by Thea Sevilleja
Startup Summit 2021 gave us a glimpse on how local and international startups continue to stay on top of their game amidst fast-paced trend changes in a globalized world. The event was held at Hopin on April 16 to 18 with over 1100 registrations from 18 countries. As BYTE’s biggest project to date, the tech conference featured keynote speeches from worldwide startup professionals, panel discussions, startup expo booths, and offered internship opportunities for participants.
Day 1: “Reimagining Possibilities with Tech”
We learned that our brain improvement rests on our consciousness and not the actual brain itself from Dr. Subhasis Banerji (Founder and Managing Director of SynPhNe) with his keynote presentation entitled “New Knowledge About the Brain and How It is Shaping Tech”. Furthermore, a patient suffering from chronic disease has a greater chance of recovery with the help of Artificial Neural Networks and enough motivation to get well. Day 1 concluded with a Panel Q & A where participants sent their questions through Slido. When asked what tips they would like to impart on future startup founders, the speakers had the same tip: define the problem they feel the need to solve and be committed to implement the solution to that problem together with the right team.
Day 2: “Breaking Barriers with Women in Startups”
One of the key insights we learned from Day 2 was from Dr. Charibeth Cheng (Co-founder and nerd of Senti AI). According to her talk entitled “Combining Passion with Your Career”, we must add passion in the work that we do instead of the other way around. In other words, we must choose which of our passions are aligned with the bigger picture and work towards something bigger than ourselves. In the Panel Q&A, one of the questions asked was “Where can we start with tech?” The speakers answered that we also need to know our strengths and find a way to connect them with tech since it can be found anywhere. Our journey with tech can also begin in working as an intern, especially for startups. Best of all, we need to just do it and to not overthink things whenever we start learning something new.
Day 3: Social Entrepreneurship for a Better Tomorrow
For the last day of the event, one of the keynote presentations was from Ruel Amparo (Founder and CEO of Cropital) which was entitled “Starting Young: The Good and Bad of Going to Social Entrepreneurship Immediately After College”. According to him, aspiring startup leaders must hack preparation, hack perseverance, and hack experience before venturing into the roller coaster ride of entrepreneurship. In the panel Q&A, one of the questions asked was “What is the difference of working in the corporate setting vs. working in a startup?”. All of the speakers had one answer: working in a startup lets us see that everything we do has a great impact on the company. However, they wouldn’t exactly find people with enough experience when working in a new startup or in our own startup as fresh graduates. Ultimately, we need to find our purpose to be able to move forward.
All of the speakers showed that venturing into a startup business is not an easy task and that execution is the hardest part. However, it really is a sight to behold as we witness society’s lives are changing for the better because these startup leaders kept on going. As such, the value of collaboration and perseverance is truly essential for us to be able to step up for the future.
We would like to thank our following partners for making Startup Summit 2021 possible: Notion, Kumu, StartUp Village, Foundation Inc., QBO Innovation Hub, ClinkIt Solutions, APRACORP, Technology Application and Promotion Institute (TAPI), Maker Academy, Datacamp, and IdeaSpace Foundation Inc.
See you next year!
