Why Helsinki Helped Me See 20x Further
A founder-first culture, intentional collisions, and the clarity that arrived at the end of the world tour.
I didn’t expect the last stop of the tour to resonate this deeply.
Helsinki in late November feels like another world—cold enough to shock your system, warm enough inside SLUSH to remind you why founders build in the first place.
And SLUSH…
SLUSH was different.
No chaos.
No ego.
Just precision, flow, and the kind of intention you rarely see at events of this scale.
At the end, they announced something wild:
25,000+ meetings. In two days.
And you could feel it in the design.
Every corner felt like a meeting space.
Tables.
Cafés.
Nooks.
Mini-lounges.
Quiet pockets for thinking and connecting.
A massive meeting center anchoring the whole venue.
It didn’t feel like a conference.
It felt like an ecosystem built for collisions—where ideas connect faster, where people move with purpose, where conversations turn into clarity.
Founders weren’t just pitching.
They were thinking together.
Building together.
Dreaming out loud.
And then there was the SLUSH 100 winner.
A startup called Diffraqtion.
We filmed a PopUp interview with Johannes, their CEO, just before he entered the finals.
Calm.
Focused.
Holding a tiny quantum camera like it was a glimpse of what’s next.
Their slogan says it all:
“See further, think faster.”
But the real signal was in the details.
Their camera can see 20x farther than anything on the market today.
And think 1,000x faster, because it processes light like the human eye.
Not through heavy computation.
Just direct intelligence.
Light in.
Understanding out.
He talked about everything from satellites that no longer need to be school-bus-sized…
→ to drones that instinctively avoid each other mid-air…
→ to robots that respond with real-time awareness…
→ to physical AI becoming the next wave after generative AI.
The government. NASA. DARPA.
Already involved.
And as he spoke, something quiet snapped into place:
This is what SLUSH felt like.
→ A place where founders suddenly see further.
→ A place where ideas force you to think faster.
→ A place where clarity shows up early.
Almost like a POV upgrade in real time.
SLUSH didn’t give me new ideas.
It gave me something better…
clarity of POV… at a much higher resolution.
Not a new direction.
Just a sharper lens.
Because a future POV is really the way you see the world before the world sees it.
And in Helsinki…
Surrounded by intentional meetings, founders thinking out loud, and a quantum camera built to extend our vision…
My own POV stretched.
Expanded.
Snapped into focus.
Almost like Diffraqtion’s technology.
Same world.
Different clarity.
And maybe that’s why November 2025 showed up so clearly..
not as a plan, but as a signal.
A moment on the horizon, my POV can now see…
20x further.
The tour ends here.
But the story?
It’s just beginning its rise.
Gratefully,
Edwin
P.S. If you want to dive deeper into Diffraqtion and the standout founders from SLUSH, you can read my full recap here:
https://upnext.world/inside-slush-100-diffraqtion-wins-it-all-plus-the-finals-and-standout-founders/