May 26, 2017
Early summer heat
Dear reader
Three major competitions made important decisions this week: Venture Kick is supporting MaxWell Biosystems, Darix and BeeHelpful with a total of CHF390,000, Masschallenge Switzerland has selected the 75 companies that will participate in its four-month Accelerator programme, and the names of the three finalists for the CTI Medtech Award on 13 June were announced.
Keyword medtech: read our interview about the digitalisation of healthcare with the serial entrepreneur, ETH lecturer and CTI coach Ulf Claesson. His advice to Swiss start-ups: “You have to be more aggressive on the market.”
Gaining an international foothold, and learning what it takes, has to be done on the spot; for example, at swissnex’s Medtech and Healthcare Startup Tour India 2017 or at the Academia-Industry Training Camps in India and Brazil, for which registration is now open.
Two Swiss IoT companies have already arrived on the global stage: Ticino-based DAC System has installed its first monitoring systems for radio antennas in the US, and Geneva-based LoRa WAN specialist Orbiwise has found a partner for expansion in Asia.
Looking forward, my colleague Stefan Kyora is back on the road next week. On Thursday you can meet him at the CTI Micro-Nano Event 2017 in Fribourg, and on Friday at the Swiss Economic Forum in Interlaken.
Have a sunny weekend.
Jost Dubacher
Editor, startupticker.ch