Swiss start-ups on the podium

Dear reader

The best cleantech start-up in Europe comes from Switzerland and is called Carbon Delta. The company won the Climate-KIC competition ‘Best Climate Venture’ this week in Frankfurt. Carbon Delta investigates the effects of climate change on listed companies and sells its analysis to investment firms.

NetGuardians also received a European award: the company was recognised in London for its state-of-the-art software solution designed to combat fraud and risk for bank clients.

The two examples show that Swiss start-ups do not have to hide from international competition. We talk to MIT researcher David Shrier about the chances of Swiss fintech companies finding international successful. At the same time, he also speaks frankly about the difficulties that await start-ups if they want to work with large companies.

However, it does not always have to be large companies with which start-ups can enter into a advantageous collaboration. SwissShrimp provides a good example: the start-up is building a production site for farmed shrimps in Rheinfelden in collaboration with Schweizer Salinen. The traditional company will provide the start-up with salt and waste heat to ensure a water temperature of 28 degrees for the shrimps. The project is one of three start-up projects that received the Zurich Climate Prize this week. The two other award-winning young companies are the environmentally friendly catering service Zum guten Heinrich, and Solaxess, which makes film for use in coloured solar cells.

The western Swiss start-up Insolight develops panels for solar power and is one of the first three young companies to be supported by the new ESA-BIC Switzerland programme. The technology transfer programme from the European Space Agency offers targeted support to start-ups in the field of space technologies and applications. The young companies are supported with funding of up to €500,000.

Next week, numerous events will take place in Switzerland as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week. Our article gives an overview. In addition, Swiss Fintech Investor Day will be held in Zurich next Monday – we will be there. I would also like to point to Microsoft’s BizSpark City Camp in Wallisellen next week – last-minute registrations are still possible. And, finally, the IMD start-up competition deadline is on 14 November.

Have a peaceful weekend.
Stefan Kyora

Editor in Chief, startupticker.ch