Sam Laakkonen

Sam started his career as a management consultant in the City of London. He was then lucky to be headhunted to his first startup, FirstMark Communications Europe, which raised the largest telecommunications Series A round in European history, $1.5 billion. He has since been an early employee at Spotify, privately invested in 25+ startups, had 3 further exits from his own companies, helped 250+ startups accelerate growth, and works as an expert for the European Commission to distribute EIC equity and grant funding. Sam has been active in the Techstars ecosystem for a number of years, having been an Entrepreneur-In-Residence for Techstars Amsterdam, and a Lead Mentor on a number of programmes including Techstars Lisbon, Techstars Korea, Techstars Boulder and Techstars Energy in Oslo, amongst others. Over the last couple of years his focus has increasingly shifted onto sustainability and impact, and how technology can be leveraged to protect the planet and to improve the quality of our lives.