Top-class names

Dear reader

AI start-up Lightly’s customers come mainly from the US, with Fortune 500 companies among them. Sales are currently growing at 20% per month. Now, Y-Combinator, one of the world’s most renowned accelerators, has participated in Lightly. Pabio has also been selected for the Y Combinator programme: the start-up has already generated CHF 1 million in sales with its furniture subscription model. German VC Global Founders Capital, one of the largest tech funds in Europe and which has previously backed Zalando, Revolut and Slack, has joined cleantech start-up Exnaton. It is the fund’s second investment in Switzerland this year.

In addition to well-known customers and investors, Swiss start-ups also attract employees from top companies. The former head of marketing at fintech unicorn Bitpanda will go to Swiss start-up Relai in September. And Embotech has taken over an entire team that emerged from Daimler: the new employees will help the Swiss start-up to achieve a breakthrough with autonomous vehicles on private areas, such as company premises, airports and ports.

Sportradar shows that it is possible to build unicorns from Switzerland. The company, which was valued at more than USD 2 billion in its last financing round, has now taken the first steps towards an IPO on the Nasdaq.

The basis for this success is rapid international growth, thanks to well thought-out products and business models. For example, Wildbiene + Partner offers a pollination service for farmers that uses the particular strengths of bees, bringing both advantages for the farmers and for diversity. The start-up, which has been awarded the Innosuisse certificate, is already successful in Europe and now wants to enter the US.

Success abroad is easier to achieve with a strong home base. Thus, it is good news when new players such as the SNGLR Group, which aims to enable exponential growth for start-ups, become active in Switzerland. This week we reported on the company’s VC arm SNGLR Capital, which has made its first investment – in Cellestia Biotech. In addition, SIX has teamed up with Venturelab to persuade more companies to go public.

Important deadlines are looming over the next few days: Likeminded, Bluelion’s start-up accelerator programme, is open for applications until 27 August and BaseLaunch until 29 August. The deadline for Academia Industry Training India expires on 1 September and for the Tech4Trust accelerator programme on 5 September.

Have a good summer weekend.
Stefan Kyora

Editor in Chief, Startupticker.ch