Narrowing the Gap Between Academia and Startup Community

Science and research have the potential to change the world. Still, a great deal of important research stays within the walls of university labs. For the world to benefit from research, we need to get academics and the industry to communicate better. How can researchers see entrepreneurship as an attractive career opportunity? How could investors regard the longer lifespan of science-based companies not as a handicap but as an opportunity for larger returns of investment in the long run? How do we get these two to meet and match? Hugo Mercier (Co-founder and CEO of Dreem), Akram Boukai (Co-Founder & CEO of Matrix Industries) and Lu Zhang (Founding and Managing Partner at Fusion Fund) discuss. -- In 2018, Slush brought together 20,000 attendees, including 3,100 startups, 1,800 investors and 650 journalists from over 130 countries. The cold and dark Helsinki welcomed these tech-heads to celebrate on Dec 3-5, 2018 with hundreds of side-events and activities around the city. Slush 2018 in pictures: https://www.flickr.com/photos/slushmedia/albums Website: http://www.slush.org Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/slushHQ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/slushHQ Instagram: http://instagram.com/SlushHQ Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/company/slush Slush Tokyo: http://tokyo.slush.org Slush Shanghai: http://shanghai.slush.org Slush Singapore: http://singapore.slush.org Intro videos by: VAU (http://vau.company) VELI.fx / Veli Creative (http://velicreative.fi) Slush is a non-profit event organized by a community of entrepreneurs, investors, students and festival organizers. Slush has grown from a 300-person event to become the leading event of its kind in the world. The philosophy behind it has remained the same: to help the next generation of great, world-conquering companies forward.