SICTIC welcomes new faces, new partners and realigns its structure

Founded as an angel investor club focusing primarily on ICT and fintech startups, SICTIC is now also accessible for startups from other verticals. The broader focus includes companies from verticals such as healthtech, medtech, foodtech, and cleantech. Accordingly, the official name of the Swiss ICT Investor Club was changed to SICTIC at the AGM in April. One of the two new board members also brings experience that matches the broadening of the focus.

Entrepreneur Stephan Thalmann joins the SICTIC board to bring in his expertise of engineering and manufacturing to assess hardware-based startups in the deal flow and to act as treasurer. Stephan Thalmann is a proficient executive with a rich experience across diverse industries. Since 2007, he serves as CEO and owner of a domestic manufacturing company in the heating and ventilation industry which he transformed into the market leader.

The second new board member, Reinhard Stoiber, will help SICTIC to expand the digital offering for the investors. He holds a Ph.D. in informatics from UZH and a master’s degree in business informatics from JKU Linz. He runs his own small consulting business that has supported major software projects in air traffic control and at the Swiss federal administration in the domains of agriculture and internal security.

Anca Albu, Dr. Thomas Billeter, Dr. Alain Dargham, Michel Kertai and Rüdiger Petrikowski have resigned from the board but will continue to serve as advisors. The change brought the board from 12 down to nine members.

The operational team was also reorganised both personnel-wise and structurally. Christian Mueller-Gorman, an experienced VP Business Development, has joined the team. A hands-on events person is still being sought. In contrast, there are currently no plans to hire a new managing director as the operational team members now work on projects directly with the board member responsible for a specific strategic topic. SICTIC president Thomas Dübendorfer is leading the operational team members.

Partnerships with Startupticker.ch, *Zünder and SWICO

SICTIC has entered into a partnership with Startupticker.ch to support the platform it its effort to give the Swiss startup and investor ecosystem a strong voice and to further improve data collection about startup investments. In addition the angel investor club has established a partnership with the accelerator from central Switzerland *Zünder to connect its investors to their startups and with SWICO to support their startup members in funding rounds. SWICO is a trade association of the ICT and online industry and represents the interests of established companies and startups in politics, business and society. Its 650+ member companies employ 56,000+ employees and generate annual sales of CHF 40+ billion. 

(Press release / SK)