The most successful Swiss entrepreneur in Silicon Valley

Alain Chuard grew up in Berne and left Switzerland in the age of 20. For some years he lived in New Zealand where he started his first company together with Victoria Ransom: Access Travel, Ltd., a leading brand in instructional adventure travel with operations in 16 countries. In 2008 he moved to Silicon Valley where he co-founded Wildfire, after he discovered there was no simple way for companies to run interactive promotions on the social web.

Wildfire helps brands run and measure their social engagement and ad campaigns across the entire web and across all social services — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn and more — and to deliver rich and satisfying experiences for their consumers.

The start-up wrote a success story: Wildfire grew from 5 to 400 employees in only four years. The company serves 16,000 customers including 30 of the top 50 brands.

Last week Chuard and his co-founder Victoria Ransom announced that they sold their start-up to Google for estimated $250 million. In an interview with 20 Minuten Chuard says why he thinks that such a success in only possible in Silicon Valley.

Chuard mentions two factors: the possibility to recruit a large number of talented employees that are interested to work in a start-up and the access to venture capital. He thinks that the unique ecosystem in the Valley accelerates every step which is necessary to build up a company. In his view this ecosystem is very hard to copy anywhere else in the world.

It is clear that Chuard is convinced that the Silicon Valley is the best place for starting ambitious Internet start-ups by far. He gives Swiss start-ups that are planning to go to California a concrete advice. In his interview with 20 Minuten he mentions Swissnex, a network of outposts initiated by Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Education and Research. Swissnex is a platform for the exchange of knowledge and ideas in science, education, art, and innovation. The organisation supports Swiss start-ups regularly. Swissnex has offices in San Francisco, Boston and Asia.