The Magic Summit Formula

On May 5th, we organised the first Impact Shakers Summit in Brussels.

The support in speed-organising the event of the impact ecosystem and the reactions of the attendees have been overwhelming.

The words people used to describe their experience at the summit moved us to the core: Magical vibes - Led by open hearts - Epic experience

"Respect, vision, smiles, curiosity, sense of purpose: an instant community by design…"

Imène Maharzi , Senior Adviser, INDEFI Sustainable Finance

For us this was the first time we saw our vision come to life at such a large scale. It gave hope, made belong, showed the lived experience of diversity and the promise of an inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem and society.

We have been trying to figure out the formula that created this magic, here are some of the ingredients we can share numbers of:

Attendees 

We had about 500 registrations to the summit and a little more than 400 showed up on the day itself.

"A conference that feels more like a friends reunion than another work summit"

Laura-Jane Silverman , Head of LSE Generate

Roughly 40%, the majority of attendees, identify as entrepreneurs. We had an average of 1 investor for every 2 entrepreneurs and a similar ratio for ecosystem builders. The remaining 20% came from corporate, academic, policymaking and media backgrounds.

"This Impact Shakers Summit allows impact players -or shakers as you call them - to exchange and meet. That’s essential because YOU are the ones creating the economy of tomorrow and, it is together that we will make our dream become the reality of tomorrow."

Barbara Trachte , Secretary of State of the Brussels-Capital Region, responsible for Economic Transition and Scientific Research

Matchmaking

The matchmaking at the event was intense. With a whopping 822 meetings scheduled, this amounted to 6 meetings on average per attendee that used the app. Some attendees were absolute power users. The top attendee had 32 meetings scheduled!

What an epic experience we had at the Impact Shakers Summit! It's astonishing to know that there are so many purpose-driven organizations out there driving social impact and innovation in Europe. Kudos for creating such a valuable platform, where like-minded individuals can join hands and network.

Safaa Charafi , Architect Urbanist & Research Fellow | Gender, Diversity & Inclusion consultant 

Geography

The event was pan-European, with just over half of the attendees coming from Belgium and most of the other attendees from its neighbouring countries.

Pitching Competition Applications 

Diversity of the founders

Types of funding

As we’ve learned through experience, impact businesses with diverse founders, almost all revert to bootstrapping first and continue to rely on own means or revenue for longer than their non-diverse counterparts. 

Impact Categories

SDGs

Doughnut Categories

Still so thankful for Impact Shakers Summit. It was great to get positive feedback from various investors and to begin some valuable conversations going. Im super excited for the journey 🚀

Oyinkansola Adebayo , Founder Niyo Bootcamps

What’s next

One of the main goals of the Summit was to facilitate direct investments into startups with diverse founding teams. We want to send a strong ecosystem signal about how powerful this ecosystem is and how serious we are about making great deals by investing in exceptional diverse founders.

We are hard at work to enable as many investments as possible into all the applicants of the pitching competition and the attendees of the summit.

We will keep you posted and share updates along the way and concrete numbers in 6 months from now!

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