A fresh wind blows through the start-up scene

Dear reader

Although Switzerland may talk about a start-up bubble, the topic of entrepreneurship has not really reached the general public yet. But the wind is starting to change direction. The number of Swiss people aiming to start a business in the next three years has risen significantly, by at least 10%. This is one of the important findings on Switzerland from the current Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.

This development is due to the increasing activities of the start-up scene. This year, for example, the first Female Innovation Forum awarded prizes to two female entrepreneurs: biotech entrepreneur Nadja Mrosek and edtech founder Melanie Kovacs.

SBB is going one step further by setting up a sandbox at Zurich main railway station, which is used by more 400,000 passengers every working day. There, start-ups can have new products and prototypes tested.

A fresh wind is also blowing through the Swiss business angel scene. With Nicolas Bürer, the representative of a new generation has been named SECA’s Business Angel of the Year. The managing director of digitalswitzerland exemplifies those private investors who as top managers are actively involved in professional life, have entrepreneurial experience and are not too far removed from their founders.

These developments are heartening, since the attitude of Swiss corporates towards start-ups, which has completely changed in a short time, demonstrates how such changes quickly become a daily routine. This week, for example, Mobiliar took over the young business software provider Bexio.

Bexio’s investors included Redalpine and Armada with Swisscom Ventures, the investment arm of a major corporation that is very active in the Swiss start-up scene. The Swisscom Startup Challenge will be held for the sixth time, in which five start-ups will be able to win a tailor-made business development trip to Silicon Valley. The 10 finalists are now known.

The Innosuisse start-up training programmes Business Creation and Business Growth were redesigned six months ago and are carried out by Venturelab in the four subject areas: Biotech, ICT, Advanced Engineering and Medtech. We asked how the courses influence the founders.

Last but not least, in his guest column entrepreneur Sadik Hafizovic looks back on 10 years of Zurich Instruments and speaks openly about his experiences: the doubts of sceptics at the beginning, the experience with sales and his astonishment that ads in glossy magazines actually work.

Have an exciting read.
Stefan Kyora

Editor in Chief, Startupticker.ch