August 19, 2016
Double reason to rejoice
Dear reader
Dassault is one of the most prominent industrialist families in Europe. The French family group combines several companies with turnover in the billions. Laurent Dassault, a representative of the third generation, in the search for interesting investment opportunities in Switzerland, has taken a stake in Geosatis. The second good news for the Jura start-up is that it has won its first European country as a customer – Lithuania.
Swisscom Ventures is also an investor in Geosatis. The investment arm of the telecoms group climbed on board after Geosatis became one of the winners of the Swisscom Startup Challenge in 2014. This week, the five winners for 2016 were announced: Advanon, Fashwell, Nanolive, Qumram and Xsensio.
Nanolive also has double reason to celebrate. With four other young companies, the start-up is in the final of the Swiss ICT Newcomer Award.
But there was not only double good news for start-ups. Two studies provided good results for Switzerland as a start-up location. First, for the sixth time in a row, it is the most innovative country in the world. Second, a European survey of founders shows that Switzerland is rated very positively as a location for young high-tech companies by foreign founders.
Start-ups that want to ensure good news have only a few days to apply for some awards, with shortly expiring deadlines for the Swiss Technology Award, Prix Genilem HES and UBS Social Innovators. Applications for the Ludicious Awards and the Swiss SGDA Games Awards were opened this week.
The winners of venture leaders China will be announced shortly. You can meet them and the community of Swiss and Chinese people bridging both start-up scenes at the venture leaders China kick-off in Schlieren on 8 September. You can meet me at Technopark Luzern’s Talk Plus event next week.
Have a relaxing weekend.
Stefan Kyora
Managing Editor, startupticker.ch