Risk-taking rewarded

Dear reader

Swiss founders are widely considered to be risk averse. But in light of companies such as Haya Therapeutics, this view can hardly be maintained. The start-up develops medication based on a platform that allows use of the previously unexploited portion of the human genome. The potential is enormous, but so are the risks. In addition, the development is capital-intensive, another challenge in the current environment. I am very pleased that this willingness to take risks was well received by the 100 experts who formed the jury of the Top 100 Swiss Startup Award. They voted Haya Therapeutics into first place.

The founders of the start-ups in the second and third places of the ranking also have no trouble thinking big. Planted and Yokoy – the runners-up – both already have about 250 employees. Discover who else is represented in the ranking in our article, where you can download the Swiss Startup Magazine, published for the awards, and find out what the TOP 100 Swiss Investor Summit is all about.

Several start-ups that made it on to the list of the Top 100 Swiss Startup Awards in this and previous years made headlines this week. Business law firm Homburger uses DeepJudge as an internal search engine, Withings uses sensors from greenteg in its smartwatches to measure core body temperature, and Healixa has received a new capital injection from the Zurich Silk Association.

Two former winners, Roger Dudler from Frontify and Martin Fengler from Meteomatics, are supporting Switzerland Innovation Park East as new shareholders. Other new shareholders include two cantonal banks, businesses and the University of Applied Sciences of Eastern Switzerland. The new capital, totalling CHF 1.55 million, will be used for further expansion steps. A start-up from eastern Switzerland has also been successful in its search for money: deskbird generated USD 13 million in its Series A financing round, making it the best financed SaaS start-up for workplace management in Europe.

This week, Swisscom announced the 10 finalists of the Swisscom Challenge – voting is open for your favourite company. In another article, we present the four life sciences start-ups that have been awarded the Innosuisse Certificate in recent months.

Those who take risks can also get into difficulties, such as cleantech start-up TRS, which had to deal with liquidity problems earlier this year. Find out what happened next in our article – and why founder and CEO Staffan Ahlgren is now more optimistic about the future.

Next week the Tech4growth Conference will take place in Lausanne on Tuesday, Innosuisse will hold a webinar for the Swiss Accelerator also on Tuesday, and the deadline for Venture Leaders Fintech expires next Monday.

Have a good weekend.
Stefan Kyora 

Editor in Chief, Startupticker.ch