Slush joins forces with AstraZeneca and calls for redefined entrepreneurship

Following a pledge to refocus its efforts on helping the startup community during the COVID-19 pandemic, Slush has announced a new partnership with biopharmaceutical multinational AstraZeneca to help to accelerate healthcare startups. The collaboration will see the organisations’ mutual interests combined on a global spectrum.

“Our new partnership with Slush is an example of our continued drive to innovate and boost our social commitment to the next level,” told Leon Wang, EVP International and Country President China & Hong Kong at AstraZeneca. “It will not only help to maintain the momentum of innovation during the current pandemic, but also ensure we’re well-equipped to face future challenges, further strengthening our biomed clusters to develop promising new healthcare solutions.”

The partnership echoes the gist of a white paper released recently by the Slush team, which calls for a new era of entrepreneurship that rests on the fundamentals of diversity, purpose and innovation. The paper is based on interviews with 60 key founders, investors and operators in the European ecosystem, as well as plentiful quantitative data.

“As the world is going through turmoil, the time is ripe for some introspection,” stated Miika Huttunen, CEO of Slush. “Now more than ever, the world needs founders – people who embrace uncertainty, see patterns in chaos and fearlessly build technologies that take humankind forward.”

Whereas the white paper was meant as a conversation starter for the European startup community and signed by key investors and scale-ups from the continent, the deal with AstraZeneca is a concrete manifestation of an urge to create companies driven to tackle unmet patient needs in healthcare and emerging markets.

“To enable deep innovation, we need a world of effortless collaboration across traditional boundaries, where all lines of human ingenuity are applied to the utmost,” told Huttunen.