The Journey Behind WebSummit
When I was 6 years old, I thought that at 16 y/o I would be a normal teenager, getting my G1 and participate in every school club possible.
Fast forward 10 years, none of that happened.
I turned 16 almost 2 months ago and every time I think about these childhood aspirations I had and how I haven’t achieved any of them, I’m not upset, because I was thinking too small.
I mean at this very moment, I’m on a plane with 6 friends flying back from Lisbon, Portugal after speaking at the world’s largest tech conference, Web Summit.
There’s the constant glamorization of “a 16 year old speaking at the world’s largest tech conference,” and on the surface, that’s what it was. But in reality, it’s the conversations, the relationships and the unique insights which have changed how I run my daily life.
The intention of this article is to take you on the journey: where I began, what I’ve worked on, what I learned from the experience alongside the value each conversation brought and what I’m currently doing. On the surface, this was just a short 3 day conference, but in reality each day began at 6am and ended at 12am. This was not a short experience.
TL;DR you’re on this journey with me and it begins from the very start. September of 2021.
The Beginning
When I was 14 years old, I joined The Knowledge Society (TKS): a global innovation program for teens to expose themselves to emerging technologies and apply them to the world’s biggest problems. Lots happened in just one year, here’s the breakdown.
I was in hatred with the problem of healthcare accessibility for multiple reasons. Here’s the short version: I got sick every time the season changed and being from Canada, that meant 4 times a year and sometimes even more but fortunately, I had the perfect care. I always took antibiotics, got the the right medicine, was driven to the right doctor at the right time, given a warm bed and a loving family to take care of me. Even with all of that, it took me one week to recover.
Then, when I was 10 years old, my family and I travelled to India and surprise, I got sick again.
But this time was different. I had to take 3+ pills, didn’t have my family doctor and none of my warm house conditions. Once we went to the doctors office on a motorcycle, I was shocked. There was one doctor with one nurse and to be diagnosed, I would go behind a curtain while everyone else waited. Children were running outside the doctors office to get money or throw up and after exiting the doctors office. I felt worse than I already did.
Now, when I was 10 years old I was set on becoming a doctor to help people overcome these terrible conditions and receive basic healthcare.
But once I was exposed to the fact that I could use technology for increasing this accessibility right now instead of 15 years later, I jumped at the opportunity.
So, I embarked on my journey in nanotechnology.
I researched smart pills: pills which would latch onto an organ, measure your vitals, connect to an external bluetooth device and show all of your metrics on your smartphone and send them all to your doctor.
Too invasive.
So, I looked at making diagnosing less invasive with point of care testing. I researched paper-based devices with quantum dots and a machine which could diagnose diseases in 5–10 minutes.
Too impractical.
This is when I had the realization that nanotech was not well suited for providing greater access to healthcare. The issue of toxicity and unknown variables meant that these projects wouldn’t be implemented for another decade. Plus, they couldn’t be mass produced due to the problem of nano fabrication.
But, I didn’t want to give up and thought “why not make the hindering factors of nanofabrication as a good thing,” and so, I built QuantumTags: using quantum dots and deep learning for anti-counterfeiting. In short QuantumTags would utilize quantum-dot ink to stamp 1000 different quantum dot patterns on a small silicon substrate (nothing on the nanoscale can be identical), this would be scanned with an electron microscope, added to a database and available for all consumers to authenticate their products.
Complicated but a realistic use case for nanotech.
After internships and other projects and working on implementing QuantumTags over the summer, I came into September 2022 and thought,
I want to work on the problem of healthcare accessibility, but nanotech is not the technology for that problem.
So, I thought “what is the best technology for the problem” and I instantly thought of AI. After reading MIT research papers, listening to Vinod Khosla and speaking with experts, this hypothesis was confirmed to be strong and possible.
As I read, and read, and read I constantly saw the term “voice based biomarkers.” Signals in your vocal cords which could indicate the possibility of certain diseases through NLP.
I thought: most of the world has a smartphone with a microphone, this could work. Though certain communities might be excluded (the mute community) or there might be privacy concerns of healthcare data (will decrease as an issue overtime), voice based biomarkers (VBBs) can help half if not most of the world.
I was set on this idea.
Now this TL;DR of my life is exactly what I told people I met at Web Summit. See, I told you you were on this journey with me.
The News
Now keep in mind, I’m still a normal eleventh grade IB student, so as I worked on this project, I continued to work on school.
In fact, as I was sitting in French class, I get a notification from my previous director at TKS (shoutout to you Kim) saying I have exciting news. I open the message, watch the video and my jaw drops.
You’re speaking at Web Summit.
I find out that I’m speaking on a panel at the MoneyConf stage with Benjamin Chemla (CEO of Shares), Nick Jones (CEO of Zumo) and Uptin Saidi (Infuencer) all about GenZ and the future of investing.
Not only the panel, but I find out I’m also speaking on the Corporate Innovation Summit (CIS) stage alongside Ciara Sejour (fellow TKS Activator) about how companies can successfully incorporate GenZ into their companies, all in front of C-suite executives.
That’s when I took it all in. I’m about to travel to Lisbon, Portugal for one week with five other TKS students, 2 directors, speak at a conference, meet the world’s tech leaders, all at 16 years old. I instantly texted my mom and replied to Kim saying, “Yes, I’m ready to go.”
The Prep Begins
With not much convincing, my parents were on board, teachers had been informed and I was in go mode. After finishing the logistics, I boiled down my intentions for the conference into two main goals.
- Have valuable conversations with people. Going deeper than just what each person works on and instead testing theories, listening to other peoples’ hypotheses and learning about people’s stories.
- Have high quality insights in my talk and panel. I’m going to be speaking in front of industry experts and want to give provide deeper insights than just what you can find on the first page of Google.
This is when I realized that having high quality conversations that go deeper than the surface level is not something has a deadline or even a limit. But instead, it’s a never ending process which means you have to expand your mindset to create interesting insights.
And so, the process began.
I realized I had to do two things. Constantly expose myself to new concepts and understand what’s happening in the bleeding edge of emerging technologies, but also understand the people coming to the conference, determine the top 5 people I want to meet, the intention behind meeting them and what to say to them.
It started with figuring out my content consumption. I had always listened to podcasts and occasionally read articles and always read research papers. But, this is when I had to step it up. Every morning I’d listen to podcasts by Lex Fridmen, The All-In podcast, The Knowledge Project, etc. I’d read articles by Science Direct, new possible scientific theories coming out and got back into reading Homo Deus.
I consumed lots of content, some of my notes and videos are added below.
This constant consumption continued on until the very last minute before I hopped into a car to drive to the Toronto Airport to fly over to Lisbon. But, I had to make sure I was meeting people I knew I wanted to meet.
And after having a discussion with one of my mentors about emailing these people, Meredith Best (Director of Ecosystem, Blue Labs), told me to really focus on my top 3. Who are my top 3 people I want to meet that it’ll be 10x more difficult to meet with without access to the conference.
So, I narrowed it down to five people.
- Rohit Prasad, Head of Alexa. Alexa is one of the best and most advanced voice assistants we know of. What if detecting diseases could be apart of Alexa? Is this already an initiative? Well, Rohit is the perfect person to ask.
- Sambul Desai, VP of Apple Health. Telemedicine is the intersection between AI and remote monitoring and Apple brings the AI section where the health brings the remote monitoring. So, with VBBs, Apple Health could be the platform to bring it to life.
- Andrew McAfee, Researcher at MIT and the Co-Founder of Sloan Management Review and an author.
As I continued both researching the people and constantly exposing myself to content, I then decided to hit the second intention, the speaking.
I soon realized that there was no concrete way of preparing for a panel. It was more of consuming content in a directed manner. This means listening to podcasts and reading articles all about investing, old trends, new trends and creating my own insights.
Here’s a compilation of everything I found:
As per the CIS talk, there was lots of coordination, changes and many rounds of feedback. Keep in mind, this talk is the young generation telling C-suite execs to change their current business model and the new edge the young generation can bring to the table. It has to be insightful and carefully articulated.
After hearing this, I came up with a first draft about my journey and how experience like this could become helpful to large corporations. Specifically, highlighting the fact that I interned at Blue Labs: Walmart Canada’s Innovation Incubator at 15 years old.
I hopped on calls with Ciara everyday and we came up with some talking points and what the final presentation could look like. Then, I got another round of feedback from Nadeem, iterated the presentation and got one final round of feedback.
I finally submitted, practiced and got all the logistics done. I was ready to go to Web Summit.
The Trip
We get to the airport, meet the TKS crew and it finally hits me when the plane takes off.
I put in my AirPods, listen to Lex Fridman talk about AGI for a bit, decided to review the talk and panel and slept, a lot. And after 7 long hours, we landed in Lisbon, Portugal!
Now Web Summit is no minor event, I mean there’s roughly 70 000+ attendees with majority of those attendees flying into the country.
As we got settled in, it came time for dinner. And so, we went to Time Out Market, and we were joined by the co-founders of TKS (Navid and Nadeem Nathoo) and they challenged us.
“Go up to 3 people and talk to them. Learn their story, why are they here and have a good conversation. Grab a selfie with them and at the end, go in for a fist bump but grab their hand instead of actually giving them a fist bump” Classic networking move.
And to my surprise, I realized that there’s so little you can actually gauge from looking at a person.
- I spoke to someone who started a crypto company with his friends, dropped out of university and is now here for another conference to pitch their idea.
- I then met another person who was working in a telecom company, was here for Web Summit and had a conversation all about Portugal.
Keep in mind these were just two people, not in a conference/networking setting and we had great conversations within 2 minutes of knowing each other.
Day 0: Kick-Off Night
Fast forward to kick off at Web Summit. This is an evening where people begin to gather and there’s a formal opening at the Centre Stage. But from our standpoint, it’s another networking opportunity.
As we sat in our chairs waiting for the speakers to begin, I turned around and began talking to the person behind me and didn’t even realize we fell into a deep conversation for 20 minutes.
The lady was from Romania and worked at a telecom company, and as we got deeper, I learned about the conditions in her city and how politics played a huge role in their access to healthcare. Here’s the short story: each election that would take place, the candidate in running would promise that they would build a new hospital, but the promise would never be fulfilled.
Until years passed by and the hospital was finally built from money funded through charitable organizations. The morale of the community was at an all time low and this just further highlighted the dismembered format of the city. Access to healthcare is a real issue that only seemed more and more real during these three days.
After kick-off, we entered Forum: the place where all speakers and guests speak with each other. We had two short hours which did not disappoint.
- I met one of the world’s finest cybersecurity leaders who is also an MIT researcher and a writer for CNN.
- I turn another corner and meet a sales representative who has now connected me with a potential investor.
But these were just two conversations of many in the span of 3 hours, but of course, we stayed until the very end until Forum closed because being the first one there and the last one to leave allows you to meet everyone there and get the most out of this three day experience.
And so, we hit our traditional spot, the mall food court for dinner and as came back to the VRBO, there came another tradition, late night talks and playing TKS mafia, ready to hit our upcoming 16 hour day.
Day 1: Time for Stage
After waking up early, surprise surprise we were some of the first people in Forum, the only right way to do it.
We networked and during this day I have both my talk with Ciara at the CIS stage and speaking on the MoneyConf panel.
First thing on the list after networking was my talk.
The Panel: GenZ and the Future of Investing
This panel was alongside Uptin Saidi (YouTuber), Nick Jones (CEO of Zumo) and Benjamin Chemla (CEO of Shares). Check out their work in the fintech space and how they’ve grown their companies in the span of just a few years.
As were getting mic-ed up, it came 11:00am, time for the panel and we walked onto stage. Prior to getting on stage, I told myself one thing “I’m here to add value and need to make sure my voice is heard.”
One thing I kept in mind from the first night is that this is time to implement the training I’ve learned in the past year, but also learn more and continue growing because that’s the only way I’ll continue to learn.
So, the first thing I asked for was feedback and came up with a few takeaways after being on the panel:
- Have unique insights. Anyone could’ve been on the panel but there’s a reason I’m there and its to bring a unique insight, new thought or new idea and I need to do that by diving deep enough into the field, making connections between this research and combining that with prior knowledge.
- Be unconventional. How do you “go off script” and not do what’s expected of you on the panel. Traditionally on a panel, 3–4 speakers come on, answer questions and walk off the stage. But, what if this wasn’t the case. What if there were contradicting opinions? What if one of the speakers began to ask questions instead of the moderator? This is how one can add more value on a panel, taking the unconventional route.
- Be confident. You have opinions and have done research, so explain it. But try to see how you can give the biggest ROI to the listeners from the research you’ve done.
- Bring the energy. Listening to panels is almost like listening to podcasts, you’re simply listening to a discussion. But with greater energy and a more conversational tone is what makes listening to the panel a lot more interesting.
- Make what you’re doing fun. Navid mentioned something multiple times on the trip “how can you have fun with whatever you’re doing, make things fun.” Making a panel fun is challenging how things are currently done but also cracking jokes and asking the audience their opinion. It’s about doing what you want and incorporating everyone else into the fun.
After the panel, I continued to network and here were some highlights from the day and some incredible people I met.
- Abbie is a chief editor at the MIT sloan management review and she told me all about her experience writing and how one of the most interesting stories was about physchological safety within workers and how that relates to companies taking risk.
- Chris has worked with the British Embassy for almost two decades now but also studied pure math at the University of Oxford and we had an incredible conversation about the beauty of math for 20 minutes, these conversations never fail to surprise me.
- Matteo and I talked about my project QuantumTags and he had loads of experience in investing in nanotechnology and quantum dots so talking about the issues around implementation and scaling was in depth.
The Talk: How GenZ Can Successfully Be Incorporated Into Companies @ CIS
During this talk, I collaborated with Ciara Sejour (a fellow activator) to talk to C-suite executives about the value GenZ can add to their companies and what is currently hindering their value extraction from the younger generation.
TL;DR: we had four main points we wanted to bring across.
- Intrepreneur vs. Entrepreneur: many youth are entrepreneurs and build their own companies to make 10x change within an industry, what if you could find and harness this youth to become the entrepreneurs of your company, the intrapreneurs.
- The Specialized Generalist: young people have the time/curiosity to build and explore their passions and build their T’s (breadth and depth into topics simultaneously) which can bring unique and broader scopes to problems within a company.
- Adaptability: young people are adaptable to changing environments and new technologies and as the industry continues to change, adaptable people are needed to drive change and increase long term sustainability of companies.
- Training Young People to be Needle Movers: young people can and need to make 10x change to fight upcoming world problems becoming more severe and need to be trained to take the risk and become the change makers in society.
And, the fact of the matter is that people want to hear about this upcoming topic since the crowd was full. Seeing the floors, all of the chairs, the entrance and outside the CIS stage to be full of audience members gave me more energy to make this talk memorable and impactful, providing value to those who are ready to incorporate GenZ into their companies.
But, the networking doesn’t end there, we went straight to a late night dinner with executives of top companies ready to have deep conversations.
Day 1 Continues
TKS hosted a dinner to bring people together and for more interesting conversations. After spending hours talking, these were some of the most meaningful conversations I had and will never forget the experience of meeting someone five minutes ago and then talking about some heartfelt-deep concepts.
Shoutout to the incredible people I met:
Rhett Power, by far one of the best conversations I’ve ever had. We began with spending almost 20 minutes breaking down my QuantumTags project and how I would go about implementing it but also the stage of nanotechnology at this very moment. We then moved onto my current project of detecting diseases through voice based biomarkers and how the motivation behind majority of my projects have been regarding the hate for the problem of healthcare accessibility. We shared some stories about how luck plays a huge role in where someone starts off in their lives. Eventually we got onto the topic of books and GenZ and it brought so many unique insights and new learnings, and I had only met Rhett for the first time, how crazy is that.
Abha from CAE told me all about their work at CAE and the AI simulations they use to train pilots and how similar that is to current advancements in using VR and other simulations to train surgeons. We talked about challenges the current generation faces and how times have changed through the lens of her eyes and experiences.
Andrew and I had an intellectually rich conversation about business models and his work at Interac. Corp to bring new conveniences to the Toronto Transit System. Eventually, we had a conversation about Uber’s business model and how that hyper personalization resulted in their speed scaling and how Interac could use a similar technique of the consumers almost creating the business.
One night, amazing conversations and great talks. Wrapped up the night with some late night mafia and conversations.
And this is when it really hit me. I felt as though I was in a whole other world. For the past few days and the next few days, I wasn’t thinking about high school, my life back home or any work I had to complete, but instead was living in the present moment and cultivating the experiences I wanted to have. Living in a VRBO with 6 friends, in Portugal and talking to executives and founders all day. That’s an experience in itself.
Day 2: The Networking Sprint
And we’re ready to do it all over again but this is when the networking fatigue began to hit. When you’re speaking with people for 14 hours in a day about work, projects, technologies and new advancements, as interesting as the conversations are, it gets extremely tiring very quickly.
But it was having the mindset of “I’m going to be back in Toronto living my high school teenage life in a few days and I won’t get this exact experience for a while, I have to make the most of it,” which brought momentum.
In fact, we even got to meet the President of Microsoft Canada and even talked to him about my project with voice based biomarkers.
As we came home, we again talked and played and had a few more takeaways from the conference and building relationships.
- Living in the moment is huge, but think about the experiences you want to cultivate and make them happen.
- Building relationships with the people you live with is huge. In the end, you’re all sharing this experience together and making it fun and building more of these experiences is what makes this once in a lifetime opportunity truly unique.
- You’re not the only person that has been doing this all day. People have been talking about work and their own work for hours on end, how can you make this conversation different? How can you make it more interesting? Ask interesting questions that are hypothetical or spike a unique conversation.
Day 3: The Final Stretch
The final day.
As usual, we were some of the first people there and I had a media interview right in the morning talking about my project of voice based biomarkers.
And, it was networking grind. This was by far my best networking day and here’s all of the incredible people I met which I can’t wait to talk more to.
Komodo Health: Met the Founder and CEO, Arif Nathoo through Navid and Nadeem. Komodo Health has done wonders in the field of data science and healthcare and even created their very own healthcare map for patients. Arif and I jammed out about voice based biomarkers and privacy issues with healthcare data.
HALA Systems: Talk about team culture. HALA Systems is a humanitarian organization making large scale impact in Yemen and heard some mind boggling statistics about the conditions in these countries. We then went onto the problem of climate change and the severity of the issue with some new theories regarding the severity of the issue. Anything and everything you would consider in a good team and company is in HALA Systems, can’t wait for a possible collaboration and was even offered an internship!
AI <> Voice Analysis: Nick is a researcher working on voice based biomarkers and specifically how all of these biomarkers can be correlated to depression and anxiety. Lots of more conversations to come!
Oracle: Thomas Siebel and I had an insightful conversation talking about the value GenZ can bring to companies. As a computer scientist, Thomas has built 3 companies, one of which was sold to Oracle. Can’t wait for further mentorship.
Cheqd: After meeting Fraser, CEO of Cheqd, I understood the great importance of knowing what’s happening in the current industries. From talking about implementing the voice based biomarkers idea to privacy and data with healthcare analysis and talking about books, some of my favourite conversation topics!
Pager Duty: Met the CEO and how their company is working within the healthcare space, alongside preventative medicine and how early detection of problems is a universal solver.
F1 Mercedes: Met the head of partnerships at F1 Mercedes and talked about where he sees the company going.
Monarch Tractor: Met the head of the company working on AI and food production. Monarch works with farmers to make optimal conditions for crop growth and is making a dent in the agriculture space.
The list goes on and on.
Keep in mind, all of these people were met in one day.
When you’re in this innovation filled space it doesn’t even make sense how much the world and people are working on and this was only 200 people in a room where I barely met 1% of the entrepreneurs and impact markers at the conference.
This brought lots of hope to the future of science and tech.
We ended the day off with a ride in the gondolas, some late night walking with limbo and some dinner at a highly rated Indian restaurant.
And, talked all about sharing the experience. We’ve lived it but explaining the value and learnings brought from this experience is difficult when the person wasn’t there. Hence, my intention behind making this article a journey.
The final day was spent exploring Sintra, Portugal, taking a sketchy-path walk to Green Street and having a photoshoot and Spice Girls jam session on the balcony as the sun was setting. We ended it with some more late night mafia, and just like that we were on a flight back to Toronto which is where this article began.
There’s the constant glamorization of “ a 16 year old speaking at the world’s largest tech conference,” and on the surface, that’s what it was.
But in reality, this experience was filled with the most meaningful conversations I had with founders, computer scientists, writers, entrepreneurs and CEOs. It was staying up late to play games and talk about the experience with the people I was sharing it with. It was about learning about the lives of my coaches and their stories. It was about having that moment where I walked around all five pavilions, saw all the company booths and saw the innovation happening in industries around the world. It was about living in this what felt like an alternate world, and understanding how to make this my normal world.
