The Hive Summit 2024: Samaipata Founders' Retreat

Every year at Samaipata, we host our Founders' Retreat—The Hive Summit—under our Founders’ Success Platform, "The Hive." Celebrating its second edition this year in sunny Mallorca, the Summit brought together the founders of our portfolio companies, operating partners, and some of Samaipata's close friends. This retreat is designed to strengthen the bonds within our community, fostering meaningful connections and facilitating collaboration among all attendees.

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Over the course of three days, 50 attendees engaged in rich discussions around this year’s theme, “The Power of Trust”. Whether it was through roundtable discussions, coaching sessions, or simply grabbing a drink and sharing stories, The Hive Summit provided a good opportunity for networking, learning and building deeper connections.

Among the highlights were presentations from our featured speakers, including Tomás Pueyo, world-renowned content creator and author of Uncharted Territories; Eric Quidenus-Wahlforss, founder of SoundCloud & Dance; and Christian Reber, founder of Pitch and Wunderlist/Superlist. Their insights sparked dynamic conversations on how to think big, the critical role of trust in building high-performing teams, effective leadership, and the challenges of the entrepreneurial journey. 

We were also fortunate to have Maurice Whelan, Carlota Mateos, and Gina Badenoch as coaches to guide us through powerful sessions focused on personal growth and community building. These sessions were designed around the peer board model, where small groups come together to share experiences, provide guidance, and support each other in navigating personal, family, and professional challenges.

Some members of the community shared their thoughts on the Hive Summit:

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‍Lukas Puender, Co-founder of Retraced: “I feel like the whole event was shaped in a way to exchange in different formats and to start to open up. And for me this was pretty much the whole reason to be here, like really being transparent, learning from each other, exchanging, being also vulnerable at times, also getting honest feedback and ideas in order to improve the status quo and getting better over time. 

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Christian Reber, founder of Pitch and Wunderlist/superlist: Samaipata invests a lot in mental health for founders and as an experienced founder - I’ve started two companies - I feel like that is something that more VCs should put on the agenda.

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Eric Quidenus-Wahlforss, Founder of Soundcloud & Dance: I think you’re just a phenomenal team here of entrepreneurs and it’s always super energizing for me to spend time with people running companies.

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‍Maria Fossarello, Revenue Growth Director at Qonto and Samaipata Operating Partner: What I’ve really enjoyed in the Hive Summit is the leadership workshop. We had a group of six people we’ve managed to establish in just an hour together a strong level of connection and trust, which actually has enabled us to have a great playbook to be used with our teams. 

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‍Maurice Whelan, Executive Coach - Founder of Unleash Potential: We set up a team charter at the start of the summit, how we were going to interact over the three days. So things that came up were confidentiality, trust, respect. And I think that really set the whole tone for that kind of really deep connection that was built throughout the three days. 

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‍Carlos Serrano, Co-Founder of Embat: Really good sessions, listening to people that have gone through this many times. Great two panels, very seasoned entrepreneurs, people that are living the same like you.

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Tomás Pueyo, World-renowned Tech Content Creator, Best-seller Author, Tech Operator: I felt that I was landing in a group of people who were already friends and respect and like each other. And also we spent all this time together in a small group, where you really get to know people, you form bonds, and you end up caring for each other and for each other’s success. And as a result, I really want to help them in a way that hasn’t happened to me in other summits.  

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