0:57 - Why start a dating platform in Switzerland
5:45 - Rising up to the fundraising challenge
12:23 - Getting money from FFFs
15:12 - Transparency in the Swiss ecosystem
19:32 - Upcoming startup trends
Laura Matter is the co-founder and CEO of noii, a video chat-based dating app. noii combines sophisticated algorithms with psychological know-how to find suitable partners and then allows you to join them on a video chat speed dating round. You are then free to follow-up with the people you click with. Laura has a background in marketing and created noii out of a personal dissatisfaction with the available dating apps.
From her recent experience fundraising for noii, Laura recommends raising money from people who already know you, because then you don’t have to convince them of your virtues as much — they already know you’re a hard worker with integrity. She also recommends focusing on landing a lead investor, since it exponentially smoothes things along. Despite the difficulties, Laura is of the opinion that compared to building a product, fundraising is nothing.
Laura praises the amount of info available on the internet about starting a company in Switzerland, but she wishes there were more transparency between older and younger founders. She can also speak to the Swiss female entrepreneur experience — check out her recent article for the elleXX blog here.
"B2C is difficult in Switzerland. There’s not a lot of Swiss investors who invested in B2C success stories."