Insights from Silicon Valley

Dear reader

My colleague Stefan Kyora has been on the road in Silicon Valley since last Sunday. He has visited the outposts of Swiss companies and accompanied the five winners of the Swisscom Startup Challenge. He’s there when they pitch and accompanies them to meetings with potential investors. Read about the start-ups’ experiences, what they have learned and their first successes.

There’s no doubt that the greater San Francisco area is the engine of the digital transformation. However, the Americans do not have a monopoly on good projects, and this has been proved by Ticketfrog: the young company from Olten has developed a platform for free ticket distribution. Sounds incredible, but it’s based on a clever idea.

The finalists of EY’s Entrepreneur Of The Year competition have already proven that their business models work. Three start-ups have been nominated this year in the category ‘Emerging Entrepreneur’ and the winner will be announced in Lausanne on 28 October.

Much earlier than that, on Saturday morning, the registration period begins for the one-to-one meetings at Swiss Startup Day 2016. As always – first come, first served.

Next Thursday two events take place in Zurich: in the afternoon, in the Papiersaal, Fintech 2016 with the theme ‘The Artificial Intelligence Revolution’, and in the evening, at the Volkshaus, the SEIF Awards for Social Entrepreneurship 2016.

And finally a message of our own: startupticker is co-publisher of GRÜNDEN, which appeared last week. The newly designed and revised guide for potential entrepreneurs can be downloaded at www.startupticker.ch/guide.

Have a good weekend.
Jost Dubacher

Managing Editor, startupticker.ch