Highlights from Day 2 of Web Summit 2022

It’s a wrap on Day 2 of Web Summit! Attendees were treated to a fascinating session with F1 legend Toto Wolff, learned about Lego’s plans for a metaverse for kids, and found out about the future of solar-powered travel.

Web Summit 2022 has seen record numbers through the doors. With 26 content tracks on 17 stages, it’s pretty hard to catch all the talks you want to get to, so here are a few you may have missed out on.

“We had a difficult season. We just got the physics wrong. There are no mystics in Formula 1.”

– Toto Wolff, team principal and CEO,
Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula 1

It has been a difficult 2022, according to Toto Wolff, team principal and CEO at Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula 1. “We won the championships eight times in a row,” said Toto, to a packed Web Summit Centre Stage, but the good times have not continued.

“But that’s the past,” said Toto of those eight successful seasons. “I think you need to look at tomorrow. We had a difficult season. We just got the physics wrong. There are no mystics in Formula 1. We got the concept of the car not in the right place and, in Formula 1, it takes a long time to unwind things that you built into the car.”

“We hope that we can very much challenge the Red Bulls and the Ferraris, but all sails are set for next year,” added Toto.

“We want to make sure that children have the opportunity to participate in [the metaverse], and to protect their right to play.”

– Julia Goldin, global chief product and marketing officer,
Lego Group

The metaverse has been promised as a virtual space where people can work, be entertained and create fantastic new worlds. The problem with this conception of the metaverse, according to Lego Group global chief product and marketing officer Julia Goldin, is that it excludes children.

“These spaces will be enabled with new technologies that will be more immersive and more advanced; that will create opportunities for people to engage seamlessly on different devices, and to engage with millions of people at the same time. And also to be much more creative than ever before.”

Julia Goldin, Lego Group global chief product and marketing officer, on PandaConf during Day 2 of Web Summit 2022. Image: Eóin Noonan/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)

“We want to make sure that children have the opportunity to participate in this world, and to protect their right to play,” continued Julia.

“This is really important, because web 2.0 was not designed with kids in mind. The majority of kids are on digital platforms that are not safe for them; that don’t protect them,” added the executive.

Crucially, Julia said that Lego wants a metaverse experience with child safety built in from the very beginning, and that the company hopes to inspire the wider tech industry to employ this approach.

“It’s going to take more than 100 years for women to hit pay parity with men. I don’t want to wait that long.”

– Lindsay Kaplan, Co-founder, Chief

Chief co-founder Lindsay Kaplan joined co:collective co-founder and CEO Rosemarie Ryan to discuss how we can change the ratio of women at the top of the world’s companies.

Rosemarie noted that many women entrepreneurs are facing tough choices in their careers: “For every one woman promoted to director level, two women are leaving the workforce.”

Further challenges arise for young women entrepreneurs trying to secure funding. Lindsay said that “women currently only get two percent of all VC funding,” preventing ideas and products capable of changing entire markets from being realised.

Lindsay and Rosemarie agreed that part of the issue stems from how women entrepreneurs are trained in leadership skills from early on in their careers.

“There’s so much we’ve been taught, as women, about leadership that stems from masculine ideals for what leadership is,” said Lindsay.

“If you’re a startup founder, you could say ‘I will meditate on the failure of my company until such time that it doesn’t stress me out anymore, then my mind would be clear to execute’.”

– Fred Destin, founder, Stride.VC

On Startup University, Fred Destin, founder of Stride.VC, offered advice for startups in what looks to be a more challenging economic environment than usual.

Startups are still best placed to take on the status quo due to their inherent culture, Fred said: “The reason why small companies – small startups – continue to kick the ass of incumbents is teams of eight, 10 or 15 people. They’re highly fast-evolving organisms that thrive on chaos.”

(from left) Stride.VC founder Fred Destin, and FS-360 and Djassi Africa managing director Fernando Cabral. Image: Sam Barnes/Web Summit (​​CC BY 2.0)

But the veteran investor suggested that founders look in a slightly unusual place for inspiration: the way of the samurai.

“Number one, they meditate on their own death 1,000 times before they go to battle,” Fred explained. “So, if you’re a startup founder, you could say ‘I will meditate on the failure of my company until such time that it doesn’t stress me out anymore, then my mind would be clear to execute’.”

“The second thing samurais do is they kill you with one slide of the sword. So this is about a maximum impact. If you have limited energy, limited time, limited money, everything should have impact at all times.”

“There are solar buses on the street in Munich right now.”

– Laurin Hahn, CEO, Sono Motors

One of the biggest obstacles to electric vehicle adoption has been their price point. This is something that Laurin Hahn, CEO of Sono Motors, is hoping to solve with the Sion, an SEV (solar electric vehicle) that launches in 24 countries, including Portugal, in 2023 – with a price tag of €25,000.

The difference between the Sion and most other EVs is that it is covered in a total of 56 solar cells, which power the car to the tune of 150 miles per week in sunny climes.

Sono Motors is also in the B2B business, with 22 customers – including Mitsubishi and Scania – on the books. And this is no concept vehicle… It’s currently being tested in Germany: “There are solar buses on the street in Munich right now,” said Laurin.

Going into production soon in Finland, the Sion has been showcased across the globe – including in New York, where Whoopi Goldberg pre-ordered two, according to Jim Motavalli, contributing automotive journalist at the New York Times.

Main image of Mercedes AMG-Petronas F1 team principal and CEO Toto Wolff on Centre Stage during Day 2 of Web Summit 2022: Ben McShane/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)