IdeaLab! 2011 ended with a Danish bang as Morten Lund gave a speech to a rapt audience at the conference-ending dinner.
The larger-than-life entrepreneur urged his listeners to make sure they were truly ready – and to be prepared to endure the possible downfalls – if they wanted to take the plunge and set up their own company. He then asked the audience to take to twitter in a bid to win free office space for their enterprise, and demanded that they “stand out from the crowd” and take to the dancefloor. Cue a massive group free for all.
The party is still going as I write – don’t worry, I’ll get back there soon – and boy, they know how to party. The dinner followed the last part of the conference, a panel discussion supposedly asking whether Berlin was set to become the new Silicon Valley, but which quickly descended into a forthright – and downright entertaining – exchange of views on the nature of investment in startups involving Florian Heinemann of Rocket Internet, Stefan Glaenzer of White Bear Yard and Passion Capital, Jens Begemann of wooga, Felix Petersen of Amen and Alexander Ljung of Soundcloud, moderated by an energetic Mike Butcher of TechCrunch fame.
I’ll have more details on that soon, as well as the talks given by Ljung and tech veteran Marco Boerries, who told me his thoughts about Berlin as a centre of tech when I cornered him afterwards.