Igniters Tech Law attended the EMERGE Istanbul 2023, the top tech conference in the New East!

EMERGE conferences are the meeting point of new technologies, start-up founders, community leaders, VCs and angel investors from the New East region: CEE (Central Eastern Europe), Balkans, Türkiye, MENA and Central Asia.

Their recent conference was organized in Istanbul on October 2–3, 2023 and connected numerous stakeholders in the tech ecosystem. The participants were a mix of tech enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, developers and investors who were excited to learn about the investment opportunities, the latest trends, new developments and how they could apply these to their projects or businesses. The two-day tech conference has also provided many collaborating and networking opportunities to the attendees with the founders and the investors.

In addition to the keynote speeches, panels, roundtables and workshops about various topics; the event hosted Emerge challenges of thriving start-ups from all over the world in different categories such as environment & sustainability, healthcare & biotech, martech & creative, B2B, HR & EdTech and others. The attendees had the chance to see amazing pitches and presentations.

Key insights from the event

● The most expressed words by the speakers and participants in the whole event were “AI”, “democratizing data” and “LLMs” (large language models). It is clear to us that ChatGPT and its peers have started a trend that affects every corner of the tech world. Many founders from the emerging markets have been improving their businesses by adapting to this recent trend.

● In the early sessions of the event, the shared statistics of global venture funds demonstrated that in 2023, venture fund deal activity has dropped radically compared to the 2022. In parallel with this, it has been harder for venture funds to raise money in 2023.

● In the keynote talks by the various investors, it was repeatedly mentioned that the New East region has tremendous potential and is an emerging tech market. Especially in the EMEA, early-stage funding looks still stable for a troubled year as 2023. Türkiye has significant tech talent, serious entrepreneurs (successfully exited before) and big investment opportunities to look for.

● KJ Dhaliwal, Chief Strategy Officer of the Social Discovery Group, presented the 4 Ts for a start-up: (1) TAM (total addressable market), (2) Team, (3) Tech and (4) Traction. Start-ups should keep in mind that “the market always wins.”

● Ekrem İmamoğlu, Mayor of Istanbul, participated in the opening ceremony remotely and talked about the importance of following and incorporating the tech developments when governing a mega city like Istanbul. He mentioned the plans for partnering with global tech entrepreneurs to improve the daily life in Istanbul. Erol Özgener, Chief Innovation Officer of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, has provided examples in his speech such as using data science and analyzing models on the city’s clean water usage data to predict its up-to-date population or immigration trends. As a resident of Istanbul, it was exciting to hear that the administrators were seriously adapting new technologies to the governance of urban life.

● Julien Simon from Hugging Face shared the recent best practices for harnessing the power of generative AI. He highlighted the benefits of open-source models and fine-tuning.

● Kristina Frolova Lasenko from Gaming Hub informed the attendees about the impressive growing speed of the gaming industry. The forecasted total number of game players for 2023 (any kind of game including mobile) is 3.2 billion. In 2030, the size of the gaming industry is expected to be $ 665 billion. “Gamification” trend is also radically growing and the businesses could benefit from searching for ways to adapt gamification into their features. Features such as progress bars, badges or leaderboards may be a good start.

● Fonz Morris from Netflix shared the secrets behind Netflix’s success. The right product design and listening to your users are the key.

● Women in Tech sessions underlined the existing gender lenses in investing and how the increase of women’s presence is improving the tech ecosystem. Great initiatives like Arya Women’s Investment Platform from Türkiye have been supporting women start-ups (not because their founders are women, but because they are successful projects), strengthening the community and proving the urgent need for equality in all industries.

Conclusion

The two-day tech event has brought together the founders, investors and thought leaders from all over the world who shared their knowledge and enthusiasm with each other. The selection of Istanbul as the venue of Emerge conference is not a coincidence but a display of Türkiye’s big potential as a start-up and venture capital hub for the CEE, Balkans, MENA and Central Asia regions.

Igniters Tech Law Team