The award season has begun

Dear reader

The day-to-day life of an entrepreneur can be hard: long hours, tedious negotiations with investors and customers, red tape – the list of obstacles is long. Nevertheless, the entrepreneurial life and its challenges is at least now talked about openly in Switzerland; for example, at the first Failcon, the presentations of which can now be viewed on video, or in some of the items we mentioned in our press review.

However, hard work brings its own rewards whether in the market or with the numerous Swiss start-up and innovation prizes on offer. The application deadline is imminent for several of these: the Prix GENILEM HES Vaud 2013 (24 May), the Social Entrepreneurship Award, the Central Swiss Chamber of Commerce’s Innovation Award, the Central Swiss Young Entrepreneur Prize (all 31 May) and the Swiss CTI Medtech Award (5 June).

The M2M Challenge and the Swiss Startup Awards are just beginning; at the latter, three prizes of CHF50,000 each will be awarded this year .

Some companies this week are already happy winners: TransCure Biosciences and faceshift were successful at venture kick, at the Swiss e-commerce awards iGroove overcame competition from Migros among others, and NanoLive received CHF10,000 at the newly created Prix Innovation Day.

By the way, NanoLive will present at the Seed Night at EPFL next week, along with five other promising start-ups. The event will also feature speeches by several distinguished speakers and a start-up corner with other young companies.

The Seed Night is just one of the interesting events taking place over the next week: on 22 May in Basel major players in microfluidics from Singapore and Switzerland will present at a workshop, and the Swiss NanoConvention 2013 follows on 23-24 May, with the CTI Micro and Nano Technologies Event on the Friday. I look forward to meeting some readers there.

Have a relaxing long weekend.
Stefan Kyora

Managing Editor, startupticker.ch