SECA Conference with an attractive programme for start-ups

The Swiss Private Equity & Corporate Finance Association (SECA), which is the representative body for Switzerland‘s private equity, venture capital and corporate finance industries, organizes the 13th edition of the annual SECA Private Equity & Corporate Finance Conference.

The conference will take place on Tuesday, 24 June 2014, in the SIX ConventionPoint in Zurich and is one of the biggest conferences in Switzerland, which brings together the who-is-who of the private equity, venture capital and corporate finance industries. Apart from excellent networking opportunities the programme offers several highlights for company founders.

The conference starts in the morning with four sessions. Three of them seem to be interesting for start-ups:

• Swiss Ecosystem for Young Investors and Young Entrepreneurs – speakers include Alan Frei (Young SECA), Manuel Grenacher (serial entrepreneur, Mila), Christan Leikert (investor, Creathor AG), Mark Schmitz (investor, Lakestar).
• Global Accelerators & Incubators – with panellists from India, Jordan, Morocco, Bulgaria, US and Switzerland
• Corporate Venturing Panel – with representatives from ABB Venture, Swisscom Ventures and Martin Haemmig and Christian Wenger

The afternoon starts with the keynote speeches. First of the speakers is Florian Schweitzer, partner of b to v, a venture capital firm and a leading investor network. The three other speakers are interesting because they are all able to broaden the participant’s horizon.

Raffaello D'Andrea is lecturer and researcher at ETH Zurich but also technical co-founder and chief technical advisor for Kiva Systems, a Boston area high-tech company that has developed a revolutionary material handling system utilizing hundreds of autonomous mobile robots.

Erik Rasmussen is the founder and CEO of Scandinavia’s leading independent think tank Monday Morning. Through many years, climate change, green growth and climate adaptation has been one of Erik Rasmussen’s and Monday Morning’s primary focus points.

Steven Vachani is a global serial entrepreneur with extraordinary experience building technology companies, an early stage venture investor, a technology pioneer in the United States and South America, and a visionary within the start-up ecosystem of emerging markets.

News about the "swissfund"
In the afternoon there will be again six sessions two of them in the “Venture Capital and M&A” track. The most interesting session should be one with the subject “swissfund” – a fund that is planned with the goal to make fundraising easier and less time consuming for Swiss startups.

It is also worth to mention that on evening before the conference a pre-event will take place on 23 June. The film documentary “Crocodile in the Yangtze” will be shown. The film tells the story of Alibaba, the Chinese company that was created in 1999 and in less than 13 years became the largest e-commerce group in China. Hosting the film will be Ms. Abir Oreibi, who worked for Alibaba for eight years as general manager and business development director for Europe & Middle East.