TechBBQ (private company)

In the summer of 2012 a small group of people sat together and decided that something was missing in the Copenhagen/Danish/Greater Copenhagen/Southern Scandinavian startups scene: our own conference. We needed the flagship event, where once a year, we would all meet up to celebrate success, learn from failure and explore relations across companies, functions and borders. All healthy startup eco-systems has their flagship event - also to makes sure that at least once a year the international investors are flying in to meet up and take the temperature on what is going on. That event we wanted to create.

First time we ran the event, we did it with 300 people at a location we could borrow for free, the beer we also got for free, the food was on a very special discount and the technology to run the event had it's issues - but there was a great sensation in the crowd, and it clearly showed the need for TechBBQ (yes, it's not a great name, but that's the best we could come up with ...). Now we can soon welcome almost 2,000 people at the magnificent Opera House in Copenhagen, dozens of VC's are present and everybody else is there as well.

From the beginning we had a few principles, that we believe are an important foundation for our success:

- The event will be owned by a foundation - it should belong to the community, and we should not earn money on it
- We want to protect the stage - it is not possible to pay to get on the program, we want quality
- We want a core part of the program to be related to our region - it's great to see successful American entrepreneurs, but it is often more inspiring to listen to the kid from Køge who made it big in London
- We need to have all stakeholders mixed together - entrepreneurs, leaders, startup employees, politicians, corporates, investors, etc. - but the key stakeholder for us, are those that are,or aspire to be, building and running tech based startups
- It has to be fun - it's great to learn, but we all need a good laugh as well
- We are happy to have helped our region to have a great event, and we hope you all will help to continue to make it better for every year.