Businesswomen in the spotlight

Dear reader

Entrepreneurial talent is a rare commodity. If start-up CEOs represent predominantly just one half of the population, this means a serious growth problem for the Swiss start-up scene. Our editor Sophie Küsterling has now created a map that lists more than 80 start-ups run by female CEOs. The map is organised into 11 fields of activity and contains clickable links to the companies’ websites. Although initially the number of 80 companies seems high, they nevertheless form a minority of less than 10% of all Swiss start-ups. By listing numerous successful role models for female start-up CEOs, our map is designed to make a small contribution to an increase in their numbers.

Dozens of studies have appeared for International Women’s Day, and of particular interest is Venturelab’s analysis of female participants in the Innosuisse training courses, as well as female winners of Venture Kick, Venture Leaders and the Top 100 Swiss Startup Award.

We not only report on women-owned companies and organisations this week. For example, medtech company Dicronis, along with 9T Labs and Optimo Medical, is one of the finalists of the ZKB Pionierpreis Technopark; and h-square, which specialises in chatbots, has merged with the similarly oriented Paixon. In Supporters, we present the plans from the new team at AlpICT, and the offer from Future.preneurship.

Speaking of future entrepreneurs, the funding programme First Ventures is supporting five further start-up projects at universities of applied sciences with CHF 150,000 each. The range extends from inexpensive prosthetic legs and a drone-based avalanche rescue system to fashionable but effective face masks for the residents of major Asian cities.

The finalists of the Swiss Fintech Awards were also made known this week, and the winners will be announced at the Fintech Awards Night next Thursday. A conference on the theme of Beyond Blockchain will take place during the day.

Blockchain has already been in the news this week: daura and Alethena independently launched tenders for the sale of tokenised shares, and in Baar blockimmo unwound a real estate transaction via blockchain.

Do not miss the following deadlines: Venture Leaders China (deadline 12 March) offers 10 start-ups the opportunity of a business development trip that could greatly accelerate the search for investors and market development in China. Also until 12 March, you can apply for a booth at CES Asia in Shanghai. And applications are open for the MassChallenge and the EIT Food Acceleration Program until 13 March.

I would also like to mention the Semaine de l’Entrepreneuriat, which will take place next week at the University of Lausanne.

Have a good weekend
Stefan Kyora

Editor in Chief, Startupticker.ch