DINNER
Tuesday 17th June 2025
Soho House, Berlin
18.45
Drinks reception
19:50
Opening Remarks
Founder & CEO, Fast Growth Icons
19:55
Welcome Address
Sebastian Schirl
Managing Director, Stifel
20.00
Seated Dinner
Enjoy three courses from Soho House exclusive menu
22.30
Carriages
MAIN DAY
Wednesday 18th June 2025
Hotel de Rome, Berlin
08.00
Breakfast & Networking
09.00
Host
Uday Singh
Founder & CEO, Fast Growth Icons
09.10
Opening Remarks
Ben Fletcher
Founder, The Mothership
09.30
Welcome Address
Florian Merkel
Director Corporate Tax Services, KPMG
09.35
Maximilian Wühr
CEO and Co-Founder, FINN
Launch: 2019 | Staff: 300+ | Funding $256m + $1b debt | Valuation: $600m+
Driving Innovation at Speed: Building a Culture of Momentum
Success in business is often defined by speed – the ability to test, learn, and adapt quickly. As companies grow, complexity can become a barrier to agility. Creating a culture of momentum requires clear decision-making, smart automation, and a willingness to embrace imperfect but rapid execution. Finding the right balance between speed and quality enables businesses to stay ahead of the curve and drive continuous innovation.
10.00
Katharina Lüth
Chief Client Officer, Member of the Management Board, Raisin
Founded 2012 | Staff 599 | Funding $303m | Valuation $1.1b
Managing complexity as you scale and doing the right things right
Simplicity has huge power. It focuses your effort in one place and enables you to go further, faster. As a business scales, complexity scales exponentially. More people, more products (or features), more channels to market and more geographies. How do you then balance the need for simplicity with the need to capture all these opportunities? We’ll discuss choosing the right opportunities, setting priorities, structuring the company and building processes. The combination between making sure you always are doing the right things, and when you are doing them, doing them effectively.
10.25
Roundtable networking and discussion session
11.10
Morning Break
11.35
Sebastian Berning
CEO & Co-founder, Instagrid
Founded 2018 | Staff: 250+ | Funding $137m +
Maintaining an Experimental, Risk-Taking Culture as You Scale
Rapid growth feels chaotic. As scale-ups mature, teams often respond by trying to “fix” the chaos—reducing risk, tightening control, and inadvertently slowing momentum. But for a high-growth company, slowing down can be more dangerous than making mistakes. How can you preserve a culture of experimentation and calculated risk-taking as your company scales? Placing risk-takers in the right roles, maintaining clear focus, and embedding a culture of continuous testing and learning can help to sustain the pace and spirit that sparked initial success – without losing control.
12.00
Roundtable networking and discussion session
13.00
Seated Lunch
Enjoy three courses from Hotel de Rome’s exclusive menu
14.30
Welcome Address
Johannes P. Goossens
Partner, White & Case
14.35
Naren Shaam
Founder & CEO, Omio
Founded 2013 | Staff 410
Striking the right balance between growth and profit
Naren will talk through the three stages of his company’s growth: from well-funded and growth at all costs, to the existential threat of COVID, to the new balanced approach of growth at a reasonable margin. We’ll discuss how he has changed the way they predict future growth to focus more on shorter payback periods and how they think about unit economics. We’ll also look at how the org structure has changed and how the core KPIs of the business have adapted.
15.00
Alexander Gran
Founder and MD, bobbie
Insolvent to Investable: The Startup Resurrection Playbook
When Alex’s business filed for insolvency, he thought it was the end. Then, in a stunning turnaround, he found investors but discovered there were no rules, internally or externally, to reverse the process. What followed was a high-stakes scramble under intense time pressure. Alex will blend legal edge cases, personal resilience, and tactical advice on what safeguards to put in place and how the unforeseen can be put to strategic advantage.
15.25
Roundtable networking and discussion session
16.25
Closing Address
Uday Singh
Founder & CEO, Fast Growth Icons
16.30
Champagne Reception
17.30
Closed
Round Table Discussion Sessions
Fundraising at scale
A session looking at all the options – VC, PE, IPO, Debt.
Balancing Growth vs Profit and Value creation
Navigating the trade-offs between aggressive scaling and sustainable profitability. How do investors view the trade-offs, and what are the risks of getting the balance wrong?
Quality of earnings – what beyond profit and growth adds the most value to your business?
Employee share schemes
How do you maximise the value, and what are the new rules? What’s best practice?
A chance for people to discuss how they offer employee incentive schemes
and find out how the new rules will change things.
Preparing for a Successful Exit
Strategic Investment and Wealth Management.
Exits – pitfalls and deal breakers
What are the things that can turn out to be deal breakers, and how you can mitigate them.
Growth through acquisitions: do’s and don’ts.
Do you grow organically or through acquisition? When are acquisitions better?
What are the reasons acquisitions fail?
International expansion
When are you ready for expansion? How do you choose the right geography?
Should you expand by acquisition? How do you manage and integrate the teams?