Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a big fan of building bridges… For instance, between Swiss startup scene and the most advanced European startups hubs like London or Berlin. Even after the Brexit dramatic vote (for the London startup scene), I still believe that Swiss startups should still think about going UK. But we will see what happens in the coming weeks (at best) or months/years, which would be the worst thing ever: uncertainty is always bad for business! As an entrepreneur, you have already ways too much uncertainty without caring about uncertainty in regulation and international trade agreements. For startups wanting to conquer the world, the most important thing is to be able to scale as efficiently as possible. And hiring the talents they need. For this, Switzerland is not bad… regulatory changes are very slow and …
Why You Need to Know Media4Equity for Your Startup Growth
This is a guest post by David Hug, a Zürich-based professional startup investor, currently acting as Managing Director at Ringier Digital Ventures. Innovation, entrepreneurship and venture capital are almost synonyms of the Silicon Valley. Over the last years, this way of thinking is gaining more and more attention in Europe. Not only famous examples from the West Coast like Facebook, Twitter and Uber started dominating our life. Also European start-ups like Spotify, Zalando or Skype changed our habits. Especially Zalando, which has chosen a new way of aggressive TV marketing to gain our attention. Most of us asked ourselves, how can a new venture finance such an aggressive marketing campaign? The solution used by Zalando to invade TV screens? Media for equity (M4E)! You may have never heard of it, and this post you’ll get more familiar with this interesting …
24 Hints to Build A Lean Startup
Monday this week, I was organizing a meetup in my home city, Biel/Bienne. We had the pleasure of welcoming Dorian Selz, a very smart and serial Swiss entrepreneur (Local.ch, Memonic and Squirro). I asked Dorian to present us his hints on how to build a startup. Dorian shared his entrepreneurial journey, from becoming partner at Namics, then being recruited to launch Local.ch to his present company, Squirro. He explained the concept of freemium and its major hurdle when you build a startup: freemium means that only a small portion of users subsidize the other ones, who get “free lunches”! Internet entrepreneurs are aware of the model, but how Dorian made the concept comprehensible to the audience of non geeks was just… awesome! Dorian then explained his point of view on the challenges of being an entrepreneur in Switzerland. After building …
How To Learn About UX in Switzerland?
If you’d like to launch a new business, you may think about the optimal combination of founders. And how many is too many? And what skills do you need in your team? Many people find extremely hard to find cofounders, especially technical ones (who has never heard the following complaint: “I cannot find a technical co-founder”?). Fortunately, nowadays, there are many possibilities in Switzerland to find software developers who may want to join a startups: Startup Weekend, hackathons (the biggest one in Europe happens in September) or even dedicated platforms like cofoundme or startup portals like f6s. But the biggest hurdle to convince a software developer (or, more realistically, everyone who has entrepreneurial spirit) to join your startup is the lack of money. Why would I work for free for your project without getting paid as I can get a …
The Zurich (Swiss) Startup Paradox
Switzerland is a beautiful country to work and to live. Low unemployment rate and good salaries, a very stable politic system, data privacy, beautiful landscapes, a precise and working transportation system, a place in Central Europe and very good international flights connections. Swiss people are also among the happiest people in the world (see here). Switzerland is even one of the most innovative countries in the world (mostly due to all patents submitted by pharmaceutical giants). But who speaks about Switzerland as a Startup Hub when thinking about digital? Nobody… at least on an international level. Even though the local startup scene is very lively and spread across the whole country (compared to other countries in Europe, you can find startups almost everywhere in Switzerland!). If the “events” metric is a valid measure, then Switzerland has no problem on the …
Happy Easter Fintech Egg Hunt!
It’s almost already Easter… and a long weekend to relax and maybe do some Easter Egg Hunts? Next Thursday, a big fintech event is happening in Zürich: The Fintech 2016 Conference. A wide panel of fintech experts, financial executives and investors will present and debate about innovation in the financial industry. From banking innovation to blockchain, from learnings out of the Silicon Valley to a debate on how to accelerate innovation, there will be a lot of knowledge to collect during this day. You can buy your ticket here (yes, it’s quite expensive…). Strangely, the conference will be a mix between English and German. My 2 cents: why cannot we just do tech conferences in English in Switzerland? Even if it’s not a problem for me (I speak German), I think it’s a missed opportunity to attract more people from …
Does Switzerland Now Have Its Startup Event?
We often hear that Switzerland lacks of a big startup event. Dublin had one with Web Summit (now moving to Lisbon), Paris had one with LeWeb (now kind of “replaced” by the The Rude Baguette events or the new Viva Technology event), Vienna has Pioneers, Münich has DLD Conference, Amsterdam has The Next Web, Barcelona has many startup events around the Mobile World Congress, Berlin and London have PLENTY (NOAH, etc.). And how about Switzerland? It is not the pompously named WorldWebSummit which can fill the gap. START Summit (happening on Friday in St. Gallen), alongside with the Swiss Startup Day and Startupfair are the biggest startup events in Switzerland. The three of them have different models and they do their best to attract renowned startup people from across the world (for Start Summit, leveraging the HSG St-Gallen alumnis network). …
SICTIC Investor Day Lausanne is back (without me!)
The next SICTIC Investor Day Lausanne will happen in Lausanne on April 25th, at EPFL. 8 selected technology-driven startups (the web, mobile, software, hardware) will have the opportunity to do an elevator pitch (one slide, 90 seconds) to an interesting audience comprised of business angels, professional investors and startup enthusiasts. The public will then select 4 startups based on their short pitch. The finalists will then have 7 minutes (and 5 minutes Q&A) to present their startup in more details. A jury comprised of entrepreneurs and investors (Alexandre Peyraud, Thomas Dübendorfer, Bolko Hohaus, Julien Guex) will elect the winner of the competition, who will get some fame (always good to win a competition and get some press) and hopefully some investors! Finally, startups and investors will gather around a cocktail in a relaxed atmosphere. Even for startups who don’t win: it’s …