Key takeaways
- alugha at WOLVES SUMMIT 2015: the alugha team travelled to Poland for one of Europe’s fast-rising startup and investor matchmaking summits, with 137 speakers, more than 200 exhibitors, and over 1,000 participants from around the world.
- CEO Bernd Korz pitched alugha in The Great Pitch, the summit’s centrepiece competition with a 50,000 USD prize, and held a confident five-minute presentation with a strong question-and-answer round.
- Two investor speed-datings landed: both partners understood the alugha idea within seconds, a useful signal that the multilingual-video pitch travels fast.
- A full booth day drove new conversations with venture capital, technology, and distribution partners, the kind of matchmaking a startup summit is built for.
- The mission has stayed the same since 2015: make one video work in every language. alugha turns that early pitch into a working multilingual video platform today.
- alugha did not reach the final, and that was fine: the feedback and investor interest confirmed the direction. Congratulations to The Great Pitch winner, Ourotech.
What alugha did at WOLVES SUMMIT 2015
In 2015 the alugha team headed east to Poland for WOLVES SUMMIT, a startup and investor matchmaking event that had already earned a place among the most important startup congresses in Europe. With 137 top-class speakers, more than 200 exhibitors, and over 1,000 participants from all over the world, it was a dense, high-energy room, exactly where an early-stage video startup wants to be seen.
It started on the Monday evening with the first gathering, a relaxed get-together that opened the door to early conversations. From there the week ran on the summit’s own logic: workshops by day, networking without pause, and a steady stream of introductions to other startups, investors, and partners. For a small team selling a big idea, every conversation was a chance to explain why multilingual video would matter.
Two investor speed-datings stood out. The format is simple: a startup and an investor get a 20-minute talk to find out whether there is a fit, and the skill is saying what your company does clearly before the clock runs out. Both alugha conversations clicked within seconds, with each partner grasping the potential of a platform that layers many languages onto a single video. CEO Bernd Korz, never short of words, made the most of it.
The Great Pitch: highlights from alugha at WOLVES SUMMIT 2015
The centrepiece of the week was The Great Pitch, the summit’s competition for a 50,000 USD prize in front of a large jury. The goal was never only the trophy. The team wanted to convince the jury that alugha would change the way online video works. Ahead of the pitch, Bernd and Kasia sat in on a workshop on the perfect pitch, then spent the evening reworking the presentation, the usual startup-conference ritual of cutting and rewriting.
On the Wednesday, in a cinema-sized hall, Bernd held a composed five-minute pitch and handled the question-and-answer session well. alugha did not make it to the final, but the jury clearly understood the idea. Warm congratulations went to the fellow finalists, SayYeahTV, Ourotech, Liftago, the shair Project, SoAmpli, and Tesla Studios.
Each of the 60 selected startups also got a booth for a day to present its business model to a wider audience. alugha’s booth day, on the Thursday, focused on new business relationships: venture capital, technology partnerships, and distribution. It turned into the centre of a run of direction-setting conversations that sent the team home with new ideas, and already thinking about how to sharpen the pitch for the next event.
Why a startup summit mattered for multilingual video
A room full of investors and founders is a brutal test for an idea. You have seconds to make a stranger care, and the ideas that survive solve a problem people recognise. The problem alugha brought to Poland was simple to state and hard to solve: a video in one language leaves most of the world out, and producing a separate edit per market is slow and expensive. That it landed showed in how quickly people leaned in.
The approach that worked in a 20-minute speed-dating in 2015 is the same one that powers the product now. One video stays the source of truth, and many language tracks are layered onto the same file, so viewers pick their language in the player. There is no separate file library to maintain and no version drift between markets. That single idea grew into a full video translation platform, where transcription, translation, and AI-assisted voices turn one upload into content that travels across markets without a re-edit.
Accessibility and reach: the part investors noticed
Reach is not only about languages. The same workflow that adds a new language can add the tracks that make a video usable by more people: subtitles for viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing or watching in a second language, and audio description for viewers who are blind or have low vision. For a startup pitching scale, the message was clear: accessibility and reach come from the same place.
That logic still holds. Today alugha produces accessible subtitles and audio description inside the normal workflow, and both travel with the multilingual file across every language you add. The infrastructure underneath has grown up too, with GDPR-compliant video hosting in Germany, so reach does not come at the cost of data protection.
What the team took home from Poland
WOLVES SUMMIT earned its place among the most important startup congresses in Europe, and the alugha team was proud to have been there. Even without the prize money, the personal result was clear: the direction was right. The feedback and the interest in alugha confirmed that multilingual video was a future worth building toward.
- Founders and early-stage teams: a startup summit is a stress test for the pitch, and the clearest ideas travel fastest in a speed-dating room.
- Investors and partners: the multilingual-video problem was easy to recognise and the single-file approach was easy to grasp.
- The product roadmap: the idea pitched in Poland in 2015 is the same idea that runs the platform today, now with accessibility and compliant hosting built in.
FAQ
What was alugha at WOLVES SUMMIT 2015?
In 2015 alugha took part in WOLVES SUMMIT in Poland, a startup and investor matchmaking summit with 137 speakers, more than 200 exhibitors, and over 1,000 participants. The team pitched its multilingual video idea, ran two investor speed-datings, and presented at a booth.
Did alugha win The Great Pitch at WOLVES SUMMIT 2015?
No. CEO Bernd Korz delivered a confident five-minute pitch for the 50,000 USD prize, but alugha did not reach the final. The jury understood the idea, and the feedback and investor interest confirmed the direction. The Great Pitch winner was Ourotech.
Where and when was WOLVES SUMMIT 2015?
WOLVES SUMMIT 2015 was held in Poland. It ran as a multi-day startup matchmaking summit, with a relaxed first gathering on the Monday evening, workshops and speed-datings midweek, The Great Pitch on the Wednesday, and booth days for the selected startups.
What is a startup speed-dating?
A startup speed-dating is a short, timed meeting, usually around 20 minutes, in which a startup and an investor find out whether there is a fit. alugha had two speed-datings in Poland, and both partners grasped the idea within seconds.
How does alugha at WOLVES SUMMIT 2015 connect to alugha today?
The idea pitched in Poland is the idea that runs the platform now: keep one source video and layer many language tracks onto the same file, so viewers choose their language in the player. alugha has since grown it into a full multilingual video platform with accessible subtitles, audio description, and GDPR-compliant hosting.
Event: WOLVES SUMMIT 2015. Location: Poland. A startup and investor matchmaking summit where alugha pitched its multilingual video idea, the same idea that powers the platform today at alugha.
