Seedstars Summit to run as online-only event because of coronavirus

Swiss emerging market startup competition Seedstars World has announced that it has moved its annual Seedstars Summit — which was expected to take place later this month in Lausanne, Switzerland — to an online-only event.

This, after the Swiss government issued a directive late last month banning all events with more than 1000 people, because of the coronavirus.

Last Friday (6 March) Seedstars media and PR manager Laura Eboa Songue announced in an email that the event instead would be hosted “fully online to ensure everyone’s safety”.

“Thus, we would recommend not to book any flight and accommodation to Switzerland,” the email read.

The 2020 Seedstars Summit will now be held from 31 March to 3 April as an online-only event

The event was to be held from 31 March to 3 April. However, Seedstars says the physical event will be replaced with a fully online event which will take place on the same days.

Eboa Songue said the pitching competition would be held online as well. She said Seedstars would announced what the next steps would be, as well as an updated agenda of the “Online Seedstars Summit 2020” shortly.

At last year’s summit Argentinian edtech startup Blended was crowned 2019 Seedstars Global Winner at an awards ceremony in Lausanne (pictured above). The startup walked away with up to $500 000 in equity investment (see this story).

Read more: Seedstars selects 11 startups to attend its 2020 global summit
Read more: Argentinian edtech Blended crowned 2019 Seedstars Global Winner

Featured image: Blended accepting the startup’s award at the 2018 Seedstars Summit (Stephen Timm)