famous in 2012 when US President Obama put
the spotlight on him during the Curiosity Mission due to his
unusual mohawk hairstlye.
“If my mohawk gets a few more people excited about science
and the mission, that’s awesome”
#mayhawk #YesWeSTEM
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
INTERACTING WITH
VIRTUAL REALITY.
Michael Buckwald
LEAP MOTION
David Holz
LEAP MOTION
Prior to co-­‐founding Leap Mo>on, Michael was the CEO of Zazuba.com, a business appointment service later acquired by a major na>onal yellow pages company. Addi>onally, he ran the first deployment of computers to Madagascar with the One Laptop per Child program. Michael earned his dual Bachelor's degree in philosophy and poli>cal science from George Washington University. David was pursuing his PhD in Applied Mathema>cs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill when he lea to co-­‐found Leap Mo>on. David also contracted for NASA’s Langley Research Center and conducted neuroscience research while at The Max Planck Ins>tute. #TOUCHVIRTUALREALITY
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
BITCOIN.
Peter Smith
BLOCKCHAIN
Simon Levene
MOSAIC VENTURES
Crypto currencies are changing the financial landscape and
Blochain is right at the spearhead of this movement.
Peter is focused on making Bitcoin easy, safe and available to everyone on the planet. He is excited about leading Blockchain’s as it grows from 2 million users to 200 million users. He has a relentless drive and passion for cucng complexity and managing rapid expansion. Before joining Blockchain, he was an ac>ve investor in the space. Simon has been inves>ng in the European (and US) startup ecosystems with his own capital, oaen alongside his good friends at Index Ventures — where for a >me he had a desk and was affiliated as a Venture Partner. Notable investments in this period include ResearchGate, Number Four, Shapeways, Squarespace, and Appcard (all Series A); as well as Fotolia and Etsy (at growth stage). #BITCOINRULES
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
HEALTH INNOVATION &
BODY DATA.
Tim Chang
MAYFIELD FUND
Carina Namih
HELIXNANO
Andrei Pop
HUMAN API
Tim will open this session with an overview on the health tech sector, the latest
innovations and an outlook on the future.
Carina will talk about what is happening inside the body and the possibilities on
getting instant access to this information right at the emerging intersection of
software and biomedicine.
Backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Eric Schmidt, and others Andrei is tackling
health data from a different perspective – building an API to integrate health data
from everywhere.
#fromDNAtoAPI
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
ENVIRONMENT.
Casey McNeil
REECYCLE
Casey has just recently been awarded as Forbes 30 under 30 –
why? Because his company REEcycle has developed a profitable
way to reclaim rare earth elements (REEs) from disposed
electronic waste. The company acquires scrap e-waste and
extracts rare earth elements using a patented solvent. REEcycle
claims its process is less hazardous and cheaper than other
reclamation processes. Cash raised: Competitions-$130,000 nonequity staked cash and $160,000 of in-kind prizes.
At Pioneers Festival Casey will explain why his invention will help
to improve the environment we are all living in.
#letscreateabettertomorrow
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
CONTROVERSIAL
TAKES ON ROBOTICS.
Jong Lee
HANSON ROBOTICS
Lior Susan
FORMATION 8
Easton LaChappelle
UNLIMITED TOMORROW
Lior founded LabIX, a hardware investment platform with Flextronics
and is now leading Formation 8’s hardware strategy.
Live Showcase: ever heard about humanoid robots? Jong is bringing
them to life at Hanson Robotics – definitely a jawdropper!
Last but not least, Easton will surprise us with a European Premiere.
#robolution
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
GRAPHENE –
THE MATERIAL OF
THE 21st CENTURY.
Catharina Paukner
CAMBRIDGE NANOSYSTEMS
As co-founder and Chief Scientist of Cambridge Nanosystems
Ltd., Catharina is responsible for both the research strategy of
the company and its technology roadmap. She leads her team in
the production and development of high quality graphene flakes
derived from hydrocarbon gases in a unique and industry leading
atmospheric pressure plasma cracking process.
Currently her industry research covers a broad range of
application developments for both graphene flakes and carbon
nanotubes in areas such as inks and polymer composites. With a
background and Master’s degree in chemistry, her PhD research
in Materials Science at the University of Cambridge focused on
the development of a completely new system for the controlled
continuous synthesis of carbon nanotubes.
#NewMaterialsRule
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
INNOVATIVE
AI KNOWLEDGE
MANAGEMENT.
Ben Taylor
RAINBIRD
Ben is the CEO of - an artificial intelligence platform capable of
applying reasoning to reach conclusions. It can solve a wide
range of problems efficiently using knowledge supplied by
authors and facts provided by users.
RainBird learns more about the author’s field simply by being
used and can solve problems beyond those the author visualised.
#AIatWork
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
NEXT LEVEL OF
AGTECH.
Jason Aramburu
EDYN
Rob Leclerc
AGFUNDER
Adam Anders
ANTERRA CAPITAL
Jason is an entrepreneur, scientist, and founder of EDYN –
a smart garden system that monitors and tracks environmental
conditions.
Adam, Anterra Capital (Netherlands), and Rob, Agfunder (USA),
will talk about the future of Agtech and its evolution in a fireside
chat on the Arena stage.
#SmartFields
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
SUSTAINABLE
ANIMAL-FREE MILK.
Perumal Gandhi
MUUFRI
Cathal Garvey
SOSVENTURES
Perumal is the Co-founder and CTO of MUUFRI, a company
focused on producing milk using cell culture instead of cows. No
animals. Just proteins, fatty acids and a biolab.
Cathal has been featured in the New York Times, MIT
Technology Review, and others on Synthetic Biology and
Independent Biology. He has recently joined Indie.Bio Ireland as
its Scientific Director.
As young, energetic, renowned biotech experts and
entrepreneurs they will allow us a sneak peak behind the curtains
of this rapidly growing tech vertical.
#RiseOfBiotech
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
HARDWARE
KNOW-HOW.
Benjamin Joffe
HAX
Dávid Lakatos
Formlabs
Building global Hardware Startups – with Ben:
Ben is General Partner @HAX. Based in Shenzhen, HAX is the
#1 global accelerator focused on hardware startups. Benjamin has
15 years experience across China, Japan, Korea and US and is a
recognized expert on innovation ecosystems.
Building SW Startups vs HW Startups – with Dávid:
Dávid is now with Formlabs, co-founded the software startup Sold
before (acquired by Dropbox), also co-founded the Fab Lab in
Budapest, and has been active in the MIT Media Lab.
#BuildingTheHardWay
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
BUILDING
SUCCESSFUL
STARTUPS.
Ethan Imboden
frog design
Tim Chang
Mayfield Fund
Venture Design – with Ethan:
Ethan is Vice President, Head of Venture Design. frog’s newly
created Venture Design practice will extend the company’s
diverse portfolio of product strategy and design services to
startup companies.
Story Telling for Startups– with Tim:
Tim Chang is a Managing Director at Mayfield Fund, focusing on
venture capital invests in Mobile, Gaming, Digital Media, Social
Media. eCommerce and AdTech in the US and China.
#StartupSuccess
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
MARKETING &
SALES AT ITS BEST.
Steli Efti
Close.io
Neil Capel
Sailthru
Sell it, baby!– with Steli:
Steli is CEO and Co-Founder of Close.io and ElasticSales,
where he helps thousands of startups succeed in scaling their
sales efforts. He is an alumni of Y Combinator, and his company
has received funding from Spark Capital, SV Angel, Start Fund
and Omidyar Networks as well as several notable angel
investors.
Marketing for Entrepreneurs– with Neil:
Neil is the CEO and founder of Sailthru. Prior to founding
Sailthru, Neil was the Chief Technology Officer for MusicNation,
an AlleyCorp company, ASmallWorld, and Money-Media
(acquired by The Financial Times). Today, Neil is also an adviser
to several startups, including Refinery29.com and Zootoo.com
and is a Venture Partner at Bowery Capital, a seed stage
venture fund.
#AlwaysBeClosing
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
VC‘s TIPS & TRICKS.
Nicole Glaros
Techstars
Jon Bradford
Techstars
Fred Destin
Accel Partners
A perfect investor meeting, Jedi tricks for startups and handson know-how from one of the most important VCs in Europe.
Fred, Jon and Nicole will take the chance to share their deep
know-how and brilliant insights with all the entrepreneurs in the
audience. Learn from those who know what they are talking
about. The Academy Stage is the place to be.
#ShowMeTheMoney
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
FROM SCIENCE TO
ENTREPRENEURSHIP.
Megan Jones
Lantern
Dr. Megan Jones is a healthcare entrepreneur passionate about
humanizing mental health through design. As clinical psychologist
and internationally recognized researcher, Dr. Jones has developed
evidence-based digital health programs for a wide range of mental
health disorders. Dr. Jones is Chief Medical Officer at Lantern
(golantern.com), an online and personalized service that allows
anyone to strengthen his or her mental health with the care and
support of a professional coach.
Megan will share her story and insights – the way from Science to
Entrepreneurship.
#Sciencepreneurship
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OUTLOOK 2015 • KEY STORIES
ROASTED!
Marvin Liao
500 Startups
Scott Sage
DFJ Esprit
Eric Bovee
SpeedInvest
There is not much to explain: startups, judges, let’s get roasted.
In other words – Roasted is not the usual pitching session in
front of a jury, but a real clash of arguments and presentation
skills.
We created this format back in 2012 together with Dave
McClure – until then investors from Qualcomm Ventures,
Sequoia Capital, DFJ Esprit and others have already been with
us live on stage!
#Roasted!
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SEE YOU AT
MAY 28 & 29, 2015
HOFBURG IMPERIAL PALACE
VIENNA, AUSTRIA
www.pioneers.io