Hi there, 

It's now only eight days to our second flagship Sifted Summit, which is shaping up to be a fantastic event. Two days of intense discussion, networking, practical help and fun at the funky Magazine centre on October 4-5.

If you haven’t already done so, sign up and join the conversation. With over 90% of all tickets sold, we're expecting thousands of attendees from many of Europe's most exciting startups, and we’d love for you to be there too.

As we all know, the market is tough out there for everyone (except generative AI companies) and I'm looking forward to hearing smart advice about how to ride out this cycle. With over 200 speakers from across Europe, ranging from first-time founders to battle-scarred operators to the most influential VC investors, the summit will be bursting with insight, experience and empathy. 

There will be a great scene-setting conversation between Stripe's co-founder John Collison and Matt Clifford of Entrepreneur First, who also heads up the UK's exciting new Advanced Research and Invention Agency. 

On the opening panel, we will also hear the wisdom of Taavet Hinrikus, the Wise founder turned Plural funder, as well as Eileen Burbidge of Passion Capital and Tessa Clarke, co-founder of Olio.

And if gen AI is your thing, then you will be racing from stage to stage to hear the founders of some of Europe's most promising AI startups, including Mistral, Sana, Helsing, Builder.ai, Pathway and People.ai.

Among my favourite things from last year's summit were the roundtables we hosted with a curated mix of founders, investors and operators thrashing out some of the trickiest problems startups confront. As a co-founder myself, I found these talks extremely useful and refreshingly therapeutic. We're back with even more roundtables this year. Be sure to sign up for one of them.

And if it's all proving a little too hectic for you, take some time out and have a coffee. Last year, one founder told us she had succeeded in landing a big investment by talking to the person behind her in the queue. Neat work.

As always, we'd like to thank  all our sponsors for enabling this exciting event to happen. In particular, our headline partner, Latham & Watkins, and our major partners, Accenture, HSBC Innovation Banking and Morgan Stanley.

Looking forward to welcoming you to our event next month.

John Thornhill

Sifted cofounder and editorial director

Any questions? Contact the team events@sifted.eu