Tailwind for women founders

Dear reader

To mark International Women’s Day, we analysed investments in female-led start-ups in 2023. The good news first: contrary to the general trend, a new record was set with CHF 180 million of capital invested. Nevertheless, the share of the total amount invested in Swiss start-ups is still modest, at less than 7%. In terms of the number of financing rounds, the proportion remains below 10%, with a total of 37 rounds by women-led start-ups. But at least female entrepreneurs are receiving increasing support. A map recently published by the Collective initiative shows an ecosystem of 50 players, all of which aim to increase the proportion of women-led companies. All the details in our article.

Female founders can currently register for the Female Founders’ acceleration programme and the first programme from Ladies Drive’s newly launched founder academy. Here at Startupticker, we now publish news about female founders in an editorial – it can be found on the first Wednesday of the month in the website’s editorial section.

There is also an increasing number of role models. One of our most popular news items this week was the sale of Locatee to a US proptech company. Locatee is run by a duo with Myriam Locher as co-CEO. The founders of foodtech start-up Cultivated Biosciences, which secured a financing round of USD 5 million this week, brought Lucie Rein on board as Chief Commercial Officer some time ago.

AI start-up BLP Digital now employs 50 people and its ERP automation solution is used by about 200 customers in 21 countries. We talked to co-founder Sabrina Schenardi about the background. Eugenie Nicoud is the co-founder of Sedimentum: her company increased sales of its Safety as a Service device by 400% last year and now wants to conquer the US market under the new name of Helpany.

I would like to point out the new and as always very informative fintech study by Lucerne University of Applied Sciences. And still on the fintech front, there was news from Tenity: three Swiss start-ups have been selected for the next incubator programme in Zurich.

Those start-ups that receive the SEF.Growth High Potential label are much more mature. Our article presents the 12 outstanding companies that have been awarded this label in recent months.

In the Lausanne region, the news of the week came from Argá Medtech; it has secured CHF 50 million in a series B round. I also draw your attention to the deadline for the next Tech4Eva programme – start-ups with a focus on femtech can apply until 15 March.

Lucerne’s first start-up day will take place next week on 14 March. The following week you can meet us at the Start Summit in St. Gallen.

Have a good weekend
Stefan Kyora

Editor in Chief, Startupticker.ch