Nicolas Bürer is Swiss Business Angel of the Year

Nicolas Bürer is well known in the Swiss start-up scene for his entrepreneurial activities and as Managing Director of digitalswitzerland. In total, he invested in six start-ups, most recently in foodtech company Yamo. One important reason for the selection was that he is representing a new type of business angel. The first business angels in Switzerland were older men who wanted to help young entrepreneurs after their corporate career. They were no longer active in business and regarded themselves as patron or teacher of the start-up team.

New type of business angel
Nicolas Bürer stands for a rather opposite type of business angel. He just turned 40 and has a top management position. He sees his role as an entrepreneurial sparring partner on equal terms with the founders. His tasks are to motivate, to inspire, to ask the right questions and only to go deep when the founders need it or neglect challenges.

His entrepreneurial experience certainly helps him to assume this role. From 2011 to 2013, he was responsible for business development and marketing at Deindeal.ch, a Swiss startup that successfully competed against companies with much deeper pockets. “At Deindeal, I learned to think big and be more aggressive”, Bürer said at the conference. At Joiz, a media company where he worked as Managing Director Joiz Switzerland he learned that the management should never wait when a startup loses traction but should make necessary bigger changes happen immediately.

Today Bürer is still President of the Board at Movu, a company that he co-founded, and later sold to Baloise Group in 2017. Bürer did not hide the fact that not all of his six investments were successful; failures are just part of the game. This might also be a part of the new business angel style.

The award was handed over by Alexander Stoeckel, partner and board member of btov Partners AG and SECA (Swiss Private Equity & Corporate Finance Association), who is responsible for SECA chapter “Seed Money & Venture Capital”.

Nicolas Bürer commented: "I am much honored to receive this award. The Swiss startup ecosystem has developed enormously in the last five years and is already one of the top 10 worldwide. We at digitalswitzerland and I as a business angel will do everything we can to achieve further breakthroughs in the next 2-3 years. We aim to grow the Swiss startup ecosystem three to fivefold within the next 10 years. In this sense, too, a big thank you to all those involved, the SECA, other organizations, investors and business angels who are committed to the Swiss startup ecosystem."

(Press release / Stefan Kyora)

Picture: digitalswitzerland