September 16, 2016
Just say no
Dear reader
On Wednesday, the Award Ceremony of the Top 100 Swiss Startups took place in Schlieren. Gathered together were the best Swiss founders, and investors and supporters: a total of 500 people who drive the Swiss start-up landscape – and the event showed the strength of the scene.
And the momentum is continuing: this week the ESA Business Incubation Centre Switzerland was launched. The initiative supports selected young start-ups with a connection to space technologies. Eligible start-ups can receive up to €500,000 in financial backing, as well as technological and business support.
Swisscom has launched a series of calls for innovation that are thematically very precise. In the first call, Swisscom and two other major European telecoms groups are looking for next generation virtual telco functions and services.
The federal government is also highly active. A new agreement with Singapore will facilitate Swiss fintech companies entering the local market. And in October, the CTI and the Swiss National Science Foundation will launch Bridge, a programme that aims to promote the transfer from scientific knowledge to innovation. This week five new carriers of the CTI Startup Label were also named.
A new development is investment by celebrities in start-ups. Yann Sommer, goalkeeper for the Swiss national football team, has joined internet start-up Movu.
Less fortunate is another celebrity: Carsten Maschmeyer. He is one of the investors who participate in young companies as part of the TV show Die Höhle der Löwen. However, when he made the three founders of SensoPro an offer, they rejected it. It was not sufficiently attractive to them.
It was a confident ‘no’. And it should be remembered that ultimately it is the business owners who must drive a start-up and who determine the path of their company. A good reminder for all other start-up founders – not all support or every investor will fit their start-up. Sometimes you just have to say no.
Through startupticker and the newsletter, we want to draw attention to the offers to which we think many start-ups can say yes.
Thus, for instance, founders should not miss the deadline on 23 September for the elevator pitches at Swiss Startup Invest in Basel and Zurich. Any firm that wants to pitch at Swiss Startup Day must prove itself first at the elevator pitch. A few Early Bird tickets, incidentally, are still available for start-ups for Swiss Startup Day.
Ticino start-ups should not miss the deadline for StartCup Ticino on 25 September.
Have a good weekend.
Stefan Kyora
Managing Editor, startupticker.ch