A financing round every day

Dear reader

No fewer than seven fintech companies reported investments this week, and the results were particularly spectacular in the case of wefox. Founded six years ago in Zurich, the company received USD 650 million and is now valued at USD 3 billion. The other start-ups show the full breadth of the fintech sector, with banking challenger neon, which has been very successful with its B2C business model, receiving CHF 7 million.

The majority, however, rely on B2B business models. FQX generated almost USD 5 million; it replaces  traditional promissory notes with blockchain-based e-notes, which are much easier to trade and transfer. Riskwolf’s platform enables insurance companies to quickly launch new products that can be used to hedge against the risks of the digitised economy. Now the start-up has completed a pre-seed financing round.

Other very young start-ups from the fintech vertical are among those teams selected for this year’s F10 incubation programme. The innovative strength in the Swiss fintech sector is apparently intact; it is the growth opportunities that are more difficult in this country, as wefox has shown. The company, which still has its holding company in Zurich, is now run mainly from Berlin, as suitable staff can be found there in large numbers.

However, this does not mean that strong growth is not possible from Switzerland. The number of globally successful start-ups might even be underestimated, since B2B companies are often reluctant to communicate. The majority of Scandit's 40 active entreprise customers are multinational global brands and the company is currently growing at a rate of 100% per year in sales. More reports on growth companies can be found under our ‘Growth’ tag. I will lead a panel discussion with four founders of high-growth companies at the startup days. There are only a few tickets left for the event on 23 June. 

Speaking of growth, Innosuisse has launched the call for its second Scale-Up Coaching programme, with applications now open.

The new Fongit Innovation Fund is aimed at the very beginning of start-up development rather than the growth phase. Now, it has supported the first companies, Adiposs and Zytlyn, with CHF 100,000 each. Our article on the young Zurich medtech company Muvon shows how the various support offers interlock at the beginning of the lifecycle and how this can accelerate the development of a start-up.