What is Slush 2025?

Overview

Slush is one of the world’s most influential startup and investor gatherings, held annually in Helsinki, Finland.

Purpose: bringing together founders, investors (including VCs, CVCs), operators, media and ecosystem stakeholders in a highly curated and founder first environment.
Date & Location: The 2025 edition is scheduled for 19-20 November 2025, at the Helsinki Expo & Convention Centre (Messukeskus), Helsinki.
Scale & scope: The event attracts startups from 70+ countries, covers 50+ industry verticals (e.g., SaaS, fintech, healthtech, deep tech, gaming).
Format: Beyond keynote sessions, Slush features extensive networking and meeting tools (the “Slush Platform”), one-on-one matchmaking, startup-investor office hours, side-events, founder-focused days.

Why it matters for Startup & VC Ecosystems

For corporate venture capital (CVC) firms, startup scouts and ecosystem builders, Slush offers a powerful opportunity:

Deal-flow access: With hundreds of early to mid stage startups and a strong investor presence, you can identify emerging ventures aligned with your sectors (for example, e-commerce, fintech, distribution, food/consumer).
Brand visibility & strategic positioning: Being present signals that your CVC or platform is serious about international engagement and innovation scouting.
Trend-spotting: The breadth of topics and global participation means you can observe emerging patterns in tech innovation, funding flows, geographic shifts, all of which align with your interest in international VC trends and CVC practice.
Partnership and collaboration: Beyond investing, you can meet ecosystem players,accelerators, corporate innovation teams, service providers that may assist in co-investment, corporate innovation partnerships, or startup corporate collaborations.

Key Features & Metrics

70%+ of attendees are indicated to be either startups or investors.
Matchmaking: Startups can schedule dozens of meetings in two days, compressing months of outreach into the event window.
Diversity of sectors and geographies: Over 70 countries, 50+ sectors represented.
Highly curated startup participation: Startups must apply to attend, helping maintain relevance and quality of interactions.

How to Approach It (from a CVC/Global Investor Lens)

Pre-event: Use the Slush Platform early to scan attending startups, investors and corporates. Prioritise those aligned with your strategic sectors and geographic focus.
Agenda setting: Book meetings in advance; allocate time for side events and networking outside the main stage to capture less-obvious deal flow and partnerships.
Value extraction: Beyond matching startups for investment, consider strategic corporate innovation outcomes (joint pilots, distribution partnerships, corporate startup ecosystem links) consistent with your group’s sectors (food, FMCG, distribution, fintech).
Follow-up: Make sure to structure immediate post event outreach to convert meetings into progressing conversations; build internal alignment so your internal stakeholders are ready.
Insights: Assign a team member to capture emerging themes, signals and benchmarkable metrics (e.g., investor seat counts per region, sector frequencies) for your annual CVC strategy and blog content.

Our Involvement

We’re pleased to announce that representatives from Magnetech will be attending Slush 2025 in Helsinki. This presence will enable us to engage with an international pipeline of innovative startups and investors, aligning with our mission to expand global connections, and to source opportunities at the intersection of startup innovation, technology and corporate venture capital.

You can simply click here to contact us on what’s app.

Closing Thoughts

Slush stands out because it balances scale and relevance: large enough to attract global talent and capital, yet curated to focus on meaningful founder-investor-corporate interactions. For a CVC operating in global markets and sectors like yours, it offers a rich terrain to invest, partner, learn and showcase.