How swissnex San Francicso supported the start of a new company

Seven years after founding two companies, synesix and careware, Stefan Zanetti was thinking about where to go, both personally and professionally. After a bumpy time, both companies were running well and there was no need to change strategy. Zanetti had learned, however, that building up companies is what he is good at and he decided to go for a longer leave.
 
One of the ideas the synesix team carried around for a long time was to launch a service that enables consumers as well as businesses to build digital identities for everything they like — shoes, gadgets, paintings, sports equipment, wine, etc.—and to equip these profiles with additional services, such as reminders, making-of videos, forms to reorder spare parts, or new sharing capabilities to see which people own similar things. Some of the existing business partners were fascinated when they heard about the idea, and Swisscom was even willing to support the team in developing a prototype. This, combined with the insight gained during Zanetti’s summer leave, led him to evaluate turning that idea into a spin-off company.
 
To get inspiration from other founders regarding how large web services are launched, and to test whether the idea seemed hot in the place that mattered, Zanetti decided to go to the Silicon Valley for some weeks. He contacted swissnex San Francisco and the result was that the entrepreneur could use swissnex as a hub for several weeks while he worked on the concept, met with providers of similar services, and tried to come up with a clear draft of how and what he should do.
 
Zanetti’s experience with swissnex was very positive. In a blog post he reports: “Working with swissnex was outstanding from the beginning. The result is that in a very short time we met many founders, got dozens of hints on recently launched services, and were connected to potential direct competitors, VCs, and other organizations supporting European startups. And we baked all these lessons immediately into our concepts. After just a few weeks, we came home with a substantially reworked approach, a completely new name, and a value proposition that has remained stable: “qipp: digital profiles and amazing new capabilities for all things people care about.”