Changing TechCrunch Europe events – how to work with us

We’re changing our events policy at TechCrunch Europe. Over the last two years we’ve developed and run our own events across Europe, thanks to the unwavering and ever professional support of Petra and Rassami of 2pears. But now that the European startup scene is gradually getting its act together, we’d like to sort of “open source” our events and are looking to partner with existing events and organisations.

We’re looking to work with you wherever your local tech scene is in Europe. So, going forward, please contact me initially and I will pass you on to our events and sponsorship consultant (to be announced) for more details about partnering with TechCrunch Europe.

We’ll be setting as high a bar as possible about which events and organisations we’ll partner with, and we’ll be looking for a minimum level of financial commitment and a combination of all or some of these elements in each events:

• Quality speakers/panels
• Investors
• Startups
• Live Video Streaming, ideally that we can embed on TechCrunch Europe

One thing that is absolutely crucial is that we won’t support events where startups have to pay to pitch. It’s fine for startups to pay for demo-pit tables in an exhibition, but we are trying to break the cycle of pay-to-pitch in Europe which does not support innovation or an entrepreneurial culture.

For those that we select as partners, TechCrunch Europe will promote events before they happen in an event listings post and on TechCrunch Global. We’ll also send a writer (usually me, Mike Butcher) and if there is any news about companies and the event content we’ll of course cover it.

We’ll offer a variety of partner packages (contact us for details below). These will be a) a Techcrunch Europe branded event where we work closely with you b) an “in association with Techcrunch Europe” event where we work with an existing name or brand. We’ll also work with events that want to be creative about naming, e.g. “KrakowCrunch” or BelgradeCrunchUp, or MaltaEuroCrunch or anything like that. It’s a little like the TEDx idea, in that we’d like to work with you to make it a great event. In addition we’ll be looking at smaller meetup-style events in the UK and I’ll also be available as a speaker for events in Europe. As with all of this, contact us as above.

We’ll be slimming down our “in-house” day-long events (GeeknRolla and The Europas, postponed to September) and one conference in continental Europe, location to be decided.

To be clear, none of the above will affect our editorial commitment to covering tech companies and startups in Europe, whether we have partnered with a particular event or not.