Startups and scaleups

You’ll hear how Europe’s scale-stage founders, CEOs and operators are making high-stakes decisions in uncertain, fast-moving markets.

Through founder interviews, strategic panels and peer discussions, you’ll see how leaders are choosing what to prioritise, what to pause and where to place their next serious bets. You’ll leave with sharper priorities for your next stage of growth and a clearer view of the decisions that deserve your attention now.

As scrutiny increases, alignment between founders, C-suite, board, investors and operators becomes harder and more important.

Sifted Summit brings these perspectives into the same room through stage sessions, roundtables and focused networking, so you can see how other high-growth companies are connecting strategy, execution and investor expectations. You’ll leave with clearer ways to keep leadership decisions joined up as the business gets more complex.

Scrappy processes work until they start creating drag.

Operator-led sessions and practical workshops will show how teams at your stage are moving from workarounds to scalable infrastructure across product, growth, people, finance and operations. You’ll leave with practical ideas for reducing friction, improving execution and building systems that hold under pressure.

AI, regulation, capital flows and larger incumbents are reshaping how companies compete.

Across the Challenger Stage, Next Stage and roundtable programme, you’ll hear how scale-stage leaders are strengthening positioning, building defensibility and deciding where they can win against better-funded or more established players. You’ll leave with sharper thinking on how to build sustainable advantage, rather than relying on short-term momentum.

Growth ambition needs to line up with funding strategy, governance and control.

Investor-led sessions, founder conversations and board-level discussions will give you a closer view of how capital expectations are shifting, what investors are looking for and how other companies are balancing growth with discipline. You’ll leave better prepared for your next raise, board conversation or expansion decision.

The best insight often comes from people facing the same constraints, complexity and pressure.

Through curated roundtables, focused networking and a growth-stage audience of Series A–C founders, C-suites and operators, Sifted Summit puts you in the room with people solving similar problems in real time. You’ll leave with conversations that go beyond surface-level networking and give you a more useful benchmark for what is happening across Europe’s scale-stage ecosystem.