Bits & Health Pretzels

For a while, FinTech seemed to dominate the southern German startup scene. Now HealthTech has entered the investor boxing ring.

Bits & Pretzels, which bills itself as Europe's premier founders festival, recently announced that it would launch a HealthTech conference to focus on how digital innovations can improve health services and patient care. While the larger Bits & Pretzels conference that takes place in September of every year invites 5,000 participants, the smaller HealthTech conference will initially invite 1,000 founders, investors, healthcare providers and business executives. The early lineup of speakers includes personalities such as Johannes Wimmer, a doctor, TV host and entrepreneur; founders such as Anna von Stackelberg from doctorly; corporate types such as Florian Weiß from jameda; and government figures such as Susanne Ozegowski, a director general at the German Federal Ministry of Health.

Past experience at Bits & Pretzels conferences suggests a large portion of attendees will be startup founders looking for investors, and investors will be the smaller number of participants discreetly obscuring their name tags so as to avoid an onslaught of funding inquiries. But there's always an enthusiastic vibe.

Tickets start at 299 EUR early/399 EUR regular for startups and scale quickly up to a maximum of 1,599 EUR for corporates.