This year again, Startup Weekend is coming back to Biel/Bienne, the biggest bilingual city of Switzerland. And again, I’m deeply involved in the organisation, as Biel/Bienne is kind of my home city. You may have heard that Startup Weekend Lausanne just happened, on EPFL campus. Startup Weekend Biel/Bienne is different. Less students, more people active as manager, developers, business men, designers… and a unique atmosphere just in regards of the language spoken! As a coach, I’ve been interacting with a team first in German, then in English to finally speak French. And vice-versa. Everyone kind of spoke its own language and does its best to understand the other ones. And it works! But if you’re new here, you may think: What is Startup Weekend? Startup Weekend is a 54-hour event for developers, designers and entrepreneurs to hack on their latest …
GO WEST! 7 days to apply to Venture Leaders NYC
End of February rhymes, since already 15 years, with time to apply to the Venture Leaders program! If you’re (relatively) new on the startup scene, you may wonder what it means: simply said, you have the opportunity to get selected in the Swiss Startup National Team of 2016! I had the chance to participate in 2014 with my company (you can discover my posts about the 2014 and 2015 teams) and I can only hugely recommend it to every entrepreneur. More than a “simple” business development program, it’s also a personal development trip where you’ll learn a lot, which will help you to improve as an entrepreneur. For your current venture or the following ones (an entrepreneur never stops, right ;-)?). In 2014, we went first 8 days to Boston, followed by 2 days in New York. Since this year, …
Time to Lift!
In less than a week, the famous Lift Conference is taking place again in Geneva. For thos who haven’t heard from it so far… that probably means that: you’re new on the startup scene (great, welcome!) you’re living on another planet (or at least, not in Switzerland ;-)…) Lift Conference is a great conference to get inspiration for top innovators from around the world, like Brian Solis. This year, there will be talks about: Blockchain technology Customer Experience Artificial Intelligence among other ones… There will also be workshops and many cool experiences, where you can test innovations… and get excited about the potential of technology! There will also be a “Lift Prototyping Lab”, where participants will go from problem to prototype in just 3 days… something that I love, and that we also know how to do it my own …
My 2015 wrap-up
End of January… it is almost late to share my 2015 wrap-up. But still time. I was planning to do it until mid of this month, but you know how life is: days have only 24 hours! You may have seen that startupolic.com turned 4 on January 12th. Already 4 years! It has gone so quickly and it is such a long time ago in the same time. I have lived so many amazing (and less amazing, true!) experiences: what I can say is that I don’t regret at all to be a real entrepreneur (and not “simply” an advisor) and a blogger! I had defined that 2015 would be the year of “monetization” for me. It was. Not that I’ve made any tremendous exit (no exit at all, by now). But my partners and I have been able to …
startupolic.com turned 4… today!
First of all, I wanted to wish you a Happy New Year (I think we can still say it until mid-January)! Hopefully, the Christmas break was the opportunity to relax (aka SLEEP!), spend time with family & friends and refill the batteries! Today is a very special day for me… Exactly 4 years ago, I wrote my first ever blog post. My initial idea was just to share knowledge and insights I was collecting in my startup journey. And get to know new people, connect them and bring my little contribution to the development of the Swiss startup scene. I committed to blog at least once a week (I know: I was less regular these past few months ;-)!) and tried to go the lean way: Find a name that express my blog and myself (not simply my name!): startupolic …
From Startup to Growth: 10 Survival Rules for Startups
I first met with Raffael years ago (in 2009 or 2010) at the Startup Day, FORUM EPFL, in Lausanne. At that time, I was trying to convince him to relocate his company a bit Northern Switzerland, as this was part of my mission. I was sure he and Joël were on something extremely promising, which is finally true. I remember our discussions as they were bootstrapping (this word was quite unknown at that time), rather than losing too much time to go pitching everywhere. Since then, their company has grown up to a “multinational SME”, with around 20 employees, multiple locations and customers all around the world. Raffael shared his “survival guide” some months ago, which you’ll discover in this post. This is a guest post by Raffael Maio is a keen Swiss entrepreneur, who is COO and co-founder …
The Seed Round Guide: Why Silicon Valley May Not Be Your Best Option (III/III)
This is a guest post by Penny Schiffer a Zürich-based energetic woman, passionate by the startup and investment world. She’s currently managing the startup initiatives of Swisscom and in charge of the « Swisscom Startup Challenge » and also part of Swisscom Ventures and a member of the business angel club Go Beyond. This post is part of the Seed Round Guide (check The Seed Round Guide: Is Big Always Better Than Small? and The Seed Round Guide: Finding & Leveraging a Lead Investor). A couple of months ago, I was coaching a seasoned entrepreneur who had developed a piece of software that is relevant to operating IT clouds. This software definitely addresses a global market and will most likely have much greater growth opportunities if the business development addresses the tech companies in Silicon Valley. After this entrepreneur …
Apply to the Swiss Fintech Award until Nov 30th!
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 …