June 21, 2013
High-profile support results in winners
Dear reader
Foreign start-up founders, such as Daniel Bermejo of Visionarity, often praise the local support that young companies receive. Many Swiss seem surprised at this praise, but events this week have once again demonstrated the quality of support for Swiss start-ups.
Bermejo established his cleantech company in Basel Technology Park. Now Visionarity has grown so much that it is able to leave the facility.
The technology park is still quite young, but the de Vigier Foundation, founded by Bill de Vigier in 1987, is one of Switzerland’s pioneers. This year, it again distributed CHF500,000 to five young top companies and organised a high-profile event with Swatch CEO Nick Hayek as the keynote speaker. Hayek gave an inspirational speech about entrepreneurial imagination, risk-taking and the necessary political conditions for it to prevail.
The level of the prize winners and the five nominees at the de Vigier Foundation’s award ceremony in Solothurn this week was very high, not least thanks to the support of entrepreneurs from the CTI’s training and coaching programmes. And the CTI itself this week awarded five new companies with the prestigious CTI Start-up label after an intensive selection and coaching process.
Several more specialised training courses are also on offer, including BioBusiness, a course on bio-entrepreneurship organised by the Università della Svizzera italiana. Feedback from participants has been very positive.
Swiss founders have also been supported in a move into the US, both on the west and the east coasts. Over the last 10 days, swissnex Boston, together with venturelab, has been taking care of 20 young Swiss companies, there to visit Venture Leaders, the Swiss start-up national team. Atizo boss Christian Hirsig is currently spending several weeks in San Francisco, supported by swissnex San Francisco as part of the CTI Start-up US Market Entry CAMP. And it turned out that Swiss start-ups can compete with the best: Hirsig came out on top in a pitching competition against 25 competitors from around the world.
Have a relaxing weekend.
Claus Niedermann
startupticker.ch