Dublin Web Summit sees start-ups walk with tech giants

Davos for geeks. The Rolls Royce of technology events. The SXSW of Europe. These are just some of the accolades the Dublin Web Summit has attracted over the years.

The rise of the event has been startling. When it started in 2010, it managed just over 500 attendees. Three years later, about 10,000 are expected to show up to network, pitch and work the biggest room some of them will ever have had the chance to circulate in.

It's not difficult to see why. The wifi works (most of the time). The food is free. The speakers are interesting. And best of all, the web summit gives you the chance to rub shoulders and share a coffee with the likes of AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong, or Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom.

Start-ups move alongside tech giants. The stage will play host to company executives and founders with a combined net worth of several billion dollars and several smaller up-and-coming firms hoping to raise their values into the millions by the time the summit is over. That room, by the way, contains companies that have raised a total of $250 trillion between them.

It’s all about mixing, and the summit is certainly trying to encourage it. There is as much of a social scene as there is serious business going on, with pub crawls and music events planned over the two days.

From the Food Summit to the Night Summit, the opportunity to network is ever present, if a little exhausting.If you want to grab breakfast next to a high-tech chief executive, five-star hotels such as the Four Seasons are your best bet. However, that ship may have sailed, with the hotel among the first to sell out – not surprising given its proximity to the venue. Other five-star hotels in Dublin such as the Shelbourne are also full.

In fact, hotels around the city are packed, with attendees turning to Airbnb – one of Dublin's newest tech wins – to find accommodation.

International visitors
More than 7,000 attendees are coming from abroad, with about 1,000 from the UK and others from the US, Germany and Scandinavia. Some are coming from as far away as Afghanistan and Japan.

This year, the summit has attracted some of the best and brightest in the industry as speakers, from home grown talent such as Stripe's Patrick Collison, to international names such as Kevin Rose.

But the organisers like to keep at least one ace up their sleeve; this year it was the confirmation that Elon Musk – Paypal co-founder, Tesla chief and head of SpaceX – would close the summit on Thursday.