Foreign companies like Swiss start-ups

Dear reader

With annual sales of approximately $7 billion, Nvidia is one of the largest manufacturers of chipsets and graphics processors for PCs and game consoles. This week, the highly respected GPU Technology Conference 2017 took place in Munich, and Swiss start-up Gamaya was selected as ‘Europe's Hottest Startup’ from 600 competitors. The award was presented by Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang. It is quite possible that there might soon be a collaboration between the Swiss start-up and the IT company from Silicon Valley.

This week Swiss start-ups Biowatch and Inpher joined the cybersecurity accelerator of Thales, the European space and security group with more than 50,000 employees. And the Lufthansa Group intends to build decentralised B2B marketplaces for the travel industry together with Swiss blockchain start-up Winding Tree.

The fact that Swiss start-ups gain the attention of large foreign corporations is due not least to the early establishment of networks outside Switzerland. This week provided two good examples: security start-up Futurae was selected for StartJLM and has won a five-day trip to the start-up stronghold of Israel, and Yelloh has made it into a seven-week accelerator programme in Helsinki.

Refind has also attracted great international attention, a project in which the serial entrepreneur Dominik Grolimund is significantly involved. The community wants to simplify the retrieval of relevant content on the internet by sharing bookmark content, and it is distributing one billion ‘coins’ to users who help to build the community. If the start-up makes a profit, it will buy these coins back later.

The five companies that were recently awarded canton Vaud’s Scale-up Label are already well-known internationally. But they also provide a tangible economic benefit in Switzerland, as they have more than 150 employees between them.

If you want to experience the great dynamism of the Swiss start-up scene first-hand, you should participate in Swiss Startup Days on 24 and 25 October in Bern. More than 600 participants have registered and about 1,000 one-to-one meetings have already been agreed.

Last but not least, opportunities that should not be missed: life sciences start-ups can apply for a place in the StartLab, the new incubator in Lausanne, until 15 October. Applications for the IMD Startup Competition are now open, and start-ups from western Switzerland and German-speaking Switzerland can participate in Prix Strategis until the end of October. 

Have a sunny weekend.
Stefan Kyora

Editor in Chief, Startupticker.ch