New board members to fuel start-ups’ growth

More prominent business personalities are joining start-ups. This year, for instance, various renowned individuals from Novartis including the former CEO and Chairman Daniel Vasella joined start-ups’ board of Directors. Recently other celebrated figures are embarking on a new journey with start-ups.

Former SAP president Franck Cohen joins beqom
Beqom is a cloud-based total compensation software that enables companies to manage all aspects of compensation, including benchmarking and rewards analysis, base pay management, short-term incentives (bonus), long-term incentives, and sales performance management on one single platform. Various companies including the recently announced Japan Tobacco International (JTI), an $11bn company are using the software solution and to strengthen its position further, beqom has won Franck Cohen to its Board of directors.

Cohen is an enterprise software executive with more than 30 years of global experience. He has immense knowledge and an extensive background in cloud-based enterprise software, having spent the last 10 years as COO and later the President of SAP. Currently Cohen sits on multiple company boards, including U.S.-based Antuit, Omada, Suse, and Trackunit.

Together with the existing minority shareholder Goldman Sachs, Cohen will help to cement the company’s position as a world-leading total compensation solution provider.

Sonect welcomes Patrick Barnert and Kristoffer Wadman
The fintech startup provides a platform that makes financial services easily accessible from anywhere. Through Sonect, every store becomes a virtual ATM, and thanks to the Sonect app, cash withdrawals are simpler, faster and more cost-efficient. With over 2,300 points of sale, Sonect already operates the largest ATM network in Switzerland. Adding to its team of 25 employees, Sonect has welcomed two new board members Patrick Barnert and Kristoffer Wadman.

Patrick Barnert has built multiple successful companies including one of Switzerland’s well-known FinTech and RegTech startups Qumram. Qumram successfully launched its solution in Switzerland, UK and USA before being acquired by Dynatrace November 2017. He is active as advisor, coach, board member and business angel. Kristoffer Wadman is Chief Innovation Officer at Sonect's partner Loomis and heads the innovation center, where he is responsible for the development and launch of new products and services.

uniqFEED appoints Peter Baumgartner and Severin Lüthi
The Zurich based startup developed a fully software-based virtual advertising technology that allows rights holders to produce user-friendly feeds for specific consumer markets. The company has now elected two board members.

Peter Baumgartner, Senior Strategic Advisor and Member of the Group Executive Management Board of Etihad Aviation GroupAs a pioneer and former CEO of Etihad Airways. Peter has long-standing experience in the scaling of businesses and his track record, strategic and forward-thinking capacity, as well as broad network in the investment community and sports industry, will be key in successfully leading and transforming UniFEED into its next lifecycle stage with a global footprint.

The second elected board member is Severin Lüthi, the former tennis professional, long-time coach of tennis legend Roger Federer and Swiss Davis Cup Team Captain. Previously, Lüthi supported uniqFEED as an ambassador and has played a key role in positioning the startup as the undisputed market leader in virtual advertising for court sports.

(RAN)

Photo:L-R: Franck Cohen, Patrick Barnert and Kristoffer Wadman, Peter Baumgartner and Severin Lüthi.