Web Summit Recap
Post from Ativ Patel ’17, founder of Mento, Inc.
Ativ Patel ’17 at the Web Summit
The Web Summit was an incredible once in a life time experience. I am still humbled and honored that I was selected as a “future global leader” scholar. The schedule that was set up for the scholars gave us vast amounts of knowledge and more importantly, friends friends for life. Before I arrived I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I wasn’t disappointed!
The overall summit was huge with over 20,000 attendees and over 3000 startups. There were six main stages covering topics such as: the Builders Summit covering coding and other forms of building, Sport Summit covering sports, technology and entrepreneurship, Machine Summit covering the Internet of Things, Enterprise Summit covering enterprise software, Food Summit covering modern food practices with technology and the Center Stage with the most acclaimed sparkers and journalists!
Seeing some of the most innovative men and women of the modern era speak changed my perspective on the ever growing possibilities for technology and entrepreneurship. Their individual stories to success were inspiring as they were littered with grit and passion for the problems they were solving!
Ativ Patel ’17 at the Web Summit
Ativ Patel ’17 at the Web Summit
I learned something unique from each of my peer student scholars from their own startups, background, schooling and culture. My biggest takeaways were from Drew Huston and Peter Thiel. Drew stated that you have only 30,000 days and what you do with them is your business, but make the most of them. Seize every moment and opportunity because you really don’t know where that will lead you. his reminds of Steve Jobs famous saying that the stars only line up in the rear view. Both Peter and Drew’s perspective that the potential for world changing ideas to make impact is the actual thought of recognizing a problem and then taking initiative to do something about the problem. If you have a problem, chances are high that someone else has the same problem. Better yet, they might be willing to pay for it. This sentiment was shared by many of the speakers at the conference!
I won’t speak for my peer student scholars, but I can’t wait to take action and initiative to make our lives better.