SICTIC expands its board

The business angel club SICTIC organizes Investor Days with the aim to connect Swiss early-stage deep-tech startups with its smart money investor community of more than 230 angel investors. 40% of the 82 tech startups selected in the recent 2018 TOP 100 Swiss Startup Awards presented to members of the SICTIC Investor Community during their fundraising.

To further spread their impact in the Swiss startup ecosystem and provide leadership for achieving the association’s mission, SICTIC has appointed four new board members; Alain Dargham, Nicola Fantini, Cornelia Gut-Villa, and Tatjana de Kerros-Budkov, bringing its board to 11 members.

“All four of our newly joining Board members embody the spirit of our investor community and bring knowledge, expertise and energy to our business angel club. We are very fortunate to have them by our side as we continue to strengthen the startup investment ecosystem in Switzerland”, said Anca Albu, Managing Director of SICTIC.

SICTIC also aims to significantly increase the number of investor members in the Romande by offering a critical mass of touchpoints to interested angels looking to build a robust network, which will result in stronger local investment support for the startups based in the region. With the new Board members, therefore, SICTIC moves a step forward towards achieving these goals. Alain Dargham and Tatjana de Kerros-Budkov will join SICTIC’s Vice President Bolko Hohaus in supporting the regional activities.

Short profiles of the new Board members

Alain Dargham is the founder of DAA Capital Partners SA; an independent investment advisory firm focused on Real Estate, Financial Services, and Technology investments. Alain is serving as a board member in several early-stage technology startups. Active in the field of finance, Alain has extensive experience in managing and investing in Financial Services, Real Estate, and Technology sectors.

Nicola Fantini worked as software engineer for five years as Tech Lead on European and global R&D projects at company 3M. Since 1995 Nicola Fantini is an entrepreneur in the field of software engineering. He has founded and built up software companies such as Science AG (Software development services, 150 employees, exit to VMware in 2006, now more than 500 employees in Sofia, Bulgaria), Aviaso AG (turned into the globally leading provider of fuel efficiency, exit to Honeywell in 2015), Spectas, CloudBroker and ScaleTools. Fantini is also actively participating in H2020 research projects. He will lead the SICTIC jury and is responsible for the startup preselection process. He is also investing as an angel investor in startup companies.

Cornelia Gut-Villa holds a Ph.D. and master in business administration from the University of Zurich. She has over 20 years of experience in financial services, strategy consulting and startup coaching. Cornelia is active as an independent entrepreneur and private investor with her consulting firm in addition to her activities as part of the incubator STARTFELD in St.Gallen.

Tatjana de Kerros-Budkov is Head of Venturing at RicoLab in Switzerland and a highly experienced innovation and entrepreneurship strategist, with proven leadership in open-innovation, R&D and knowledge-based entrepreneurship initiatives across government and corporate sectors in the Gulf region. She did market research and advised leading institutions in the establishment of entrepreneurship and SME initiatives with a particular emphasis on knowledge-based industries – specifically on renewable energy, manufacturing, and ICT. She founded two ventures – one in management consulting, and another in data science.

Photo: Alain Dargham (top left), Tatjana de Kerros-Budkov (top right), Nicola Fantini (bottom left) and Cornelia Gut-Villa (bottom right).

(RAN)