At some point, every startup needs to move beyond things that don’t scale and build a team that can intentionally and efficiently take its product to market. However, what kind of profiles should you be hiring first – and how should you onboard them? How should they be structured? What are the right goals and incentives to have in place? Who makes for a good GTM hire when both the market you operate in and the strategy for winning it may be blurry? Åsa Lidén, COO of next-gen presentation software Pitch will unpack it all.

Product-driven companies put their users’ painpoints and the extent to which their product solves those front and center. When necessary, they do so at the cost of short-term sales.Product managers work at the core of these choices. After all, they are the ones that translate customer understanding into product roadmaps. Leigh Marie Braswell was the first product manager at Scale AI before turning to early-stage investing at Founders Fund. She will join us to share insights on how fantastic product management can uphold product-driven cultures as companies grow in scale and complexity.

At the inception, you will work side-by-side in a room with your co-founders every day. Each of you will understand every part of the business, and you can make most decision together. What a joy!However, if everything goes well, this dynamic will look very different a few years down the line. Each of you will have real C-level roles at a real company. Someone needs to be CEO. You can no longer stay on top of every detail and decision in each other’s domains. How do you nurture trust and intimacy? How do help each other grow now that each of you is in over your heads?To talk about all of this we have Yoko Sprig, Co-founder and CEO of the equity management platform Ledgy.

Organisations often talk about the importance of diverse perspectives but how can founders really ensure the broadest range of voices are heard? What steps can founders take to embed diversity in their organisations to build the best products and services for users?In a fireside chat Danish business angel Louise Herping Ellegaard speaks to Esther Hare, Apple’s senior director of Worldwide Developer Marketing and Executive Sponsor Women@Apple, as they share their experiences as leaders in technology. From how you can support and elevate each other to how you can give a voice to those traditionally unrepresented, the session will give you an insight into what it really takes to build a truly inclusive organisation.

In the early days, a startup’s competitive edge is almost always agility, speed, and relentless passion for the problem. Founders tend to have an intimate knowledge of the customer pain and, early on, are able to project that understanding onto almost every detail in the company.As companies scale and mature, they risk losing this and becoming the very behemoths they set out to disrupt. However, Qonto Co-founder and CEO Steve Anavi argues that it doesn’t have to be like this. He will join the stage to share insights on how to remain agile.

Fundamentally, a product proposition answers the question: why should someone buy this product? This is a question that any startup is going to have to answer very clearly before they can dream of product-market fit. So how do you narrow down from a rough idea to a specific product proposition?Now, for many companies, the work doesn’t stop there. That was the case for Spotify, who’s Global Head of Consumer Experience Sten Garmark join us for this talk. After achieving exceptional success in music streaming, Spotify chose to start building product #2 – podcasts. Guided by Slush CPO Elmo Pakkanen, Sten will delve into why and how that happened.

We all know a good brand when we see one. However, the amount of established brands have forced nascent ones to go to increasing lengths to stand out and break through the noise.Joining us to uncover what it takes to create brands that users connect with on an emotional level is Natasha Lytton, Head of Brand, Network & Portfolio at Seedcamp. Her talk will take us from the foundational moments all the way through to how your brand might need to evolve and expand as your product and user base do.

Everyone knows your story matters to you, but is it a compelling one that can break through the clutter? No matter how big the need is, how great your tech is, or how talented your team is, you will need to craft your own story. Joining us to fight for relevance and attention through startup storytelling is Gabe Kleinman, who works on Founder Solutions & Marketing at the purpose-focused VC fund Obvious Ventures.After the keynote, you’ll walk out with a practical playbook on Startup Storytelling that covers questions related to purpose, journey, and truth, as well as target and message.

One of the most common misguided pieces of startup advice is: “go find a huge market and claim a small share of it”. However, very few iconic companies are built this way. Much more often, great startups create new categories that exist adjacent to, in the intersection of or totally outside of the existing market. These markets are often originally very small, or non-existent. However, when the time is right, companies are able to rapidly grow these spaces and turn them into huge ones in a matter of years.To share advice on how to do this is Yee Lee, VP Growth & Capital Markets at Terraformation – a company attempting to reforest the Earth at an immense scale. It’s not Yee’s first rodes – he’s a two-times founder and has worked on product at Meta, Google, Skype, Slide and PayPal alike.

Throughout the whole life-cycle of your startup, it is very easy to lose sight of what is important - from the chaos of the early days, to managing successful teams later on. In this talk, Marcelo Lebre, COO and co-founder of Remote, will share his experience on how to keep the focus on the things that really matter.