Lift announces new startup competition

For the World Startup Summit, a selection of startups identified during the MassChallenge hosted in Boston, London and Israel will travel to Geneva to pitch their ideas. Alongside these international companies, 15 Swiss startups selected by Bilan from their "50 Swiss startups in which to invest" list will showcase their projects.

The Swiss startups will be selected by a Bilan Jury (composed of Pascal Allot, IBM regional manager, Jacques Essinger, CEO of Symetis, Laurent Farinelli, CEO of Fasteris, Jean-Luc Favre, CEO of ABB Sécheron, Pierre-Alain Graf former CEO de Swissgrid, Dominik Grolimund, serial entrepreneur, Veronica Lange, CTO of UBS, Raphaël Domjan, eco-adventurer and Abir Oreibi, CEO of Lift). At the conference they will have the chance to pitch their projects to an professional audience of investors and VCs.

Lift and Bilan collaborate since 2013 on the launch of the annual project “50 Swiss startup in which to invest”. The goal of the project is to support investors in identifying startups to invest in across multiple sectors such as fintech, medtech, robotics and social entrepreneurship. Initially, a special edition of the Bilan magazine was launched on the first day of the Lift Conference and was supported by a dedicated event at Lift, including a panel of experts who would discuss the Swiss startup ecosystem.

The detailed programme of the “World Startup Summit” including the names of the selected startups will be revealed in January 2016. The Summit replaces the Venture Night, the startup competition at Lift which was organised by Lift and AlpICT und took place for several years.