The wheel turns

Dear reader

It was announced on Wednesday evening that the Geneva medtech start-up Kejako had taken almost CHF 800,000 in a seed round. The next morning, Sensirion made its successful stock market debut: the company generated CHF 55 million and the stock gained 40%. Thus, Felix Mayer and Moritz Lechner have completed a journey that began 20 years ago in the laboratories at ETH, a journey that has just started for Kejako and co-founder David Enfrun.

Although successes, setbacks, breakthroughs and usually a few more financing rounds intervene, what was a rarity when Sensirion started is normal today.

Zurich-based fintech company AlgoTrader has just completed a post-seed round of CHF 1.4 million, and western Swiss IT start-up Zip.ch has generated a good CHF 1 million.

Bestmile has completed a Series A round of $11 million – the Vaud company is a world leader with its platform for the management of autonomous vehicles. Meanwhile, life sciences firm Amazentis has already reached the third round with the announcement last week of conclusion of an $11 million Series C funding.

Staying in western Switzerland, it has just been announced that Geneva-based Spooklight Studio has been working with virtual reality pioneer Magic Leap for two years. Magic Leap? Wasn’t there something...? Correct: the American firm took over the VR part of Dacuda last year.

Looking ahead, the deadline for venture leaders China has been postponed until the following Monday. And the application deadline for the Masschallenge expires on Wednesday.

You have a little longer to participate in an European survey, with which the European Startup Monitor wants to discover how the European start-up ecosystem is ticking along. The questionnaire can be completed in about 10 minutes.

The newsletter will not be published next week as it is Good Friday. We wish you all a happy Easter and see you in two weeks.

Jost Dubacher
Editor, startupticker.ch