Founders shared valuable insights on the progress Luxembourg has made towards becoming a startup nation and the work that remains.
Arendt & Medernach’s auditorium formed the backdrop for Silicon Luxembourg’s bi-annual Founders Cocktail, which welcomed a hundred people for roundtable discussions and networking.
In his welcome speech, Arendt & Medernach Partner Bob Calmes talked about the small but steadily growing startup scene. He said: “Arendt & Medernach never gave up the startup mindset. We like to think of ourselves as entrepreneurs: we push ourselves and we push innovation.”
During the first roundtable Sandrine Lapointe, co-founder and COO of LuxRelo, talked about the origins of the company she runs with her spouse and shared the benefits that starting a company later in one’s career can bring.
Tokeny CEO Luc Falempin, meanwhile, talked openly about the mistakes he made in his decade-long career as a serial entrepreneur and the advantages his youthful age brought–not to mention the fact that his first internship involved working for himself. He said: “We had nothing to lose. We made a lot of mistakes. We tried and iterated. I knew that it was not a sprint, it was a marathon.”
The final panel examined the state of Luxembourg’s startup ecosystem touching on topics related to growth and talent.
Jean-Michel Ludwig, director for business development at Luxinnovation, gave context on past efforts to nurture the ecosystem and how this will evolve in future.
Carolyn Prestat, CEO of Fiveoffices, shared insights on the differences between running a startup in Luxembourg and in France.
Patrick Kersten, serial entrepreneur and chairman of the Luxembourg Startups Association, highlighted the strengths and weaknesses and shared the association’s ambition to reach 1,000 startups by 2030.
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