The IO+ Week: an effective startup community
Every Sunday, our weekly review offers an overview of the most interesting stories around important innovations.
Published on June 8, 2025
Bart, co-founder of Media52 and Professor of Journalism oversees IO+, events, and Laio. A journalist at heart, he keeps writing as many stories as possible.
“Gerard & Anton” is the name under which we organize several large events for the startup community each year. The Piek Awards in the winter, the Gerard & Anton Awards in the summer (you can already register for our event on July 3!) In between, we host the Founders Dinner and are working on more thematic gatherings such as Medtech or Semicon.
But we also have the monthly Drinks, Pitches & Demos under the Gerard & Anton umbrella. This is a recurring, extremely accessible event where people with a good idea (a startup is often too big a word for the stage they are at) share their ambitions with an interested audience and then ask for the help they think they still need. This regularly leads to new contacts, fulfilled wishes, and even the start of a business. What's truly remarkable is that we often see these fledgling ideas resurface years later as winners of a Gerard & Anton Award. That's the power of the ecosystem!
Typically, Drinks, Pitches & Demos is always on the first Wednesday of the month, but at the request of startup ecosystems in Tilburg and Breda, we are working on a steady expansion. Last week we had DPD Tilburg (read the report here, including a video of all pitches), and in two weeks it's DPD Breda (register here). And in between, we naturally had our monthly DPD, this time on the roof of Strijp TQ. Read the report of that event here, including a video with all the pitches.
External Content
This content is from youtube. To protect your privacy, it'ts not loaded until you accept.
And there was also some good news during this DPD: a new fund for bottom-up startup community initiatives.
Bob van der Meulen & Hugo van Hees
And then there was this:
- EZ: The Netherlands must secure a leading role in the chip industry
- AI in the manufacturing industry: from hype to necessity
- Switch on, switch off: the new form of contraception
- The fall of the cabinet causes incredible frustration in the energy sector
- From lab to global impact: these startups are going to make it
- This startup makes a dismantlable solar panel
- This professor designs molecules to prevent cancer metastasis
- Recycling record in Europe for steel packaging
- Breakthrough in early detection of Crohn's disease
- Breakthroughs in electronics, photonics, and circularity for Holst
- From lab to global impact: these startups are going to make it
Watt Matters
In the meantime, we are busy preparing for our event on November 26: Watt Matters In AI. Click on the banner below for more information and the registration link.
Don't want to miss a thing? You can find an overview of all our articles here. Have a great Sunday!