Surprises for and from start-ups

Dear reader

For many years, investors kept repeating that there were just not enough good start-ups in Switzerland to justify investment on a grand scale. But the dynamism of the Swiss start-up scene means that now fewer and fewer investors share this view, and are launching new funds to invest in Swiss start-ups. This week we reported on two such funds: Zürcher Kantonalbank, which has been active as a seed and early-stage investor for 12 years, is planning a new CHF100 million fund for growth financing; and Bellevue Asset Management will provide biotech start-ups with capital through its new venture capital firm BB Pureos Bioventures.

Another positive surprise was provided by a group of successful IT companies. This week they announced a free solution for entire office administration: the offer, which is financed by advertising, is intended for start-ups in particular.

And there were surprises from start-ups too this week: Dotphoton, for example, has launched an iPhone photo app with built-in compression software, which enables high-resolution RAW images to be taken that need only a fraction of the storage space.

The success of Working Bicycle has also astonished us. With its advertising boxes for bicycles, advertising reaches those hard-to-get-to places. Language schools, educational institutes, consumer goods manufacturers and Muba are among its customers, and the young team is already planning its expansion in order to be able to compete in national campaigns.

The Business Creation and Business Growth modules from Innosuisse’s start-up training programme have also been redesigned. In our article, Jordi Montserrat, Philipp Winteler and Caroline Graf from Venturelab reveal how support for participants is tailor-made, why non-university founders are welcome and what mission-based training is.

Innosuisse also supports start-ups that want to appear at the leading IT trade fair CEBIT: 15 start-ups will be able to attend the Swiss Pavilion at CEBIT 2018 at a greatly reduced price. Applications are open until 28 February.

The application deadlines for two important prizes also expire at the end of February: Start Summiteer and the Swiss Medtech Award.

Finally, a message on our behalf: we have evaluated our investment news and posted a list of investors that have announced investments in Swiss start-ups in recent years. The list currently includes more than 80 venture capital companies, corporate venture units and business angel clubs. As always, suggestions and input are welcome.

Have a good weekend

Stefan Kyora

Editor in Chief, Startupticker.ch