As already explained earlier this year, the Swiss fintech scene is growing rapidly. And even more since then!
A new award was launched end of September: “The Swiss FinTech Award”. The idea is to build a national ecosystem that helps Swiss fintech companies going forward, and gaining international attention. Initiated by Finanz und Wirtschaft Forum, the initiative gathers key players in the field, like Accenture, PostFinance, Raiffeisen and many other ones. The applicants will not only compete for a cash prize (definitive not announced yet, but a multiple of CHF 10’000.-!) and a ticket to Accenture’s Innovation Lab in London (to be awarded on March 31st in Zürich), but finalists will also get coaching and an opportunity to meet the partners at speed dating events.
It is also my pleasure to announce that startupolic.com is a media partner of the award and the conference. There will be competition happening here to win a free ticket to the conference in March… Stay tuned!
The application timeline is the following:
- Until 30th November: online application on f6s (to my great pleasure, as I’ve written already years ago: Startup Competitions, Don’t Waste Entrepreneur’s Time!)
- Until 18th December, jury members (you can discover who they are here) will rate the applicants and select their top 10 candidates.
- Mid-January 2016, Accenture will hold a bootcamp.
- February 2nd 2016, speed-dating event in Zurich for the top 10 startups, who will be able to meet all jury members and representatives from banks. The selected startups will also pitch to the jury, which will select 3 finalists for the fintech conference.
- March 31st 2016: FinTech 2016, where the finalists will pitch a big audience and where the winner of the award will be announced.
Selection criteria are obvious: product and business opportunity, team and business potential.
Application is free of charge (how could it be different, btw?) and is really easy. If you already have been present on f6s, it will probably only take you a dozen minutes to apply. And if not, maybe 20-30 minutes in total. So hurry up, APPLY!