Conference programme

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This session will look at the ingredients that make high performing teams connect whether in your client start-up companies or your own business.
 

Our keynote speaker’s presentation will set the scene for the day and impart some key messages relating to world of start-ups.

This session will explain the basics of Web3, all you ever need to know but were afraid to ask and will focus on some use cases including the metaverse and decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs).

Our panellists are leading lawyers who are also active angel investors. They will share their practical experiences for the benefit of those interested in being an angel investor. The issues they will be discussing include: 
•    Do lawyers make good angel investors? 
•    How to go about sourcing, investing and managing the investments?
•    Ethical issues – should lawyers invest in their clients, or their clients’ competitors?

Grooming your company for an exit is an important process as a buyer may emerge at any time.  Fast growth companies can through multiple rounds of funding in a relatively short period of time and can scale very quickly going from start-up to larger business in a short period of time. Rapid growth means that these companies often struggle to keep up with all the organisational changes required in a larger business. This panel will focus on the importance of being ready to sell and how to ensure the execution of a smooth exit.

We have witnessed how the public markets, driven by the central banks policies, lifted tech start-up company valuations to unprecedented heights. Now the public markets seem to be bringing valuations down again – in many cases well below pre-pandemic levels. What is happening on the stock markets and what is the impact of current macro-economic circumstances on trading? What are the implications for the funding of start-ups and growth companies? The first session will allow us to hear from leading financiers on their insights into the current market situation and provide an outlook on what to expect in the near future.

This session will focus on the trends within different tech sectors. You will have an opportunity to participate in two interactive round table sessions on two of the below topics. Share your experience within the various sectors or take the opportunity to improve your knowledge in a new field. We will learn some key take away points from each sector.

1.    Planet Positive – tech and tech-enabled companies are enabling the transition to sustainable practices in fields such as energy, water and chemicals.
2.    Frontier tech/Deep – tech is pushing the boundaries of science and engineering through technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, blockchain, advanced material, biotech and quantum computing. 
3.    Improving Health – tech companies are improving patient welfare and thereby revolutionising health care and healthcare systems. Such improvements see the use of AI to predict certain illness and technologies being used in preventive care. 
4.    The Future of Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology – insights from the pandemic, the digital transformation and applications of IoT, AI and robotics to manufacturing processes are challenging the traditional approaches, practices, and business models of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
5.    Future Finance – new business models and technologies are powering financial and insurance systems and leading to an explosion in fintech and insurtech.  
6.    Digital Work – empowering workers and enhancing productivity. The digital workplace must help shape culture, engage employees in the mission and simplify the way employees do their work. 
7.    Empowered Individuals/Education – championing new forms of online education and powering the creation of personal productivity. Education plays a significant role in the empowerment of individuals and the use of new technology can have a great impact here. 
8.    Future of Food and Drink – new business models and technologies are reinventing how food and drink is produced, distributed and consumed.
9.    Mobility – the way people and goods are moving is changing. Mobility is one of the key factors for how cities will develop in the future. New technologies – if used the right way – can help to contribute to smart cities.
10.    Industrial Automation – industry, manufacturing, production and construction processes are becoming more efficient with the implementation of new technologies to control systems, such as computers or robots as well as information technologies. 
11.    Legal tech – new technologies such as blockchain and AI are being identified as technologies that many disrupt the legal profession in an unprecedented way.

This session will focus on how to use blockchain technologies for raising capital and will cover non-fungible tokens (NFTs), token generation events (TGE), decentralised autonomous organisations (DAO), security and utility tokens. We will also touch on how the Markets in Crypto-assets (MiCA) Regulation is going to affect the industry.  We will hear from a panel of experts from the business and regulatory sectors.

The second session will build on some of the insights provided in the earlier session on funding and valuation. During this session we will take a more technical dive into matters that lawyers should be considering in the current funding climate when drafting and negotiating transaction documents including: 

•    Investor defaults – what happens if the investor cannot complete on the funding round after signing
•    Impact on funding instruments –  convertible equity/debt, venture debt
•    Impact on deal terms – anti-dilution protection, milestone investments, increased governance rights
•    Impact on deal certainty – material adverse change (MAC) clauses, walk away provisions, force majeure and hardship clauses

General Counsels who have led some of the largest exits in Europe give their perspective on how the outside counsel can have most impact on the exit process and, of course, the exit outcome.