June 10, 2016
Changing the culture
Dear reader
This week Swiss Medtech Day took place in Bern. The 600 visitors included many start-up founders: one entrepreneur told me that his decision to start a start-up was greeted with incomprehension in his field. There is still much to be done to build a vibrant start-up culture in Switzerland, but this week also showed that many things are moving in the right direction. For example, at Medtech Day, Federal Councillor Johann Schneider-Ammann gave the Swiss Medtech Award to start-up Intento.
And it is not only in the known start-up centres that things are moving. In Altdorf yesterday Uri councillor Urban Camenzind handed over the first innovation cheque, worth CHF 15,000, from ‘zentralschweiz innovativ’ to the start-up TwentyGreen.
Swiss companies have for some time recognised that start-ups are important partners in innovation. Swisscom is increasing its commitment: a Swisscom internal fintech cluster is institutionalising collaboration with young companies in the finance industry. Swisscom Ventures is also expanding with a dedicated fintech fund of more than CHF10 million.
And Biovotion announced the first closing of its ongoing CHF10 million Series A financing round, led by Swiss Re.
The emergence of a more entrepreneurial culture also can help educational programmes, such as the new ‘unSchool for entrepreneurial leadership’ from Stride, a spin-off of Impact Zurich Hub.
And last but not least, associations also play a role. This week, a new association, the Swiss LegalTech Association, initiated by two start-up entrepreneurs, went public. It will deal with digitisation of the legal system.
A change in culture that leads to more start-ups and more risk-taking would make sound economic sense, as Swiss start-ups are able to assert themselves globally with their products. The best example of that this week comes from Orbiwise: the start-up, a leading provider of infrastructure solutions for the Internet of Things, has been selected by Tata Communications to supply the core network management solution for its nationwide Indian Low Power Wide Area Network.
Have a good weekend with new horizons
Stefan Kyora
Managing Editor, startupticker.ch