A strong start for Swisscom’s spin-off ‘rready’

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05.05.2021
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Following the success of Swisscom’s intrapreneurship project Kickbox, the founding team has established an independent entity called ‘rready’ to further accelerate innovation at organisations worldwide using its proven Kickbox innovation methodology. An international syndicate of investors, led by Californian venture capitalists FYRFLY Venture Partners, have invested in the company. 

Founded in 2021 by Dave Hengartner, Ralph Hartmeier, Reto Wenger and Vinzenz Leuenberger, rready AG is a provider of B2B SaaS solutions for innovation methods to engage corporate employees in innovation processes in a scalable and active manner. The concept emerged from the Swisscom Kickbox intrapreneurship program, offering GETKICKBOX software, based on the “Kickbox” methodology by the Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Adobe’s former Chief strategist Mark Randall. Several startups have emerged from the program. Help2Type, which enables people with sight impairments to feel keys on a touchscreen, is just one of over 700 employee ideas that have been developed and implemented at Swisscom. Forty additional solutions have emerged from the program and currently, more than 20 companies including Roche, Siemens Energy, LGT, SBB Post Luxembourg, Implenia or ZF Friedrichshafen among others are benefiting from the service. 

The newly founded start-up rready has officially spun out from “GETKICKBOX”. With the establishment, the team seeks to further use software products to foster the innovative strength of employees, structure innovation processes and thereby tap into a company's greatest capital.

Elaborating on the package rready offers, CEO Dave Hengartner said: “As GETKICKBOX we only offered one product to launch, manage and automate a Kickbox intrapreneurship program. As rready we will still offer this product as KICKBOX, but added two additional products to our portfolio: IMPROVE and FEEDBACK. They also focus on ”employee-driven innovation” and follow the same value proposition: turnkey solutions for innovative programs that can be launched within 100 days. With IMPROVE, our customer can run a “continuous improvement” program, where all employees are able to improve their organization. With FEEDBACK we have an application, where employees can get quick feedback for ideas and prototypes from members of their organization.”

Financially well-placed 
The financing round led by FYRFLY Venture Partners, based in California and Switzerland, involved the two institutional investors Equity Pitcher and Verve Ventures, as well as the entrepreneurs and business angels Felix R. Ehrat, Bernd Schopp, Jürg Stucker and Roland Schönholzer, who all have many years of management experience in executive positions in various business fields. Swisscom remains involved in GETKICKBOX as a minority shareholder and manages the participation via Swisscom Ventures

FYRFLY Venture Partners’ founder Philipp Stauffer is convinced of the company’s international potential: “I see great potential in the digitisation and automation of innovation processes. And not just within companies, but also in partnerships comprising several organisations, for which rready supplies an easy-to-use, motivational platform for the global market, which delivers measurable results.”

Rready's next milestone is to turn the GETKICKBOX product into a multi-product company and enter additional markets in the EU and US. Mark Randel remains a mentor to the startup and its team of 24 employees. 

(Press release/RAN)

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