Bilbao Slush'D debut by the numbers - Organizers already eyeing round two
How Elena/Popovici and David/Cabezón turned a thesis into Spain's first Slush'D, what it means for the Basque tech sceneand why their next act could be a venture fund.
A six‑month sprint from idea to licence
Most large conferences are built by committees; Bilbao Slush’D was willed into existence by two founders and a slide deck. The origin story is almost cinematic: Elena Popovici—who spent five years in Finland volunteering for the original Slush—returned to Spain just as her partner, Basque native David Cabezón, finished a bachelor’s thesis comparing the Nordic and Basque ecosystems. The paper’s conclusion was blunt: Bilbao had talent, capital and institutional backing, but lacked a catalytic event.
Armed with that research (and Popovici’s phone full of Slush contacts), the pair pitched Helsinki for a local licence. It usually takes a year; they got the green light in six months and convinced city hall, the provincial agency SPRI and Deusto Business School to come in as gold partners.
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850 people, €8 billion AUM—and a waiting list
On 20 February 2025 the Bilbao Exhibition Centre swapped trade‑show grey for Nordic neon. Bilbao Slush’D’s inaugural edition drew more than 850 participants from 40 countries, including 250 international investors, 185 large corporates and 385 startup leaders who collectively represented €8 billion in assets under management.
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Quality, not head‑count, was the KPI. Slush’s trademark 1‑to‑1 meeting system generated more than 400 curated founder-investor sessions, while six side‑events—including a female‑investor lunch and a Sigma Squared delegation of under‑30 founders—kept the corridors buzzing.
Content centered on three themes—Nordic innovation, born‑global mindset and youth entrepreneurship—and spanned verticals from biotech, healthtech and fintech to AI, deep‑/clean‑/greentech and foodtech.
Online buzz was strong: the event site logged 12.000+ organic page‑views, while the official networking app facilitated 3.300+ direct messages and generated 1.200+ documented business opportunities; where social reach topped 200.000 impressions on LinkedIn and Google.
Why Bilbao—and why now
The Basque Country has quietly invested for 15 years in R&D tax breaks, advanced‑manufacturing clusters and a public seed‑funding network, yet headlines still gravitate to Barcelona and Madrid. Popovici’s thesis‑turned‑pitch argued for a "north‑to‑north" bridge: connect Biscay to the Bay of Finland, where Estonia and Finland generate Europe’s highest unicorn density. Deep‑tech, health‑tech and cleantech—sectors strong on both coasts—were chosen as anchor verticals.
The bet paid off: keynote slots went to Peter Vesterbacka (Angry Birds, Slush founder) and Pipedrive CTO Agur Jõgi, proof that tier‑one speakers will board a plane to a city better known for a titanium‑clad Guggenheim than venture capital.
Building an ecosystem—one graduate at a time
Popovici’s other fixation is youth entrepreneurship. Spain’s median founder is 41; in Finland it’s 28. To bend that curve Bilbao Slush’D embedded twenty Deusto master’s students across ops, partnerships and stage production, giving them front‑row access to VCs they would rarely meet in class.
Expect that pipeline to expand: BayLoop is negotiating with additional universities and has already fielded requests from Polish and Ukrainian delegations for 2026.
Gender balance mattered too. Twenty‑four women representing funds from Mexico’s Cometa VC to Belgium’s Smartfin spent an afternoon swapping term‑sheet horror stories—and co‑investment leads. It wasn’t a panel on "women in tech"; it was business as usual, exactly the point.
Before Round Two: The Bottom Line
Slush licences renew annually, with a three‑year extension possible if milestones are met. The organisers are currently crunching quantitative (NPS, deal‑flow) and qualitative (sponsor interviews) data for Helsinki; Popovici expects a go/no‑go decision "within weeks." Early signals look good: seed‑stage founders report follow‑up term‑sheets, and the Basque government hinted at multi‑year support during a closed‑door debrief.
Behind the scenes BayLoop Ventures is already sketching its second act: a pre‑seed fund writing €150k-€250k tickets in the same verticals spotlighted at the conference. Popovici calls it "phase two of the experiment—moving from convening capital to deploying it." If that happens, Bilbao Slush’D will become more than a date on the calendar; it will be a feeder for a home‑grown VC flywheel.
