Swisspreneur podcast

About Olivier Laplace:

Olivier Laplace has been a partner at the VC fund VI Partners since early 2022. He previously worked as head of corporate VC at Swiss Post and founded a company called Balumpa, which provided users a geo-localized social network. Throughout the years, his investor portfolio has included companies like TestingTime, Beekeeper and guuruu.

At VI partners Olivier mostly invests in B2B SaaS. His typical day as a VC includes:

- 2-3 phone calls with new potential companies
- 2-3 calls with potential co-investors
- A few random calls, like helping portfolio companies with day-to-day issues

A common complaint within the Swiss ecosystem is that there isn’t enough gross capital. Olivier thinks this should be solved in two ways:

- Swiss pension funds need to start investing in VC. There’s 1 trillion CHF in the Swiss pension fund system. Nowadays 1% of that (10B) goes into private equity, but very international private equity, and mostly into the buyouts.
- Building innovation in-house might not be the best way to do it anymore, so Swiss corporations need to buy out more startups. Despite popular perception, IPOs are very rare ends to the startup journey — it’s mostly tradesales.

Memorable Quotes:

"In 15 years of work experience, I changed careers about 5 times — these changes were always based on opportunities."

Resources Mentioned:

Deep Tech Nation, Dominique Mégret

The Power Law, Sebastian Mallaby

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About Patrizia Laeri:

Patrizia Laeri is a business journalist and the co-founder and CEO of elleXX, an independent money media platform for women. She studied business administration and then went on to start her journalism career in 2003 at SRF. During her time in Swiss television she reported on a number of subjects, like the World Economic Forum, Nobel Prize winners, and countries like Iran and North Korea. In 2020 she joined CNN Switzerland as editor in chief, only to see it declare bankruptcy soon after.

In that same year, she decided to launch her own company, elleXX. Being well aware of the dire financial situation of Swiss women (56% of which are not able to support themselves independently), Patrizia was tired of simply raising alarm on the issue and wanted instead to become a part of the solution.

Besides the financial independence issue, it is also a fact that Swiss women invest much less money than men, are very rarely targeted by wealth management companies (with 86% of them addressing men), and receive less than 1% of Swiss venture capital. During the pandemic, Swiss women also quit their jobs in larger numbers than men.

elleXX has a few ideas on how to foster female financial independence:

Offering financial literacy courses: to fix a problem, you first must understand it. elleXX regularly offers “money hacks” courses. Raising awareness about the importance of the 3a pillar: lots of Swiss women don’t have 3a insurance. Together with Vontobel, elleXX offers you a 3a pension solution to help you make sensible provisions. Offering legal protection against gender-based work discrimination: if you’re a Swiss woman in the workplace, chances are you’ll need a lawyer at some point throughout your career. Together with CAP, elleXX offers you legal advice and representation in court.

Memorable Quotes:

"25 years ago I didn’t know any founders personally, let alone female founders."

"35 years ago Swiss women couldn’t open a bank account without the signature of their husbands."

Resources Mentioned:

The Double X Economy, by Linda Scott

Influence, by Robert B. Cialdini

Bloomberg Equality Reporter

Financial Times

The Economist

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About Laura Matter and noii:

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.

Memorable Quotes:

"B2C is difficult in Switzerland. There’s not a lot of Swiss investors who invested in B2C success stories."

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About Heiner Grüter:

Heiner Grüter is the CEO at Meridium Partners, a strategy and M&A consultancy company. He was previously the CEO at UNIC, one of Switzerland’s first digital agencies and one of the Swiss Startup Mafia’s “mother” companies, having given rise to major players like Rentouch, Students.ch, Fashion Days and Qmram.

But why was UNIC so special?

Timing: UNIC employees were weathering the boom and bust storms of that era, and this gave them a clear picture of what works and what doesn’t. Hiring: UNIC made a point of hiring only very talented people. Founding team: the UNIC founders were very entrepreneurial themselves, and cultivated that sort of environment.

Why should you sell your company?

- You should sell your company if you believe somebody else would be a better owner for it than its current shareholders.

- You should not sell your company simply because you’re tired and want somebody to take your job. This results in a fire sale, usually with very mediocre results.

What’s the right time to sell your company?

You need to wait long enough for your company to build a track record: KPIs and other metrics which show the strength of your business and support your projection of its future. It’s okay to go into a financing round without a track record, but never an M&A process. Don’t wait so long that you run out of cash half-way through the M&A process. Time pressure to finish the deal is something you want to avoid at all costs, or you’ll risk ending up with a pretty crappy deal.

Memorable Quotes:

"Selling your company means you believe someone out there is a better owner for it than your current shareholders."

"Being successful in Switzerland doesn’t say a lot about your expansion potential."

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About Sophie Lamparter:

As founder and managing partner at DART labs, Sophie is a Silicon Valley VC with Swiss roots. She and her team focus on finding the best European technology startups and turning them into global players. Prior to becoming a venture capitalist, she worked in media relations. In a livestream with Swisspreneur host Silvan, she answered some of the most common fundraising questions, like:

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Is your company VC-backable?

- First things first: if you can scale your startup by bootstrapping it, don’t take investors in. How scalable is your company? And how scalable would you like it to be? VC money only goes to the most scalable companies. The goal of every VC is to have an investment be an entire fund returner — that’s how they look at startups.

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Should you choose a VC fund or a business angel?

- Both can work: it really depends on your case. Look for the person with the most insider knowledge/network in your industry. If that person happens to be a business angel, great. If it’s a VC fund, that’s great too.

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How many investors should you talk to?

- As many as you can handle. Your goal as a fundraising startup is to create FOMO (fear of missing out) in investors. If you’re only talking to one, he or she will feel perfectly at ease to drag things out, but if you’re talking to several investors simultaneously, each of them will be afraid that you’ll close a deal with someone else. Doing this in a condensed timeframe will allow you to really build up momentum.

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What’s an inflection point?

- An inflection point is anything that validates your business in the eyes of an investor.

- Examples: Entering a new market, launching the next version of your product, acquiring a big customer, reaching time milestones, sheer growth, etc.

Memorable Quotes:

"The goal of every VC is to have an investment be an entire fund returner. That’s how they look at startups."

"Getting into Y Combinator can mean the difference between being valued at 6 million or 15 million."

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Bio:

Zeki Bulgurcu ist der Gründer von Swissmeme und Zekisworld. Aufgewachsen in Basel, startet Zeki seine berufliche Laufbahn mit einer Berufslehre als Detailhandelsfachmann. Seine ersten Memes veröffentlicht er 2013 - schnell entwickelt sich sein Instagram Kanal "Swissmeme" zu einer festen Grösse in der Schweizer Social Media Szene. Neben Instagram ist der Meme-König persönlich, aber auch mit weiteren Comedy Profilen auf Facebook, Youtube und TikTok unterwegs. Nicht selten zählen diese Accounts mehrere 100'000 Follower und so ist der Baselbieter einer, wenn nicht der erfolgreichste "Social Media Typ" der Schweiz. Dank des starken Personal Brands, welchen er sich in den letzten Jahren aufgebaut hat, ist er immer wieder als Werbegesicht in Online aber auch Offline Medien zu sehen.

Neben über zehn erfolgreichen Social Media Accounts hat Zeki Bulgurcu eine eigene Sucuk Wurst, welche in vielen Migros Filialen zu finden ist. Zudem plant er aktuell einen eignen Kino-Film.

Memorable Quotes:

"Hör auf dein Bauchgefühl. Wenn du eine Leidenschaft hast, welcher du in deiner Freizeit gerne nachgehst - bleib dran! Vielleicht explodiert es und du kannst ein Business daraus aufbauen."

"Als ich kündete und auf Social Media setzte, sagten alle 'Du spinnst doch'. Doch das machen einige heute immer noch."

About Olga Dubey:

Olga Dubey is the co-founder and CEO of AgroSustain, a one-stop-shop solution for biological plant protection that she created following her PhD in Plant Pathology, during which she met her husband and future AgroSustain co-founder.

AgroSustain produces natural, biological crop protection solutions. These solutions serve to reduce food waste by preventing the formation of molds both in the field and on the shelf. The product, which is invisible and does not smell, creates a very thin barrier around the food which leads it to reduce its respiration — according to Olga, this is the plant equivalent of “falling asleep”.

Memorable Quotes:

"A researcher isn’t just someone who sits in a lab all day. It’s someone who’s constantly developing their analytical abilities."

"When you run a startup, you learn something new every day. You never get bored."

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About Estella Benz:

Estella Benz is the co-founder and CEO at Skin Match, a retail technology which uses AI to take the beauty industry to the next level. In her university studies she combined marketing with the beauty industry, after failing to get into her desired fashion design school. Her interest in the beauty industry stems from the fact that it just takes a miniscule difference in a brand’s angle for this brand to find a completely new market, even if the industry as a whole seems saturated.

The predecessor to Skin Match was RUE CINQ, a luxury eCommerce store which targeted customers’ specific needs through its powerful algorithm. However, soon enough Estella started being asked by other brands for the use of this algorithm, and this was what in the end truly became a business, under the name Skin Match.

Skin Match offers beauty quizzes for brands’ websites, an “INCI-Explainer” for every single ingredient on the website (which is of course based on their growing product and ingredient database), and “beauty insight” — the google analytics of beauty products. Whatever new feature or tool they push out first gets tested by 100 customers with their likes. Estella recommends that you never assume you’ve reached product-market fit definitively, and that you be willing to ask the questions you don’t want the answers to. She says oftentimes founders know what’s wrong with their products, but aren’t willing to go through all the work required to fix them.

Memorable Quotes:

"We could earn a lot of money in corporate. But we still believe that entrepreneurship is the right path, and that keeps us going."

"Be open to ask the questions you don’t want the answers to."

Resources Mentioned:

The eMyth Enterprise, Michael E. Gerber

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About Simone Riedel:

Simone Riedel Riley is the general manager at the Swiss Technology Fund, which grants loan guarantees to Swiss cleantech startups. She got her MBA from UZH and also studied at Harvard and Indiana University. She then came back to Switzerland to work as a CFO for a number of companies, before joining Emerald Technology Ventures in 2010.

In 2014 Emerald Technology Ventures won a mandate by the Swiss government: as part of the passing of a CO2 law, the government wished to set up a fund which would help cleantech startups receive loans from banks, and ETV won the mandate together with South Pole. So the Swiss Technology Fund was born.

The companies the Swiss Technology Fund works with are 90% startups and 10% SMEs. Most of these startups would simply not get a bank loan without the fund’s help, and while the SMEs could eventually secure themselves a loan, they would certainly have to pay higher interest rates without the Swiss Technology Fund’s stamp of approval.

Why does the Swiss Technology Fund facilitate loans instead of equity rounds? Because the Swiss government did not wish to get too involved: with loan guarantees, the government only has to pay in the case of a default. In the case of a default, the government formally becomes that company’s new lender, and the bankruptcy administrators take a couple of years to fully dissolve the company, selling all the assets. The Swiss Technology Fund receives nothing, but that is a risk they are willing to take: out of 135 companies, only 7 have thus far defaulted on their loans.

The fund can also help companies by providing contacts from their wide cleantech network, in case of a funding round. To receive the guarantee, companies pay the fund an annual fee of 0.9% of the loan guarantee. Then of course they also pay an interest rate for the loan, which usually lands somewhere between 1 and 2% — quite cheap, compared to equity. Companies are also required to submit quarterly and annual reporting to the fund, as they would to any investor.

Memorable Quotes:

"If we only support high-flyers, then we’re not doing our job as a startup fund. We should support the startups that actually need us."

"The climate crisis won’t be solved by technological innovation alone."

Resources Mentioned:

signNow

Canva

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About Ivan Cossu:

Ivan Cossu is the co-founder and CEO at Deskbird, a people-centric solution for a hybrid workspace. He has a background in economics and worked for a number of banks and consulting companies before venturing out onto entrepreneurship.

Deskbird came about during the start of the pandemic: Ivan and his co-founder Jonas Hess quickly came to the conclusion that Covid would cause a huge disruption in the workplace, and initially planned to tackle this with a B2B co-working marketplace. However, upon gathering customer feedback, they decided to pivot it to its current model, where each office is exclusive to each company but employees can book desks as they please for their in-office days.

Ivan is a strong believer that a strong culture can be built remotely just as well as in-office, as long as the team actively works to build it. Remote-first teams also benefit from much bigger talent pools, which may grant an advantage culture wise in the long run.

Memorable Quotes:

"I believe you can have a stronger company culture in a remote setting than in an in-person setting."

"As a remote-first company, you have a much wider talent pool."

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About Soumya Dash:

Soumya Dash is the co-founder and CEO of Sleepiz, a startup which produces remote sleep monitoring devices. Originally from India, he grew up constantly relocating to different regions of this country due to his father’s job, and this allowed him to develop an incredible degree of adaptability. This adaptability was then put to good use when he chose to do his masters at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology as a fully funded scholar.

During his masters he visited Switzerland as an Erasmus student. Soumya’s time there made such an impression on him that when the time came to choose were he would do his PhD, he turned down an offer from Stanford to study at ETH.

It was during the last years of his PhD that he started Sleepiz, which leverages the power of sleep insights with a device that is simply placed next to the bed. The device operates in a non-contact fashion and measures movements originating from heart contractions and breathing patterns, as well as body motions with medical grade accuracy. This is quite simply the first time we’re able to measure cardiopulmonar activity without actually touching the body.

Sleepiz is catered towards respiratory illnesses, namely sleep apnea. Most people who suffer from sleep apnea do not get diagnosed, which is concerning considering that this condition makes it likely that at some point in their lives these people will suffer a fatal stroke. However, even if people do make an effort to be diagnosed, it is a cumbersome process involving a night at a sleep clinic with a bunch of wires strapped onto you. Sleepiz has come to change all of that.

Memorable Quotes:

"I lived in many different places throughout my whole life. This has made me capable of seamlessly fitting into any environment."

"I don’t think I’m the type of person that takes no for an answer, at face value."

"We’re risk takers but not stupid ones. We needed to ask ourselves: is the impact worth all the pain?"

Resources mentioned:

Thinking Fast And Slow, Daniel Kahneman

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About Hermann Arnold:

Herman Arnold is the co-founder and ex-CEO of the talent management software company umantis. He was also a co-founder of btov and START global.

START global, the (nowadays) international organization promoting entrepreneurship among young people, was co-founded by Hermann during his Zwischenjahr at HSG. The inspiration for it was actually another project of his: during this time Hermann also created a computing school for kids in his home country, Austria; he then felt it was necessary to create role models for these kids, so that they would feel they had more career options than going into banking or consulting. He himself comes from a family of entrepreneurs and feels this area is a much better use of great talent than areas like finance, seeing as they nowadays don’t provide much value to people, according to Hermann.

In 2000, after finishing his studies, he co-founded btov — brainstoventures, a matchmaking platform to connect great companies with great venture capital. The founding team, Hermann reflects, underestimated how difficult it would be to make money with their business model — they wanted to take a cut from the equity the way Y Combinator does, but after one year they realized this model wasn’t going to work for them and they had to pivot.

Coincidentally, companies had previously approached the btov team saying it would be great to have their matchmaking software to use with their own employees, as they had little clue about the skills their people had. And that’s how btov was pivoted into the HR software Umantis, one of the first Swiss Software as a Service companies. In 2014 Umantis merged with the Haufe group: after realizing that one of their competitors was going public in 2011 with 30M revenue, 45M losses and an evaluation of 1B (which were crazy numbers back then), the Umantis team knew it was their time to start actively pursuing an exit scenario.

Memorable Quotes:

"When doing business, you should always be very clear with your terms and write them down — especially if you’re doing business with friends."

"It’s hard to see your company go in a direction you don’t agree with."

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Click here to answer the 2022 Swisspreneur Survey.

And if you want to meet Carlo and Silvan in person, join us at the Unfold Conference.

About Carlo Badini:

Carlo Badini is a co-founder and CEO at Pabio, the startup which allows you to decorate your apartment with high-quality furniture through a monthly subscription. He studied Business Administration and Psychology at the Universität Bern.

Back in high school, he wanted to be a movie director, and so borrowed money from his parents to buy an expensive DSLR camera. To pay back his loan, he began producing short explainer videos for companies around Bern — and so Cleverclip was born. After graduating, Carlo took a gap year to focus on Cleverclip and travel, and it was by traveling that Carlo realized his privilege as a middle class Swiss person, and decided to put his “luck” to good use. While at university, he bootstrapped Cleverclip as a solo founder, which he nowadays does not recommend.

In 2020 he decided to step down from his role as CEO at Cleverclip to start a new venture: Pabio. The idea for Pabio is based on the premise that it’s cheaper to rent high-quality furniture than to periodically replace “fast” (= low-quality) furniture. In case a customer really likes a piece, they can eventually buy it out. Carlo says that this is obviously the best option for the customer, and that Pabio can afford to lose out on that recurring revenue.

In 2021 Pabio got accepted into Y Combinator’s Summer Batch. Carlo relates that though very expensive (Y Combinator takes 7% for a post-valuation of 2.1M), it was a really great experience: in 3 months Pabio tripled its sales and learned how to grow fast while still focusing on market fit; afterwards they raised a great seed round from both European and US investors.

Memorable Quotes:

"Entrepreneurship is one of the most efficient ways to change the world."

"Usually the problems you don't anticipate are the ones that actually end up making your life more difficult."

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Click here to answer the 2022 Swisspreneur Survey.

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About Lena Jüngst & Simon Nuesch:

Lena Jüngst and Simon Nuesch are the co-founders of Air Up, a revolutionary scent-based drinking system. Lena has a background in product design and Simon studied technology, management and business administration. They both come from Germany.

During her bachelor's, Lena and fellow student Tim Jäger stumbled upon the topic of retronasal smell (tasting with your nose) when they were looking for a topic for their bachelor's thesis. Their interest led them to connecting this topic with our modern diet, which is currently both a huge threat to our health and to the environment.

Our early evolutionary history taught us that food which tastes nice is good for us, but today that is certainly no longer the case. So if you want the sensory benefits of drinking a fizzy drink without the health and environmental costs, what do you do? You trick your brain into thinking water tastes like a fizzy drink, of course.

Air Up's first prototype was simply putting one straw inside a cup full of water and another straw inside a scent diffuser and slurping both simultaneously. This was the rudimentary beginning of the "pods'' for sale today, which can be conveniently attached to water bottles.

Memorable Quotes:

"Sustainability is THE product design question right now."

"Entrepreneurship means feeling constantly overwhelmed and constantly fascinated by your work."

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About Pascal Koenig:

Pascal Koenig is the co-founder, former CEO and current board member at AVA women, a startup manufacturing wearable fertility trackers for women. He studied business in St Gallen and New York and worked at McKinsey for a few years before being invited by one of his university professors to join a startup project — Cardiosave.

After having started 4 companies, here’s some of the advice Pascal has for young entrepreneurs:

- Pick your co-founders very carefully. Most people do so randomly or without much thought. Having studied alongside them and being confident in how knowledgeable they are is not a good enough reason;

- When building your product, don’t strive for perfection right away and know that ideas aren’t worth much. The real magic happens when you buckle down, get it done, and then iterate, iterate, iterate;

- Switzerland is more or less the same country whether you live on 100’000 or 1’000’000 CHF. So if you’re hesitant whether or not to take the entrepreneurial leap, take it;

- The best place to start when building a product is with a real problem that you know quite well.

Memorable Quotes:

"If you’re not embarrassed when you launch your first product, it’s too late to launch it."

"Switzerland is more or less the same country, whether you live with 100’000 or with 1’000’000."

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About Boris Manhart:

Boris Manhart is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of Growth Unltd, a company that helps scale your business. He was previously involved with CodeCheck and Numbrs, and studied for a couple of years at the Universität Zürich.

Boris is actually a university dropout: he quit after 2 years of studying to co-found the communication and promotion agency Compresso AG, which he ended up leading for 10 years. When looking back, he thinks a university education may give you a good background, but it's not all that's necessary to turn you into a successful entrepreneur.

Despite having co-founded Numbrs and Compresso AG, Boris has also been the external CEO at several companies, namely CodeCheck and TRIQ. This can sometimes be a challenge, because founders typically look at their startup as their baby and have a very hard time establishing emotional distance and creating space for someone else to come in and take things in a new direction.

Here are 5 things Boris wished he'd known before starting his first company:

- You shouldn't start without a solid foundation: what kind of values do you want to share with your team? What is the purpose of this company? What skills do you need to build a company that is successful?

- Choose your core team wisely: it is more important that people add strength to the company through their personality than through any specific skill.

- Leadership is not a competition: learn to delegate responsibility and to worry more about the team's collective talent than your own personal abilities.

- Stick to best practices: data based approaches always win. Find proof for your hypotheses!

- Listen to your gut feeling: though this contradicts the fourth point, there are certain situations in which you simple have no data. In those cases, trust your deepest instincts.

Memorable Quotes:

"If you do something out of passion, it usually turns out well."

"There is always a better you. Be willing to learn."

"As a founder, you should never pay too much attention to compliments."

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About Lorena & Alice:

Alice dal Fuoco is the head of innovation at VNTR, an innovation and venturing project by Postfinance. Lorena Tschirky is the lead of one of VNTR's successful ventures, miira.

Before joining VNTR, Alice's work at Postfinance consisted of trend scouting the data economy in San Francisco. Alice and her colleagues were interested in discovering which US startups and research projects would end up having an impact on Europe, and especially on Switzerland.

Lorena's main project is miira, a solution to optimize your pension with just a few clicks. Lorena's research told her that financial security and the ability to keep up living standards is a rising concern, even in Switzerland, and that due to a lack of transparency on the part of official entities, and the lack of an incentive to start saving, Swiss people do so too little too late. Out of this research, the "DESIRE" (Design Your Retirement) was born, but as it had an over-abundance of features, Lorena and her team simplified it into an MVP which tells user what their income is going to be upon retirement, and whether there is a gap between their ideal standard of living and that income. This MVP would later become miira.

Another one of VENTR's initiatives was the "Failure" and "Success" books — the former originated from a huge excel file a co-worker of Alice once had to compile, listing every innovation project VENTR ever did and at what stage it failed. The 500 copies originally printed turned into 2000 once HR got wind of it: they wanted every employee at Postfinance to own one, to foster a more failure-positive culture. This bred a wish for a book celebrating VNTR's successes, and so the Success book was born.

Memorable Quotes:

"Never fall in love with your first prototype. I've never heard of anyone whose first prototype was their golden ticket."

About Markus Meyer:

Markus Meyer is responsible at UBS Switzerland for payments, trade finance and leasing business. He has been working for UBS since 1996, and holds a PhD in Information & Technology Management and Banking from HSG.

According to Markus, there is no universal right timing for going international, but it is something Swiss companies should start working on as early as possible, considering the size limitation this country necessarily imposes.

Before going international, companies should take care to:

- Clearly define their USP/differentiating factor;

- Find out where their clients are, world-over;

- Ascertain what the competition is like in the countries they're looking into, and what the pricing level currently is.

Common challenges when going international:

- Sometimes you are simply not allowed to sell your product in a certain country, especially countries which already rely heavily on imports and therefore wish to protect their economy;

- Even if you are allowed to sell in a certain country, you will have to face different rules, regulations and taxes;

- Regarding distribution, companies would do well to remember that mindset changes greatly from country to country. Are you really catering to local needs? Are you falling into the (typically Swiss) trap of over-engineering?

Memorable Quotes:

"If you're a Swiss entrepreneur with a good idea, you have no choice but to go international."

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About Martin Eichenhofer:

Martin Eichenhofer is the co-founder and CEO at 9T Labs, a startup making 3D printed carbon composites for high volume production. He has an impressive academic background, with one BA, one MA, one MBA and one PhD under his belt.

His university path is actually deeply tied to his entrepreneurial career, since the idea for 9T labs occurred to him during his masters, his MBA was motivated by his desire to build 9T labs, and he got his PhD after realizing he didn't have enough of a scientific foundation for it yet. Martin also met one of his co-founders, Chester, during his PhD.

When commercializing an idea which originated in academic research, the 9T labs team relied heavily on market insights and treated the transition as a very gradual process. They also opted to sell to different industries/application fields, instead of hunkering down on a single one. In their book, it's better to partner up with the champion companies of each industry than to pursue every single company in a given industry.

Memorable Quotes:

"US companies get a lot more funding than us, but the fineprint of those deals often shapes the exit negatively."

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About Martin Eng & Patrick Forte

Martin Eng is a senior client advisor at UBS, and Patrick Forte works there as the head of corporate finance. Martin has been a part of the UBS team for a total of 15 years, Patrick for 18.

The ON team won the SEF (Swiss Economic Forum) award for Innovation in Production of Sporting Goods, which earned them the SEF.growth (at the time called SEF for KMU) label. SEF growth companies get easy access to loans from UBS, and this was how Martin and Patrick met the ON founders.

They were very impressed from the very beginning with the ON team's commitment and with their expertise: despite being a young company, they had systems and automation in place which allowed them to know their global sales with a 30 min delay — and this in the early 2010s.

ON needed the loan money in order to pre pay all their orders, since their choice to invest all revenue into growth meant that it took them a long time to start generating cash. The loan amount was adjusted periodically based on the influx of ON orders. UBS also provided expertise for the decision making process.

Memorable Quotes:

"If you can get get funds through loans instead of equity rounds, then that's always preferable as a startup, because it means you get to keep your baby."

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About Phil Libin:

Phil Libin is the co-founder and former CEO at Evernote, the world’s best known note-taking app. Prior to Evernote, he built Engine5 and CoreStreet. He holds a BA in Computer Science from Boston University, which he began in 1989 and only finished in 2019. He originally dropped out shortly before graduating.

Phil did not originally plan to become an entrepreneur, but despite his ambitions of working a steady job for a large company, he just couldn’t commit to that sort of life and instead prefered to build companies with his friends. It was only 20 years into this career that it occurred to him entrepreneurship was a valid option.

He sold his company Engine5 for $26M in January 2000, right before the dot com bubble burst. Phil was 30 years old at the time. 25% of the money earned by the founders was held in escrow for 2 years — which turned out to be a very good thing, because the remaining 75% they invested into companies which then very quickly went bust.

Around 2007, Phil and his team got to thinking about building something like a cognitive prosthesis, a second brain — the note-taking app to conquer all. Their research led them to a California team of scientists working on a very similar product, and they decided to combine the teams. Originally, Evernote was a product intended for journalists and investors.

In 2015 Phil Libin stepped down from his CEO role at Evernote (remaining as Chairman until 2016) and moved on to new projects, such as the product studio All Turtles and the video communication company mmhmm.

Memorable Quotes:

"As young entrepreneurs, we always felt like we were failing. Like the reason we were starting these companies was because we couldn’t get real jobs."

Resources Mentioned:

Continuous Glucose Monitor

1491, by Charles C. Mann

Kindle

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About Thomas Hofer and Vito Gigante

Thomas Hofer is the head of the transaction advisory at UBS' corporate finance department, and has been working for UBS for over 20 years. Vito Gigante has been the head of SME M&As at UBS ever since 2016.

Here are a few common mistakes when it comes to selling/buying companies:

- Sellers often underestimate the difficulty of the selling process;

- Sellers often neglect to undertake the necessary preparation (i.e., mostly the documentation process);

- Buyers often focus on the aspects they have expertise on, and neglect to ask for advice on other topics.

Thomas and Vito recommend that you sell your company while it still has a bright future ahead, and not when it's about to tank. You should also pay close attention to the political and technological zeitgeist when assessing the right time for the deal.

UBS provides transaction financing services, where they act as a sparring partner for the buyer the whole way through. Their internal experts provide a 2nd opinion on various aspects of the deal, and they also coordinate the closing process to ensure utmost transaction security.

Memorable Quotes:

"The best time to sell your company is as soon as a promising future comes on the horizon. Don't make the mistake of waiting too long."

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About Bettina Hein:

Bettina Hein is the co-founder and CEO at juli Health, an app for managing chronic health conditions, and an investor at the Swiss Shark Tank Höhle der Löwen. She also co-founded START Global when studying at HSG, as well as Svox and Pixability. She’s married to Andreas Göldi, who is an investor at btov partners.

Bettina grew up in a family full of entrepreneurs and so was never short for role models; despite this, she did not feel confident to jump straight into entrepreneurship after her university studies and ended up interning and working for a series of corporates instead. She particularly remembers her unpleasant experience at McKinsey, which she says had a cutthroat environment.

During her time at HSG, she co-founded the largest student-led entrepreneurship conference in the world, START. The people she co-founded it with would go on to start btov ventures, and also put her in touch with an engineer developing text-to-speech technology - and so Svox was born.

Due to the telecom bust in 2001, Svox went through a number of difficulties, having had to fire more than half of their staff and place the rest on short time work. Despite the hardships, Svox turned the tide and was eventually sold to Nuance for $25M. By this point, Bettina and her husband Andreas decided to get a mid-career masters at MIT, and it was out of MIT that Bettina built Pixability, the video advertising software company. She left Pixability after 12 years to support her husband in moving back to Switzerland. Shortly after moving back, she was invited to star on Höhle der Löwen.

In 2020 Bettina co-founded juli Health, an app for managing chronic health conditions. Juli Health is geared towards US customers, since it aims to help compensate for the US healthcare system’s many inefficiencies.

Memorable Quotes:

"No one in my family ever had a 9 to 5 job, so it was rather easy for me to envision myself becoming an entrepreneur."

"Before starting my first venture, I told myself 'If this doesn't work, I can always get a job at McDonalds.'"

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About Fabian Humbel:

Fabian is an executive director and the head of special segments, credit and recovery solutions at UBS, of which he has been an employee since 2006. He has an MBA from the Chicago Booth School of Business and a BASc in Business Administration from HSG.

3 misconceptions about liquidation that he believes founders must deconstruct is the idea that liquidation is not a valuable option, the idea that liquidation is in fact a failure, and the notion that liquidation is necessarily connected to an insolvency procedure.

There are 2 types of liquidation:

- Privately initiated liquidation: your business model didn't work out, and you've chosen to shut down in style. This may even involve a sale at the end.

- Forced liquidation, under the insolvency procedure: you have not been able to pay your creditors. In this situation, you may find an agreement with the creditor and manage to have some of your debt forgiven. If you do not reach an agreement, insolvency it is.

Fabian stresses the necessity of reaching out for external psychological support should you find yourself dealing with an insolvency procedure. You do not have to bear the brunt of it by yourself — and having an external, neutral perspective on your situation may end up benefiting you more than you know.

Memorable Quotes:

"Liquidation does not mean insolvency, and it is not necessarily a bad thing."

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About Roy Bernheim

Roy Bernheim is the co-founder of the men's underwear brand T-Bô, the first clothing brand to be community driven. His background is in European Social and Political studies, and after university he went on to work in private equity and brand management.

Roy and his co-founder Allan Perrottet built T-Bô in 2017. They were interested in creating a highly scalable business with a large target audience, and soon discovered that men's underwear was an interesting category from this point of view, because:

- Online businesses with a physical component need a basket size that is not too big (because then people wouldn't convert, or would take too long to) nor too small (because then it's difficult to compensate for the acquisition cost). Men's underwear had a happy medium;

- It had an interesting customer acquisition cost;

- Even if you don't establish a subscription model, men's underwear is a product people will buy more of if they like it;

- You can ship it inside an envelope up to three pieces of underwear, which is highly cost effective from a logistics standpoint.

T-Bô menswear is Direct By Consumer, meaning that the products are co-created together with the T-Bô community — they're not personalized, but they are highly subject to democratic changes based on feedback. This demand-driven production means the returns are very few and they don't have to factor in wastage into their margin structure, which allows them to have competitive prices while still maintaining a very nice margin.

Memorable Quotes:

"The clothing brands of the future will be built in a collaborative and open way."

Resources Mentioned:

Exponential Organizations, by Salim Ismail, Michael Malone & Yuri van Geest

Give and Take, by Adam Grant

Science News

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About Jürg Tauss:

Jürg Tauss is an executive director at UBS and the head of the M&A valuation desk at the corporate finance Switzerland team.

The first thing Jürg thinks founders should know is that value is in itself subjective, and guided by the individual who looks at the asset. What the UBS M&A valuation desk tries to do is identify a market consensus regarding the value of this asset.

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Why should you do a company valuation? To prepare for the acquisition of your company, or for the buying of equity by other parties.

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What should you take into consideration?

- Do not look to big company valuations as a reference, since your knowledge about their journey and inner workings is woefully incomplete.

- Mind the difference between the value potential of your company and its time value: you cannot just calculate the supposed value of your company taking into consideration the best case scenario of your company's future progress; you have to consider all sorts of possible scenarios, good and bad, and then base your valuation on that.

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To prepare for a company valuation, you should first gather all knowledge about the future of your company in a transparent and easy-to-understand way.

Memorable Quotes:

"Large company valuations are often taken as a reference point by startups. This can go very wrong."

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About Pascal Meyer:

Pascal Meyer is the solo founder and CEO of Qoqa, a flash sale e-commerce platform in Switzerland created in 2005. He previously worked for AMPCO Metal and Buchheim Communications.

At the time of Qoqa's founding, e-commerce was quite new to Switzerland and brands were extremely hesitant about it, so the first Qoqa customers were so-called "internet geeks", who, having some knowledge on the subject, were afraid of getting their credit card details stolen by e-commerce websites or things like that. The first product Qoqa ever sold was an mp3 player, which at the time was at the cutting edge of technology. Nowadays it is through its forums, email and social media interactions that Qoqa receives feedback on what sort of products to make available next.

In March 2020, during lockdown, Qoqa stepped up to the challenge by creating a platform where small brick and mortar shops and farmers could advertise their products, so that Swiss customers wouldn't just buy necessities from large companies with internet media reach. This platform, which is still up and running, is called Direqt.

Memorable Quotes:

"Better to try and fail than do nothing at all."

Resources Mentioned:

Delivering Happiness, by Tony Hsieh

It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work, by Jason Fried

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About Mathis Büchi:

Mathis Büchi is the co-founder and chairman at the pdf software company smallpdf and the digital tax accountant Taxfix. His background is in International Business and Global Management and he previously ran a tour company organizing trips to North Korea together with an NGO. His university studies, as well, took place in Asia: he frequented the University of Hong Kong and Korea University (in South Korea).

When the political climate in North Korea intensified, his tour company came to an end and he took the trans Siberian railway train back to Switzerland, where he would go on to found smallpdf in2013. Smallpdf was bootstrapped from the very beginning, as their business model allowed them to generate enough revenue from day one to pay themselves a salary and keep things afloat.

In 2016 he co-founded Taxfix and became itsCEO, not because he had a background in taxes or any particular expertise on it, but due to the fact that he himself found taxes an aggravating an confusing task. Taxfix got started in Germany because tax filing is even more complex there, so much so that 25% of Germans don't even file their taxes, thereby losing out on an average of 1000€.

Taxfix tackles this issue by radically simplifying the process: an automated questionnaire on your phone simulates the conversation you would have with a tax accountant and the tax relevancy of your replies is then analyzed by the app.

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Memorable Quotes:

"Building something out of nothing is what excites me the most."

Resources Mentioned:

FitXR, the VR boxing app

No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention, by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer

About Julian Liniger

Julian Liniger is the co-founder and CEO at Relai, the world's easiest Bitcoin investing app. His educational background is in Business Administration and Psychology an he has previously worked for Gsponer Consulting Group International and synfluence.

He was originally introduced to bitcoin by a nerdy friend of his, through whom Julian bought his first bitcoin. Despite having had little talent for "techy" things all his life, he eventually grew to understand cryptocurrency.

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The idea for Relai came from Julian's own experience. Before, if you wanted to start buying or trading bitcoin, you had to:

- Find an exchange and create an account, which required uploading all of your personal info and having it checked, which took a couple of days;

- Wiring money from the bank to the exchange and waiting for that process to be completed, so that you could then exchange the money into bitcoin;

- Creating a wallet, then withdrawing the bitcoin from the exchange to the wallet (since exchanges — and the bitcoin that is stored within them — are at the mercy of hackers).

The whole process took about 1-2 weeks and required 2-3 different service providers.

The fact that the process needed to be simplified was a no brainer. Together with his co-founder Adem Bilican, Julian started the pre-seed fundraising process. It took them 5 months to raise a meager 20k. In hindsight, Julian blames his lack of track record and the typical Swiss hesitancy, but also the fact that they were approaching the wrong investors: people who didn't understand crypto and sometimes weren't even that interested in fintech.

Once they got the money, Adem and Julian built the MVP in 3 months and went live — from this point onwards, investors were the ones approaching them. And it's no wonder: Relai allows you start buying, trading and saving bitcoin within just 1 minute, and they don't even need to know your name.

Memorable Quotes:

"More than half of Gen Zs and Millennials say they'll be investing in bitcoin. These are the people who are gonna control more than half of all money in the future."

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About Lorenzo Arizzoli-Bulato:

Lorenzo Arizzoli-Bulato is the co-founder and managing director at LINIA, a startup manufacturing drone software for power line inspection. His educational background is in Electrical Engineering and before starting LINIA in 2018 he worked for companies such as IASTE, Axpo Group and EWZ.

Despite being in a rather niche market, Lorenzo has no trouble finding customers, in part because he knows the problem and buyer persona intimately (having worked in the industry for a while himself), and in part because power grid operators are under a lot of pressure:

- Due to the climate emergency, weather impact on power grid infrastructure is worsening;

- Due to decarbonization, more and more traffic is being brought to existing power grids;

- Building new power lines is usually met with quite a lot of resistance from local communities, so operators are wary to do so;

- The time frame for maintenance work is getting shorter as more and more people need to use electricity all of the time.

In November 2021 LINIA won the Energy Startup Day 1st place Public Choice Award.

Memorable Quotes:

"I see companies which offer similar products more as partners than as competitors."

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About Elisabete Ramalho

Elisabete Ramalho is an international executive with 20 years of experience in digital transformation, technology, manufacturing and consumer goods, who is currently active as an industry lead at Google.

For Elisabete, strategy is, naturally, about making choices. These choices should be informed by answers to the following questions:

- What is my product really about?

- How am I gonna market it?

- Should I target B2B? B2C? B2B2C?

When answering these questions, there is no exact "right" or "wrong" answer; only answers which mean accruing more or less risk.

Another thing which needs to serve as your strategy's compass is the value proposition. If you have yet to land on a definitive value proposition, consider these questions:

- Does your product already exist in the market?

- Could your success be detonated by lower prices from the competition?

- Do you have a core competence relevant to building this product?

Speaking of competition: Elisabete recommends that you be aware of what they are doing, but that you don't fixate on it — you only know what their current and past moves are, not what they're ultimately aiming at, so you may severely misinterpret their actions.

When drafting an actual plan, try to answer these three points:

- Where are you going?

- How much do you need?

- What role will each team member have?

You might also want to work with OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). Your annual OKRs should tie in with the team OKRs, which in turn connect to the individual OKRs. When setting goals, do so in a way that will push you out of your comfort zone. If you know full well you'll reach them, then those aren't goals — they're a checklist!

Lastly: allow your team members to shape the company strategy with you. They'll be more personally committed to achieving the goals if they themselves had a role in determining them.

Memorable Quotes:

"The right product to sell isn't necessarily the cheapest one. Because when you start pricing down, you cannot price up again."

"If you set yourself goals you know you will reach, then those aren't goals. It's a checklist."

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About Oliver Huber

Oliver Huber is the founder and CEO of Nomady, a Swiss sustainable camping platform. Previously he worked for VP Bank and Schwyzer Kantonalbank, and has a background in Business Admin, Finance and Banking from Hochschule Luzern.

Oliver has always been an outdoors and camping enthusiast, so the Nomady idea — landowners becoming hosts and renting out their campsites — seemed only natural to him. Having successfully flipped a house in the past, he had enough capital to quit his day job and start going all in on Nomady from day one.

When answering whether Nomady is capitalizing on the sustainable tourism craze, Oliver replied that wanting to get away from crowded places and connect with nature has always been a human necessity, so the growth of this market comes as no surprise. He also feels a responsibility to play his part in answering the climate emergency.

He began in earnest by going around his hometown and pitching the idea to landowners — 5 or 6 of them said yes and this allowed him to test his MVP. His first customers had a very positive experience, and word of mouth really helped Nomady expand, as well as some Facebook posts from Oliver himself.

Covid had both a positive and negative effect on his business: on the one hand, when the pandemic crisis began in March 2020 Oliver was in the middle of negotiations with investors, after having spent 1 year and a half bootstrapped, and his investors immediately quit. But on the other hand, since during the pandemic people couldn't travel abroad and felt safer vacationing in remote places, Nomady came as a perfect solution for their tourism needs.

Memorable Quotes:

"It was important for me to have real entrepreneurs on the board and as investors, because in an early stage you need to call them up and ask them difficult questions."

Resources Mentioned:

The Packraft

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About Elisabete Ramalho

Elisabete Ramalho is an international executive with 20 years of experience in digital transformation, technology, manufacturing and consumer goods, who is currently active as an industry lead at Google.

Elisabete's maternal grandparents were a big inspiration for her. They ran a successful bakery in a small town in Portugal during the 50s and travelled all over the world. Elisabete's grandparents taught her the value of working hard and of staying humble, and also of intimately knowing the needs of each of your clients — they knew everyone's name and order as soon as they walked through the door.

During her career Elisabete has formed a clear opinion on what it takes to be a good leader. According to her, a good leader:

- Allows their team members to co-create the company strategy;

- Is always ready to acknowledge they're wrong, and always eager to learn;

- Focuses on a person's strengths when giving feedback;

- Avoids biased language and promotes diversity in hiring;

- Makes people feel comfortable enough to speak up, and gives credit where credit is due.

At Google, good leadership is measured by cross checking someone's annual performance review with employee retention, talent acquisition and team satisfaction rates.

Memorable Quotes:

"If you have the right people on your team, goals should be co-created. It can't just be up to one person to decide."

About Philippe Willi

Philippe Willi is a co-founder and CFO/COO at TrekkSoft, a booking solution for the tour and activities market. He studied business administration at HSG and soon after started his first business, the web agency zimtkorn, together with DeinDeal co-founder Adrian Locher and Valentin Binnedijk. There they built websites for SMEs.

In 2007 he met Jon Fauver, a former raft guide and American living in Switzerland, who invited Philippe to join him at the water sports company Outdoor Interlaken. Then in 2010, Philippe and his old co-founder Valentin started TrekkSoft, as a booking solution for Outdoor Interlaken. They even put in their own money, to ensure they really had skin in the game.

TrekkSoft's main innovative feature was its "book now" button — though nowadays it seems absolutely obvious, this button was at the time quite revolutionary.

Philippe describes finding product-market fit as a moment when things suddenly just click, and you can stop relying solely on assumptions. However, Trekksoft's whole addressable market was rather large, so this product-market fit was only truly valid for certain market segments. Since trying to address the whole market with just one service seemed too risky to them, they opted instead for acquiring a number of competitors which addressed other market segments, and used investor money to do so.

Being in the travel industry, the TrekkSoft Group was hit hard by Corona. Though one company in their group made 1M in net profit in 2020, the group overall lost 30% of its revenue (which put them close to breakeven) and had to let go of a number of employees. Several other employees left of their own accord due to the lack of immediate careers prospects.

Memorable Quotes:

"Solving your own problem means product-market fit comes easier. But it also might result in conflicts of interest."

Resources Mentioned:

Weg zum erfolgreichen Unternehmer, by Stefan Merath

The Entrepreneurial Operating System

About Urs Aebischer:

Urs Aebischer is the CEO at Diseo, a decentralized ecosystem of interconnected social platforms of brands and organizations where users exclusively control their data and earn from it. Urs is also the co-founder and CEO at Swiss Impulse Group, which focuses on disruptive digital media. He has a background in Physics.

Urs has always been one to search out new ideas. Back in 1995, when he was getting his PhD in Atmospheric Physics at the ETH, he was one of the first people to have an email address. In today's world of ubiquitous social media networks, Urs (as well as many others) has identified a problem: people's data is being harvested, used and monetized by third parties, without people ever receiving any sort of compensation for the value they provide. Urs does not believe we can legislate our way out of this; the social dilemma requires a solution built from the ground up.

That's why he created Diseo. On Diseo, sharing data and giving something your attention creates revenue which can be shared between up to 16 different people. Every time a user clicks on an advertisement, they earn income for doing it and for giving permission to be targeted by this advertiser. When a user clicks an ad, they also see which of their friends have already bought the product/used the service — this is what Urs calls "social selling". Users can also recommend ads to their friends, who, if they see it, will also receive money. Every single action in favor of the product creates a revenue share.

Additionally, both users and companies on Diseo have a trust rating and get to rate each other. If a company uses child labor, they get downvoted. Urs hopes that through this process dialogue and reform will follow.

Memorable Quotes:

"Facebook and Google could easily copy what we're doing. But that would ruin their entire business model."

About Alain Chuard

Alain Chuard is a Swiss serial entrepreneur best known as the founder and Chief product officer of Wildfire Interactive, the social media marketing technology company acquired by Google in July 2012. At Google, Alain was responsible for overseeing Wildfire’s strategy, integration into Google’s Display Ads Division, and external representation of the product. He also co-created Swisspreneur with Christian Hirsig in 2016.

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Here are some of his answers to every founder's burning questions:

- What's the ideal founder team? Alain prefers 2 founder teams with complementary skills: 1 product rockstar with an eye for design and strategy, and 1 marketing and sales machine. The founders should of course also share similar values.

- Where should I search for my co-founder? Look for high talent-density places, like Ivy League universities, On Deck Fellowship and Y Combinator.

- When should I quit my day job? Keep your day job during the idea validation phase, but go all in once that phase is through. You want to give your startup the best chance possible, and that requires you to give it your all.

- How do I know if I've got a good business idea? Start with your own problems and look for inflection points, or shifts in tech and user behavior. Ask yourself: why was this idea not possible 5 years ago? How do I currently have an unfair advantage?

- What makes a good MVP? MVPs should be barebones in terms of features and design but still provide a solution that captures a pivotal need the customer has. Basically: it should have achieved product market fit.

- How do I know whether or not to pivot? You should pivot if you're consistently failing to see demand or if you have a high churn rate.

- Should I bootstrap my company or raise funds? If you have a product that can scale through tech, raise funds. If you're running a business which grows in a more linear fashion, it's worth it to bootstrap. Either way, if you should choose to fundraise, approach it as a partnership rather than a transaction.

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Currently Alain is the president of Prisma, a digital first school that adapts to every child's unique needs and abilities and to every family's lifestyle.

Memorable Quotes:

"I see a lot of founders that look at the fundraising process like a transaction, rather than as a partnership."

Resources Mentioned:

The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz

High Growth Handbook, by Elad Gil

How Superhuman Built An Engine To Find Product Market Fit, by Rahul Vohra

Essays by Paul Graham

The Product Market Fit Survey

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About Valentina Velandia

Valentina is a co-founder and partnership curator at Capacity Zurich, an incubator for startups built by refugees or migrants. She is originally from Colombia, but moved to the US after finishing high school to study Communications at California State University.  She then went on to work for the UN in Singapore while getting her master's in Diplomacy and Gender Policy.

Despite coming from a family of matriarchs, Valentina initially had some misgivings about feminism: she thought feminism and femininity were mutually exclusive. However, this and many other opinions of hers changed when she took a class at University with a really amazing teacher.

When Valentina moved to Switzerland, she worked in Geneva for a time, after which she relocated to Zurich. Despite having worked in Geneva, being highly qualified and speaking several languages (namely German), it took her more than a year to find a job. Naturally, this took a toll on her self-esteem — she blamed herself.

One of her co-founders to be, psychiatrist Alexa Kuenburg, also came to this conclusion while working with war victims and refugees: the higher someone's education level, the more difficult the integration process becomes, because there is often difficulty in finding a job which matches the person's abilities, and this mismatch can put into question a fundamental part of people's identity.

Initially, Valentina and her co-founders wanted Capacity Zurich to be a labor market integration program for refugees and migrants, which would also educate Swiss companies on how to navigate the bureaucratic hoops of hiring people with a migrant or refugee status. It ended up becoming a startup incubator.

Memorable Quotes:

"Diversity-wise companies are beginning to realize that if they don't jump on the bandwagon soon, the wagon is gonna run them over."

Resources Mentioned:

Afghan Laziz, the foodtruck project

Don't ask me where I'm from, ask where I'm a local TED Talk

White Fragility, by Robin DiAngelo

Quiet: The Power Of Introverts In A World That Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain

About Oliver Baumann:

Oliver ist der CEO des Helvetia Spinoffs Atlanto AG, einer digitalen Administrationsplattform für KMU. Ursprünglich war Atlanto als Projekt innerhalb von Helvetia geplant und wurde schliesslich als Tochterunternehmen ausgegründet. Oliver, welcher in einer Unternehmerfamilie gross wurde, war immer interessiert daran, in die Selbstständigkeit überzugehen. Nach seinem Studium an der HSG in St. Gallen, wo er sein Bachelor- und Masterstudium absolvierte, arbeitete er fast sechs Jahre bei Helvetia. Seit Januar 2021 ist er nun CEO der Atlanto AG.

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Memorable Quotes:

"Der Prozess, Dinge manuell abzutippen, liegt in Zukunft einfach nicht mehr drin. Dafür werden wir keine Zeit mehr haben."

"Wir wollen das Leben von kleinen Unternehmen vereinfachen."

About Daniel Borel

Daniel Borel is the co-founder and chairman emeritus of Logitech, the world's largest manufacturer of computer peripherals — with headquarters in Switzerland! After studying Physics at EPFL, Daniel went on to do his masters at Stanford.

In the 70's, Stanford was on fire. The Apple computer had just been created, as had Bill Gates' Microsoft, and the first microprocessors, operating systems and programming languages were just coming up. It felt like a technological revolution was imminent, and Daniel wanted to be a part of it. Together with fellow Stanford student Pierluigi, Daniel developed a word processing system, and their company address was "165 university avenue" — famously shared by Google and Paypal. Unfortunately, this project didn't take off, and Daniel ended up moving back to Switzerland to accommodate his wife's wish of setting up her own veterinary practice (which was not possible in the US since they did not recognize her diploma as valid).

Then in 1981, at his father-in-law's farm in the canton of Vaud, Daniel founded Logitech together with co-founders Pierluigi and Giacomo. Their product was a mix of hardware and software, which is a notoriously difficult thing to pull off, but Daniel believes that that's where you can really make a difference, and that this is what ensured their survival in an extremely competitive world.

How competitive, you may ask? Well, after meeting Bill Gates at a beach party in 1982, Daniel began talks with Microsoft — but they soon realized that the tips they were giving Microsoft on why not to buy from Logitech's japanese competitor, Alps, were actually being passed on to Alps. This made Daniel give up on Microsoft altogether.

With the rise of competition between computer manufacturers in the early 90s, prices went down dramatically, and Logitech had to move its manufacturing to China in order to produce cheaper and be able to compete.

In 1998 he decided to step down as CEO: after a crazy, decades-long ride, it was time for a rest. Nowadays, he keeps himself busy with his many grandchildren, his boat, and his philanthropic endeavors: Swiss-up, a foundation dedicated to fostering excellence in Swiss education, and Defitech, which manufactures computer technology for people with disabilities.

Memorable Quotes:

"Try and fail, and never fail to try, but don't put all your eggs in the same basket."

"Success is never final."

"By having a passion, you avoid having a job."

Über Gianluca Lombardi & Andreas Stöckli:

Andreas und Gianluca sind beide bei Helvetia tätig. Andreas ist Marktverantwortlicher für Unternehmen in der Generalagentur in Aarau. Dabei hat er mit Firmen-, wie auch mit Privatkunden engen Kontakt. Gianluca ist als Versicherungs- und Vorsorgeberater in der Generalagentur in Baden aktiv. Er durfte bereits seine Lehre bei Helvetia absolvieren und konnte sich danach seinen Weg in den Aussendienst schrittweise erarbeiten.

Memorable Quotes:

"Bleibt auf eurem Weg, bleibt fokussiert."

"Redet aktiv über Fehler, weil das Veränderungspotenziel bei Fehlern sehr gross ist."

"Mut ist sehr wichtig. Seid mutig, neue Dinge auszuprobieren."

About Bettina & Mannar

Bettina Hirsig is the co-founder and lead at Powercoders, a coding academy for refugees. She has a background in marketing and business administration. Mannar Hielal is a junior software engineer at Liip, a Bernese digital agency. Originally from Aleppo, Syria, Mannar fled her war-torn country for Turkey, and then eventually Switzerland, where she would join Powercoders.

Just after the birth of their second child, Bettina's husband Chris was invited to the Global Entrepreneur Summit in San Francisco. There he met two female entrepreneurs: one who had founded a coding academy for women, and one who'd founded a catering company which hired exclusively refugees. It was then that the Powercoders idea was first born.

In the beginning, Powercoders was funded partially by the Switzerland's state department for migration, and partially by a number of foundations. Nowadays, it is funded by the canton and by the companies to which Powercoders provides employees — the Powercoders graduates.

One such graduate is Mannar, who back in Aleppo studied Computer Engineering and constantly went against her mother's expectations of her by working two jobs and even practising martial arts. When the Syrian war came to Aleppo, public transportation stopped working and water and electricity were cut. There was no internet, Mannar couldn't get to work and neither did she feel it was safe to call her co-workers — there was no way of knowing whose hands would pick up the phone. Aleppo was being bombarded, which forced Mannar to move to a safer neighborhood within the city (one which experienced bombardments less frequently). Though she was not afraid of death, Mannar did not want to end up a nameless corpse on the streets of Aleppo, and so she left for Turkey, which is just 45 min away.

However, she soon realized that Turkey used Syrian refugees as political pawns, and that the threat of repatriation hung above her at all times. She also was deprived of several rights in Turkey (since she did not actually receive asylum, but was only there on some sort of humanitarian stay), and could only access a bare minimum of healthcare services. She decided to leave Turkey for Switzerland. In Switzerland, Powercoders seemed like a natural first step, considering what she had studied back in Aleppo. It was during the Powercoders career day that she was introduced to Liip, her current employer.

Nowadays, Mannar dreams of perfecting her skills as a developer, bringing her mom over to Switzerland, and buying a house by the lake.

Memorable Quotes:

"Being a leader means being open to constructive criticism. You need to have a beginner's mindset every single day."

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This episode was produced in collaboration with Startup Days.

Über Stefano Saeger:

Stefano Saeger ist Investment Manager beim Helvetia Venture Fund, ein Investment Fund von Helvetia Versicherungen, welcher in Startups investiert. Der Fund wird extern durch btov betrieben. Nach seinem Betriebswirtschaftsstudium an der HSG absolvierte Stefano den Master of Arts in Business Innovation, wobei er davon ein Semester in Johannesburg ablegte.

Nach verschiedenen Tätigkeiten im Bereich von Business Development (Fanpictor AG) und als Projektmitarbeiter im Lehrstuhl für Controlling und Performance Management absolvierte Stefano ein 19-monatiges Trainee Programm bei der ABB in Zürich und San José USA. Als ABB Trainee kam Stefano sehr schnell mit allen Themen der Startup Welt in Berührung und fand seine Begeisterung dafür. Seit Oktober 2019 ist er als Investment Manager im Venture Fund von Helvetia tätig und mag den grossen Perspektivenwechsel, welcher durch den Mix von Makro- und Mikroebene entsteht.

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Memorable Quotes:

"Was ich einfach unfassbar toll finde, ist, mit viel Enthusiasmus die Leute da dran sind."

"Jeder, der daran arbeitet macht es gerne und macht es, weil er überzeugt davon ist, was er macht."

"Ein bisschen Skepsis ist sinnvoll, weil sie uns auch weiterbringen kann, in allem was wir tun."

About Anne & Tobias Richter

Anne Richter is the founder and CEO of Knecker, a startup which produces vegan protein-rich snacks. She got her MA in Economical Engineering from the Technische Universität Berlin and afterwards worked for a series of energy companies, before starting her own venture in 2020. Tobias Richter is the founder, former CEO and current Chairman of TRI Dental Implants, a Swiss emerging leader in innovative modern implant dentistry. He got is BA in International Business Studies from the International School of Management (Germany).

In 2011, after a decade of working in a corporate environment, Tobias took the leap and founded his own business. Tobias chose medtech entrepreneurship to have the best of both worlds: though he grew up in a family of doctors, he felt studying medicine would be too limiting, so he studied business instead and later focused on the medtech industry, specifically dental work — which, being very digital, benefits a lot from integrating AI components.

Together Tobias and Anne have 3 children. Life with 2 startups and 3 kids can often get very hectic, so the couple has developed a system:

- They have an Au Pair who lives with them, which really helps;

- They keep a joint timetable, to always know what the other will be doing. This is especially important for events happening before 9am or after 6:30pm, when the kids are at home;

- They organize two weekly "family meetings": one with the kids, the other one without them. The meeting with the kids, called Basilikum, is a half-an-hour get-together where the family discusses the previous week ("What was good?" "What was bad?") and plans for the week ahead ("What are your expectations regarding next week?"). Often the deal is sweetened with some sweets or chips for the kids, facilitating their cooperation.

Tobias and Anne also utilize a tool called The Wheel Of Life, which allows you to reflect on the previous year and plan for the year ahead by having you evaluate your life according to 8 different aspects: health, finance, career, family, personal development, spirituality, your romantic relationship, and social life. The results are shown on a "spiderweb" type of graph, which easily allows you to spot weaknesses. For instance, when their kids were younger, Anne and Tobias tended to neglect their romantic relationship, so they decided to institute a weekly lunch just for the two of them: the "Love Lunch." By constantly reflecting and thinking ahead, the couple is able to remain focused on what matters most to them.

Memorable Quotes:

"I wanted to be in control of my own destiny, so I became an entrepreneur."

Über Adrian Tüscher und Sarah Gassmann:

Adrian Tüscher ist der Leiter des Bereichs HR Legal Services. Er berät nationale und internationale Kunden im Arbeitsrecht und ist spezialisiert auf Immigrations-, Sozialversicherungs- und Steuerfragen im Zusammenhang mit internationalen Entsendungen, Personalleasing und Mitarbeiterbeteiligungsprogrammen. Adrian verfügt über umfassende Erfahrung im grenzüberschreitenden Arbeitsrecht, in der Gestaltung und Umsetzung von Mobilitäts-Compliance-Prozessen sowie von Vergütungs- und Beteiligungsplänen.

Sarah Gassmann ist diplomierte Steuerexpertin und Manager bei KPMG in Zug. Sie verfügt über umfassende Erfahrung bei der Umsetzung von aktienbasierten Vergütungsplänen für börsenkotierte und nicht börsenkotierte Unternehmen. Darüber hinaus berät sie zu nationalen und internationalen Aspekten der Sozialversicherungen. Sarah verfügt über ein langjähriges und ausgezeichnetes Netzwerk zu den Steuerbehörden in der Zentralschweiz.

Wann sollte ich über ein Mitarbeiterbeteiligungsprogramm nachdenken? Welche rechtlichen Aspekte gilt es bei der Umsetzung zu beachten? Und wie viele Anteile sollte ich für meine Mitarbeitenden reservieren? Diesen und weiteren Fragen gehen wir mit den Experten Sarah Gassmann und Adrian Tüscher von KPMG nach.

Nach dieser Episode weisst du, welche Aspekte du bei der Umsetzung eines Mitarbeiterbeteiligungsprogramms unbedingt beachten solltest, wo du Gestaltungsspielraum hast und, was du machen kannst, wenn die Dinge nicht nach Plan laufen.

Memorable Quotes:

"Schweizer sind zwar lieb miteinander, aber auch ein wenig missgünstig. Daher haben sie oft das Gefühl sie bekommen weniger als die Anderen."

About Anne Richter

Anne Richter is the founder and CEO of Knecker, a startup which produces vegan protein-rich snacks. She got her MA in Economical Engineering from the Technische Universität Berlin and afterwards worked for a series of energy companies, before starting her own venture in 2020.

Anne met her co-founder Susanne while volunteering at the local Ludothek. Since Anne had just had her third child, she was especially impressed by Susanne's success as both a mother and entrepreneur. Together they developed the idea of a vegan Kneckerbröt, for an age which requires climate-friendly snacks.

The base ingredient of Knecker is organic soy, sourced from an Austrian farm. The recipe then also contains sesame, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and lin seeds. It's gluten-free, and comes in three different flavours: mountain salt (geared towards sporty-people), rosemary (usually eaten as an appero), and curry and thyme (for chip lovers).

Knecker's proof of concept phase began right after lockdown, making buyers twice as enthusiastic about having the product in their stores. Knecker's buyer persona is an outdoorsy, sporty, environmentally-conscious person between the age of 20-55.

Keeping in line with the climate-friendly theme, Knecker packages are refillable and available at "unpacked shops" — meaning zero waste, package-free shops.

While Anne would love to start expanding Knecker as soon as possible, it's getting harder and harder to enter the EU market these days, so she feels she still needs more volume in Switzerland before she can finally take that challenge on.

Memorable Quotes:

"I'm alive in order to change things. I think it's part of my DNA."

"Everyone who has a company should be on Instagram."

Resources Mentioned:

Femtech Alumnae

About Adrian Locher

Adrian Locher is the co-founder and former COO at the Swiss shopping platform DeinDeal, which was bought by Ringier in 2011. Adrian stayed at DeinDeal until 2015, after which he took a 1 year sabbatical to explore internet hotspots acorss the world. In 2016 he settled in Berlin, where he co-founded the Merantix venture studio.

Adrian chose Berlin as his new home due to the presence of great schools for his kids and also because he enjoys Berlin's cosmopolitanism and diversity, not only from a lifestyle point of view, but also in times of finding talent. While he finds Zurich one of the most beautiful places to live, he thinks people there are noticeably less ambitious, as is the trend in Europe overall. In order to compete with America and China, Adrian thinks Europe should start putting aside nationalistic fervor and thinking at a continent-wide scale.

Adrian chose to build a venture studio because this allows him to both be an investor and remain involved on the operating side as well. He thoroughly enjoys the "0 to 1" phase, where ideas are iterated and validated in the market, and step by step something gets built.

Merantix is an AI-focused venture studio because Adrian and his co-founder Rasmus think AI will transform our industries as radically as the internet did decades ago. AI essentially automates and optimizes complex decision making based on a lot of experience — any process which involves this will sooner or later be revolutionized by AI. When asked if AI would ever see its own bubble burst like the internet did in the early 2000s, Adrian replied that that has already happened at a more discrete level, with industries such as autonomous driving: the initial hype turned into disillusionment when our expectations for rapid progress came crashing down.

Business ideas at Merantix go through 3 stages:

- Ideation:

Here the team considers how the industry may be transformed and what role AI would play in that. If it looks like there's a strong shift ahead, the team starts evaluating different business models. Their ultimate goal is not to become an AI SaaS company, but a value chain integrator.

- Incubation:

If clients show interest, the product starts getting built. Here it should be noted that Merantix only starts hiring team members once they know exactly in which direction they want to go.

- Scaling:

Here Merantix takes a step back and starts looking for outside investors, remaining more as an active board member. However if more help is needed for things like financing rounds, team building efforts or pivoting, Merantix gets its hands dirty again.

Memorable quotes:

"Think about how the internet has changed a great number of industries. That's how much AI is gonna change them, as well."

About Julian Teicke

Julian Teicke is the founder and CEO at wefox, Europe's largest digital insurer. Having studied Business Administration at the University of St Gallen, Julian joined Groupon in 2009 as an intern, only to be handed much more responsibility than originally predicted, due to his boss having had a burnout.

In 2010 he co-founded DeinDeal, and became its COO. After having left the company in 2015, he started wefox.

When he was originally approached by his would-be co-founder with the idea for wefox, Julian rejected it outright, because his own father was in the insurance business and he did not wish to follow in his father's footsteps. Eventually, though, he was won over by the idea's potential and decided to give it a fair shot.

The biggest insurance companies, despite their size, are nowhere near as big as the tech giants — their growth is too slow. Wefox wanted to become the exception to the rule and grow 100% per year. Here are some of the challenges they've faced:

- Margins in the insurance business are typically extremely low. This wasn't a problem in the past, because insurance companies had a second income stream: capital returns. Meaning, they invested the money they got from customers into capital markets and made capital returns. But in the 0 interest environment we're currently in, there are no more capital returns, so the focus needs to be on risk returns. This demands 3 things: using tech and data to reduce the loss ratio (= claims payout), decreasing administrative costs, and boosting sales.

- Capital efficiency: Julian's time at wefox has made him aware of the need for capital light models, where all the money they have is put to use in innovation and growth.

- Innovation: Big insurance companies have always been in a catch 22 situation. Over decades they attracted the most risk averse investors that request yearly dividends, meaning the money spent on these dividends did not get invested into innovation. But if they stop paying dividends, investors drop out. This is a complicated problem to puzzle out.

In just over 4 years, wefox's success won them $650m in a series C and a $3bn valuation. According to Julian, they'll be using the money to fuel further international expansion, and to transform their insurance products from reactive to proactive, in order to make a real impact in harm-prevention.

Memorable Quotes:

"The ultimate success for any startup is motivating people to do it themselves."

Resources Mentioned:

Reinventing Organizations, Frederic Laloux

About Laurent Decrue

Laurent Decrue is the co-founder of the moving company MOVU and the software company Holycode, and is currently also the CEO at Bexio. At Holycode, Laurent turns people's product dreams into reality, so there's no process he knows more intimately than product development. The company headquarters are in Serbia — this is called nearshoring: outsourcing your operations to another country, but one that is nearby and usually even in the same time-zone.

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Is there a set framework for product development?

No: it depends on the stage. But if there's something Laurent can recommend, it's that before you start developing, you should create a business canvas. Think about what a prototype could look like, especially a UX prototype that is clickable. Next you should figure out the smallest possible version of it  — something that can be cooked up in 3 weeks. Even if it works, you'll inevitably end up throwing it away because you need to build a bigger version, but having built it in the first place allows you to decide whether a bigger version is worth it.

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Similarly, it's best not to invest in a crazily complex back-end architecture right away. Build something that works and have your customers test it and give you feedback — even if they do so in a simple spreadsheet.

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Taking inspiration from The Lean Startup, Laurent talked about the 2 hypothesis you need to prove:

- Value hypothesis: are people willing to spend money/time interacting with your tool?

- Growth hypothesis: is it scalable? It's possible that a very good product is not actually scalable. At this stage,  marketing, sales and process optimization become cruzial.

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The age-old debate: Scrum or Kanban?

Laurent recommends Kanban for really creative solutions. This tool is all about making sure you don't have more than one or two tasks in each phase of the process, and it also really helps you keep focus.

On the other hand, Laurent sees the utility of Scrum for good quality, fast results.

Memorable Quotes:

"Don't invest in a crazily complex backend architecture before you've actually verified that this is the right architecture to build."

About Laurent Decrue

Laurent Decrue is the co-founder of the moving company MOVU and the software company Holycode, and is currently also the CEO at Bexio.

He grew up with a headstrong grandfather who pressured him to take a corporate job at UBS. Despite getting along well with the people there, his problem with authority made UBS too stifling an environment for his entrepreneurial spirit. When he got layed off due to the financial crisis, he decided to join DeinDeal.

Laurent thinks there were two main reasons for DeinDeal's "mafia status":

- It was an unprecedentedly fast growing company, which attracted a certain type of personality;

- It was a very big company overall, which, statistically, means spin-offs are bound to happen.

Unfortunately he suffered a small burnout during his time at DeinDeal, which motivated him to take a break from working before starting his own ventures. During this break he got his masters' degree. He never received any professional help to overcome the effects of his burnout, which in hindsight seems to him like poor decision making. He also feels a certain resentment towards the people he'd been working for, for not having helped him spot the warning signs. Laurent feels guilty himself about not having been able to do this either with two of his own employees later on.

The idea for MOVU came from his own frustration at the slowness of the existing moving services. Despite the company's success, they also underwent a series of challenges:

- From the beginning they knew they wanted to develop a subscription model around a cleaning service, but it took them so long to get to it that by the time that they did, another company had already jumped on the bandwagon and was having great success;

- Their original CTO left, and it was difficult to make sure he got fair compensation: they ended up assigning some of his shares to the new CTO and buying out some of his shares as well;

- More than once they neared bankruptcy, as investment rounds often hinged on a few yes's and no's. This was particularly nerve-wrecking considering some of the people in the MOVU team were parents;

- They received a very generous offer for MOVU early on but declined it, because it did not make strategic sense. They risked a lot to play the long game, but it ended up paying off.

In 2016 Helvetia acquired Moneypark. This let Laurent know that other insurance companies would soon start making investments, and so he made sure to get in contact with the lot of them. MOVU eventually got sold to Baloise.

Simultaneously to creating MOVU, he also founded Holycode, which provides nearshoring services. He remains there as a board member, and has also since 2020 been active as the CEO of Bexio, after Jeremias Meier stepped down from the job.

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Memorable Quotes:

"If you get 1% better everyday, that's 37times better per year."

"You need to have the courage to realize that during tough times you need to go hard, and during easy times you need to take it slow. Don't push yourself over the brink."

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Resources Mentioned:

Startup CEO, by Matt Blumberg

The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries

Zero To One, by Peter Thiel & Blake Masters

About Peter Kempin and Patrick Arnold

Peter Kempin is a Team Head of Executives & Entrepreneurs at UBS, where he has been working for the past 15 years. Patrick Arnold is a tax expert at UBS and certified financial planner.

Decades in the industry have taught Peter and Patrick that young founders don't think much about taxes. They're heavily focused on their business idea, and taxes aren't a very sexy topic to begin with. But they are nonetheless a crucial step of every business journey.

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The first thing you should concern yourself with is the business plan:

- Take into consideration the liquidity needs of the company. This is the basis for your financial requirements: is it possible for you to bootstrap the business and "keep a large portion of the cake" or if there is a need to bring on investors in order to grow the company?

- If you have a business plan for your company, you need one for your personal life as well. How much money can you contribute to your own business? Is it possible to draw pension assets? Do you want to? Should you have a private, non-touchable reserve?

- Keep in mind the founders' financial situation. Do they all have low fixed costs, which will allow you to bootstrap and keep costs and income low? Or do some of them have families already, and aren't able to take on as much risk?

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Profit taxes vary from 12-20% depending on the canton. At the beginning of a company, when you haven't broken even because you're not even profitable yet, tax benefits aren't really on your mind — so founders usually choose a domicile in the geographical zone most relevant to their business. But you should take into consideration that the corporate tax reform gives you different advantages/disadvantages depending on the canton you choose, so choose wisely. But even if you make the wrong decision, you can always change domicile later on.

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Many founders wonder whether they should set up an individual company or a corporate one. Here are some differences to consider:

- If you're running an individual company, you're taxed on your business profit with the income tax, together with all the other private factors you have: rental income, investment income, etc... But if you're running a corporate company, you're taxed with profit taxes. The income tax only applies if you draw a salary.

- If you have a corporate company and you sell it, you can benefit from tax free capital gains. If you sell an individual company, it's fully taxed.

Memorable Quotes:

"Becoming an entrepreneur means tapping into your savings. It should not be done lightly."

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