Slush, a global startup movement and a not-for-profit community, announced a partnership, with a global, science-led biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. The collaboration helps Slush’s mission of helping the next generation groundbreaking founders and AstraZeneca’s pioneering work in the healthcare landscape to improve patients’ lives and push the boundaries of science.
Slush and AstraZeneca’s collaboration started initially in 2020, and the aligning interests and the previous fruitful outcomes helped both parties to deepen the mutually benefiting relationship for 2021. Based on last year’s learnings, Slush and AstraZeneca have an opportunity to make significant progress with the shared mission: helping founders solve critical patient issues. This year, Slush and AstraZeneca will double down their shared activities in the startup ecosystem.
In practice, Slush will facilitate relevant opportunities for startups to connect with AstraZeneca both online and offline around the year. The online events are hosted on the Node by Slush online platform, which was successfully used during the collaboration in 2020. This year, Node by Slush will be used to organize Online Roundtables hosted by AstraZeneca for the cutting-edge health and biotech professionals, startups, investors, and researchers. The shared offline activities will be disclosed later in 2021.
“Our actions over the next decade will determine the course of humanity for generations to come. In the future, entrepreneurs have to work in collaboration with the smartest individuals from across society, including academia, governments, arts, and larger companies. Our continued partnership with the science-led biopharmaceutical company
AstraZeneca is a critical step in achieving this. We share a common mission to accelerate revolutionary healthcare startups and create real change.”
Miika Huttunen, CEO at Slush
“At AstraZeneca, we’re committed to partnering with entrepreneurial talents from around the world, supporting their ambitions to enter the healthcare industry and develop new technologies that take us ‘beyond the pill’. By providing startups and entrepreneurs with guidance and mentoring we’re co-creating drug, device, diagnostic and digital technologies that advance international clinical capabilities. Our partnership with Slush will open up a world of possibilities for further international organisations seeking to develop solutions for patients, allowing us to transform lives.”
Alexander Bedenkov, VP International Medical and Global Health Innovation Hubs Network at AstraZeneca
About Slush
Slush is the world’s leading startup and tech event and a student-led, not-for-profit movement. Slush’s annual main event gathers thousands of investors, founders, journalists, and executives to Helsinki annually during late fall. In the early summer of 2021, Slush will launch a new version of the online startup-community initiative Node by Slush – Preregistrations for the platform are now open. On top of events and Node by Slush, Slush runs an online media called Soaked by Slush, a newsletter with 70k+ subscribers, research pieces, and much more. Slush Oy is owned by the Startup Foundation. The purpose of the Startup Foundation is to support and enable entrepreneurship and the creation, growth and
internationalization of startups in the Nordics. As with previous years, Slush’s annual operating profit will be used directly to develop the events and support entrepreneurship through new projects and initiatives. www.slush.org & @SlushHQ