Venture Briefing Bern: How to Get Funded

Date

Friday, 29. September 2023; 12:00-13:00

Location

Uni Bern, Room tbc, Schanzeneckstrasse 1, 3012 Bern

Register

The Venture Briefing event series is designed to help students with an intent to pursue entrepreneurship take their first steps towards building a successful company. This session features Andrea Chicca, CEO & Co-Founder of University of Bern spin-off Synendos Therapeutics.

The Innovation Office of the University of Bern, the Bern University of Applied Sciences and Venturelab cordially invite you to join us for a free lunch and learn about non-dilutive funding instruments for your spin-off or innovation project!

In the first part of the event, various financing options for spinoff and innovation projects will be presented.

In the second part, Dr A ndrea Chicca, CEO & Co-Founder of the University of Bern spin-off S ynendos Therapeutics will share his experiences and advice on building his company and raising funding.

About: Andrea holds a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Pisa (Italy). After his first post-doctoral studies in cancer biology at the Istituto Toscano Tumori (Firenze, Italy), Andrea joined the group of Prof. J. Gertsch at the University of Bern, initially working as a post-doctoral scientist, then senior scientist and principal investigator.

In 2018, Andrea obtained the venia docendi in Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine awarded from the Medical Faculty of the University of Bern and obtained the habilitation for a professorship in Pharmacology from the Italian Ministry of Education and Research. In 2020, Andrea completed the Master of Advanced Studies in Translational Medicine and Biomedical Entrepreneurship (Sitem-Insel-University of Bern). Andrea is a co-author of 50+ scientific articles published in international peer-reviewed journals.

Andrea co-founded Synendos Therapeutics in 2019. The company develops potentially breakthrough safe and effective therapies for neuropsychiatric disorders. In 2021, Synendos raised CHF 24 million with investors including Kurma Partners, Sunstone Life Science Ventures, Ysios Capital and Bernina BioInvest. In addition, Synendos has raised CHF 4m in grant funding.

Andrea will talk about their startup and share details about their journey of building a successful company. He will also help answer some of your questions during the Q&A session:

How to become an entrepreneur?
How to validate my idea?
How to fund my idea?
How to find help to bring my idea to life?

You will also be introduced to different support programs available to new entrepreneurs:

Venture Kick: up to CHF 150,000 pre-seed capital for business development
InnoBooster: up to CHF 150,000 grant to accelerate market entry
First Ventures: up to CHF 150,000 financial support and tailored coaching program for University of Applied Science students
UniBE Venture Fellowship
BRIDGE: from reseach to innovation
BFH-specific instruments
Start-up Grants by the Bern Economic Development Agency

Thank you to the Gebert Rüf Stiftung for supporting this event.

Principal

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