Three things I learned at Web Summit

I had the absolute pleasure of attending my first ever Web Summit in Lisbon last week with my co-founder, Precious Ene and it was quite the experience! Just thought I’d share some personal reflections of my experience. Will share a separate blog on my key takeaways about what’s happening on the tech scene.

1. The first and probably the most important thing for me personally was just how impactful extensive facetime with your co-founding/management team can be. Time just to think and talk is crucial for the success of your company in my opinion. I run Career Ear with Precious Ene but she is currently only part-time. We meet in person a couple of times each week, discussing updates, working together and executing our action plans and obviously speak everyday. However, it dawned on both of us how valuable it is to spend more time together, we were able to have extensive conversations and bounce ideas off one another that we hadn’t previously had the time to do because we were just focused on working through our to-do list and any time we did have to brainstorm was always limited which stifled our creativity. Web Summit changed this for us and we’re super excited about how those conversations have progressed us.
2. If you think you’re thinking big and creative, it’s probably not big or creative enough! Technology is advancing at a considerable pace, odds are that the wildest solution that you can think of to a problem you are facing can already be solved with technology - all you need to do is find the people with that expertise to get on board (I know, I know, somewhat easier said than done!)
3. Every technology company is hiring, constantly. They are all fighting over the same pool of talent but many are not prepared to invest the time and money into upskilling entry level talent. This has left me somewhat confused as to how they all believe they will fill their hiring needs. Newsflash: If we do not upskill (and reskill) people then there simply won’t be enough talent to go round. Fact. This means that in addition to being a great place to work, you’ll have to invest more in salaries and benefits and/or make bad hires out of desperation and we all know how that story ends. All experienced hires started at entry level, you may want to think about investing there if you want to build your pipeline.

Looking forward to attending the summit again in 2020!