Swisspreneur podcast

The Episode in 60 seconds

What you need to know about angel investing in Switzerland, according to Thomas Dübendorfer.

The most common mistakes of new angel investors:

• Accepting the first deal they are offered: many new angel investors fall into the trap of investing into the first deal they are offered without due diligence. Even if the founders are people you know, this can still end very badly and potentially destroy friendships and/or your future ability to invest.
• Failing to consider the business model: too much excitement about the team or idea can cover up a lack of a working business model that will allow the company to scale and be sold at a profit.

The investment process:

• First contact with a pitch deck and fact sheet;
• Meeting to get to know the team and clarify questions;
• Proposal / term sheet: details of how much money is getting raised at which valuation;
• Due diligence;
• Notarizing the issuance of new share capital;
• Great templates for most of these steps can be found at SECA.
  

Make sure you are covered — the shareholders agreement:

• The shareholders agreement sets out the rights and obligations of shareholders and is an important part of any investment deal.
• If you hold less than 50% of the shares, it should include some type of minority protection so you have a say on important business decisions such as the business moving abroad or changing the business purpose.
• It should also include a liquidation preference for shareholders, meaning that if the company goes bankrupt, shareholders will be paid out any remaining capital first before the founders receive any money.

Full-time business angels:

• It’s possible to be a full-time business angel i.e. to live from the returns you get on your investments.
• This takes some ramp-up time because there may be a considerable gap between your first investment and your first successful exit that allows you to live off of the returns.
• Diversification is key. It is unavoidable that some investments will be lost. Diversification protects you from losing your entire investment.

Advantages angel investors bring to a business:

• Experience: angel investors are often former entrepreneurs themselves, so they’ve “been there, done that” in most of the situations a young company encounters.
• Credibility: an angel investor on the board can give other investors confidence to invest.
• Network: especially if the angel investor has a large portfolio, they may be able to connect their companies amongst each other so they can benefit from shared learnings.

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Memorable Quotes:

“If all you want is to ‘get rich quick’, then maybe being a business angel is the wrong path for you. Better visit a casino.”

“Helping the startup team to make the right decisions at the right moments is the most important thing a business angel can do besides activating the network.”

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Resources Mentioned:

• SECA Templates and Industry Standards
• SICTIC Partners
• Swiss Angel Investor Handbook

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About Simon Enderli and SWESA

Simon Enderli is the CEO of the Swiss Entrepreneurs Foundation (SEF) and President of the Swiss Entrepreneurs & Startup Association (SWESA). Before joining the Swiss Entrepreneurs Foundation as Deputy CEO in 2019, Simon spent 8 years at PostFinance, the financial services unit of the Swiss postal service. In 2020, he took over the CEO position at the Swiss Entrepreneurs Foundation from his predecessor, Peter Stähli. Shortly after, SWESA was established to work more closely with national parliamentarians and represent Swiss startups in the political decision-making process. Simon was nominated as the association’s first president and within only one year, the organization was well on track to launch its first political initiative: a startup visa to facilitate the access to talent from countries outside the Schengen Area for Swiss startups. Simon holds a degree in Business Administration from the Berner Fachhochschule.

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Memorable Quotes

“Don’t romanticize the word “president” — what it actually entails is a whole lot of work.”

“I actually do think there are plenty of ideas in Switzerland. Our true weakness is knowing how to commercialize those ideas.”

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Building a stable company the efficient way: Contovista’s case of success

In 2013, software engineer and tech lead Thomas Dübendorfer left Google Zürich, turning over a new leaf into the new-found world of start-up financing. In this episode, the Internet entrepreneur and expert angel investor discusses the evolution of his investing career, sharing valuable advice for those willing to make their leap of faith into the world of start-ups.

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Great beginnings

After completing a PhD in Computer Science from ETH in 2005, Thomas Dübendorfer knew that industry would be his next step. He soon seized the admirable opportunity of kick-starting his career by becoming a tech lead and software engineer in the early days of Google Zürich. In a small community of less than 60 workers, Thomas found a happy medium between his academic experiences and the concrete universe of large-scale programming. His line of work focused on fraud-prevention projects for advertisement systems; as relevant Big Data challenges arose on a daily basis, he grew in his expertise.

The company soon expanded exponentially, numbering around 1,400 workers by 2013. Consequently, a switch in work dynamics seemed urgent. New internal structures, such as team-building and emerging administrative layers, brought a significant contextual shift. With expansion came also a fresh set of initially unexpected skills: beyond “machine learning” and programming, Thomas became familiar with the delicate procedures of hiring his own collaborators.

In hindsight, Dübendorfer recognises how these transformations can become “little disruptions” in the sustainability of a company’s development, effectively changing its work culture. Nevertheless, this accelerated flow still had its benefits…

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Lessons learned from Google Zürich

Undergoing this form of “American-style scale-up” has definitely enriched Thomas’s perception of workplace mechanisms, some of which he considers valuable directions for Swiss companies:

1. Including senior, experienced workers allows new workers to grow in productivity through active contact;
2. By connecting many diverse paths and frames of mind, this growth-by-interaction approach can quicky turn complex; as such, paying close attention to the organic shifts of the company’s working culture is essential;
3. Early coaching nourishes a healthy environment and helps incoming collaborators feel more comfortable and integrated in their workspace;
4. Being transparent regarding performance provides precious insight by aiding collaborators in the assessment of their effective productivity;
5. If things are not working out due to a personality incompatibility or divided goals, firing as a method of keeping team balance — though “hard” and “not very European”, as Thomas admits — may yet be a necessary evil.

However, as the corporation reshaped itself to new demands, Thomas started missing the “family groove”, the intimate, small-scale setting where his work as a programmer flourished. After 7 years of cooperation, Thomas made the decision of expanding to new horizons.

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Switching paths

“I was also much fonder of working with young, inspired entrepreneurs, and I really tried to make this big. For me, it was a big bet; I knew it was a medium-to-long-term bet, so I knew I had to do this for several years before seeing whether it worked out or not. In the beginning, you never know . . .”

Thomas admits his first contact with entrepreneurship came “by accident”. Becoming an angel investor for Spontacts “basically overnight” offered him the tools to build Zeeder, a group of angel investors prioritising seed-stage ICT start-ups.

As a member of Zeeder, Thomas co-founded two ICT start-ups: Frontity and Contovista. By noticing that banks were moving towards digital-based services and that customers grew more and more demanding regarding their personal finance, Contovista strove to fill the gap.

The problem with traditional banking? “Dead data”, as in PDF files or simple transaction extracts, is far from interactive and informative regarding trends and specific needs. Contovista offers digital services to financial institutions and consumers recurring to data analysis. Their services use digital intelligent management to tailor meaningful, insightful data, fostering a proactive attitude towards finance management.

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How to build trust as a start-up

As entrepreneurs know, banks are very careful in analysing risk, pondering every possible wrong turn before granting funds:

1. Is the digital database secure for large-scale banking?
2. What privacy options does it supply?
3. What must be considered in the absence of a solid track record?
4. Is the system rescalable to fit an ever-growing customer base?

The solution? A multi-skilled network of contributors. Contovista benefited from the collaboration of lawyers, executives and software engineers proficient with credit card data treatment: this diversity of useful competences brought an added layer of trust.

However, holding advisor and shareholder roles simultaneously has its conflicts of interest. To solve this, Thomas adds that granting upside participation is key to diversifying the conversation with the interested party.

On a final note, presenting a concrete price tag, when compared to competing free-access models, may positively alter the institution’s perception of a product’s risk in the long run.

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Approaches on competition

While Contovista was taking its first steps, personal finance was certainly having its hey-day as a “hot topic”. Driven competitors can truly storm a seed-stage start-up with doubt and apprehension.

Nonetheless, Thomas has a different take on the quest for market success: competition is natural and necessary! In Contovista’s particular case, the presence of two other competing companies sparked a craving for achievement: with this vital propelling mechanism, the company managed to launch within the first 18 months and strengthen its connection to institutions through B2B agreements.

For dealing with a competitive market, Thomas presents some helpful guidance:

1. Know your surroundings and study your contextual framework carefully: “[y]ou definitely want to watch what’s going on. For us, focus was the most important”;
2. Prioritise your vital connections: keep an open discussion with your favourite customers. Assess what banking partners you must keep on your side. Similarly, apply your budget on what’s truly essential.
3. Check your partners’ mindset regarding the surrounding market and take notes. What can you improve with this conversation? As Thomas explains, “[y]ou can also learn from how people perceive the competition.”

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Going international

Contovista’s expansion to Germany and Austria seemed promising. However, the company opted for conquering the Swiss market first, guaranteeing a solid home base. On the one hand, changing too early might concede influence in the local market to competitors who eventually decide to switch from B2C to B2B. On the other hand, selling too late may also come with exponential risk after the 5-to-10 years mark.

On August 2nd 2017, barely 4 years after its initial incorporation, Contovista was sold to the Aduno group. According to Dübendorfer, the change was more than welcome: both companies showed “[a] very close entanglement on the know-how basis”. Aduno was a perfect fit for Contovista’s future endeavours, since they also operated with data analytics and collaborated with credit card processers, but with a significantly larger customer base. For Thomas, continuity of purpose is vital to customer maintenance: that is, making sure that a sustainable creation maintains its identity throughout its different stages.

In conclusion, Contovista illustrates a “perfect blueprint of how you can sell a successful start-up”. According to its co-founder, “[i]t shows you can build something from scratch, and, within a reasonable amount of years, have your first customers become profitable, and then actually sell the whole company.”

SICTIC’s motivations

On September of 2014, the Swiss ICT Investor Club (SICTIC) came to life. According to Dübendorfer, the association sought to respond to existing blank spaces. Many other investors’ clubs were concentrating their efforts on a broad scope of enterprises, so building a community with a shared, specific interest in stimulating data-driven technology start-ups became the next step.

Unsurprisingly, a successful angel investors’ club like SICTIC holds its secrets. Dübendorfer shares his insight on building a positive, productive network:

1. Pay attention to the type of adopted business model: what kind of community does it attract? Is it sustainable in the long term? If not, is a structural switch feasible?
2. Do not miss opportunities to reach out and take chances with outside investors. For example, imposing a finder’s fee may be restricting to interested parties. Thomas’s strategy involved simply displaying the platform, allowing new contacts to discover their best possible flow. In brief, maximise company/investor matchmaking by allowing free, open-circle interaction.

What’s next?

Thomas currently possesses more than 20 portfolio companies. He has successfully incorporated 10 as of the moment, and is looking forward to establishing two more later this year.

For the investor, the line of action is clear: you’ve got to look after the youngest companies, while making sure the most acclaimed ones can grow even further. To take just one example, his 2013 incorporation Frontify has now around 130 employees and international offices in New York and Frankfurt. So, it’s vital to find a balance between helping the largest companies go international while still supporting new founders in building something wonderful from day one.

Final advice from Thomas

Work efficiently. Use shared platforms such as Google Docs or Spreadsheets for fast-moving collaboration, instead of hurling e-mails packed with heavy attachments back and forth. This allows all users to keep track of activity step-by-step, nurturing a streamlined, collaborative understanding of the project at hand.

About Thomas Dübendorfer

Thomas Dübendorfer is the president and co-founder of Swiss ICT Investor Club (SICTIC), the most influential angel investing association in Switzerland, with a scope of work deeply focused on technology start-ups in their earliest developmental stages.

Thomas holds a doctoral degree in Computer Science from ETH Zurich, his alma-mater. In January 2006, he started his career as a tech lead and software engineer at Google Zürich, where he worked in fraud-prevention projects for advertisement systems.

After 7 years, he left the company and devoted his life’s work to entrepreneurship and angel investment in seed-stage ICT start-ups, currently numbering more than 20 entrepreneurial endeavours in his portfolio. Beyond his accomplishments in industry and investment, Dübendorfer has ample experience in academic settings, having worked as a researcher and lecturer in institutions as the University of Zürich and ETH Zürich, where he co-lectured a module on Network Security for 10 years.

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About Karim Maizar and SWESA

Karim Maizar is a partner at Kellerhals Carrard and Board Member of SWESA, the Swiss Entrepreneur and Startup Association. He is the co-founder and head of Kellerhals Carrard’s startup desk and in this capacity has advised some of Switzerland’s most promising technology and life science startups through all stages of their growth. As a board member of SWESA, Karim is lobbying and working with a group of Swiss national parliamentarians to improve the legal conditions for startups and innovative SMEs in Switzerland. Currently, the association’s top agenda item is easier access to foreign talent for companies in Switzerland. While Switzerland’s technical universities ensure a steady supply of top talents, it’s often not enough to meet the needs of fast growing startups. This is why Karim and SWESA propose to introduce special immigration rules for highly skilled workers and founders from countries outside the European Schengen Area. Karim was recognized for his work by Bilanz/Handelszeitung/Le Temps as one of the “Top 100 Digital Shapers” of Switzerland in 2019.

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Memorable Quotes

“I’m totally convinced that a political lobbying organization speaking on behalf of startups and the venture capital ecosystem is required.”

“The digital wave that came with the Covid crisis has mitigated Switzerland’s difficulties with searching for talent.”

“Until now Covid has had a very small impact in the startup and venture capital world.”

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About Leif Langenskiöld and FocusWater

Leif Langenskiöld is the founder of FocusWater, a Swiss vitamin water. After obtaining his degree in International Relations from the University of St. Gallen, Leif originally planned to join the United Nations. His plans changed significantly when a summer job at Red Bull turned into an 11-year tenure with the company, eventually advancing him to Director of Business development and Motorsports marketing based in Los Angeles, CA. Having started at Red Bull as employee #16, Leif got to know what it takes to get a beverage startup off the ground — and in 2005, he decided to leave Red Bull’s increasingly corporate structures to make it on his own. His first two attempts at beverage-related ventures failed. Unfazed, he continued his hunt for the right idea and eventually found FocusWater. The brand was struggling because it had a very low repurchase rate (meaning customers bought it only once and never again). Leif, together with his co-founder, took over the brand from its original owners and completely revamped the contents of the product. The new Focus Water was a hit, growing from CHF 3 m in sales in 2018 to 10 m in 2020. In 2019, he sold the company to Rivella’s innovation team for an undisclosed amount.

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Memorable Quotes

“When I joined Red Bull in 1995, it was a startup. With time, as it grew bigger and became more corporate-like, it became less interesting for me.”

“I think you learn much faster by making mistakes than through a series of successes.”

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About Hanspeter Fässler and Anybotics

Hanspeter Fässler is the co-founder and chairman of Anybotics, an ETH robotics spinoff with a focus on autonomous, walking robots for industrial inspection tasks. Hanspeter started the company in 2016, together with 5 co-founders. At this point, he was already looking back on a successful career which had allowed him to accumulate a wealth of business experience. Amongst other roles, Hanspeter served as the CEO of Implenia, a large Swiss construction company from 2010-2012 and subsequently as Senior Vice President, Business Unit Grid Systems at ABB, an electrical equipment provider. With Anybotics, Hanspeter made his first foray into entrepreneurship. Since 2016, the company has grown from the co-founder team of 6 to a team of 55. In 2020, the company took part in the SEF Upscaler program and subsequently closed a CHF 20 m Series A round with Swisscom Ventures as lead investor. Anybotics has also been recognized with the Swiss Economic Forum Award. In 2021, the company plans to ship the first commercial version of their inspection robot, going up directly against their large American competitor, Boston Dynamics. Next to his role at Anybotics, Hanspeter also holds a variety of other board mandates, amongst them Axpo and Dätwyler Holding.

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Memorable Quotes

“I’ve always seen myself as more of a builder. Usually I’m not the one who comes up with the crazy ideas — I’m the one who makes them happen.”

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The Episode in 60 seconds

Life before and after the exit, according to Simon Scheurer.

Balancing family and business

• If you happen to already have a family when you start your own venture, you’ll face trade offs between your family and your work life. Don’t try to sugarcoat this. Be honest with yourself and your loved ones about the choices you make in this trade off.
• Having a partner by your side who is willing to “watch your back” while you are focusing on your venture is invaluable. Consider making an explicit contract / commitment about what you each expect from each other.
• Find a model that works for everyone (e.g. your partner stays at home full time with the kids but always gets Sundays off for Golf) and define a time period for which you’ll stick with this model before you reevaluate. This helps to reduce stress from constant negotiations and uncertainty.

Earn out periods

• When your company gets bought, it’s customary to agree on a so-called “earnout period”. This means that crucial members of your (management) team commit to continue working at the new mother company for X amount of time in order to receive additional compensation.
• Earnout compensations are usually tied to a performance metric (such as earnings or gross sales) but sometimes just depend on the founders staying with the mother company for the agreed period of time.
• Typical earnout periods last between 2-4 years.

Life after the exit

• Some founders describe feelings of “post exit depressions”, a feeling of emptiness and sadness. This is probably a result of unrealistic expectations about how great the exit will feel coupled with a sense of loss and / or burnout. Whatever it may be, talk to others about the way you are experiencing the situation and don’t hesitate to get help.
• Make a plan for how you are going to make your money work for you. Getting professional help with investing is usually advisable. Rely on your network for recommendations about investment professionals.

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Memorable Quotes by Simon Scheurer

“I’m just not a corporate guy. I like new things and I don’t like being told what to do.”

“Wealth for me is just an instrument that allows me to be independent and happy.”

About Roxana Porada and PXL Vision

Roxana Porada is the co-founder and CPO of PXL Vision, a software provider for digital identity solutions. Roxana obtained a degree in Cybernetics and Statistics and subsequently worked as a software developer. In 2012, she joined Dacuda, the company founded by Swisspreneur guest Michael Born. When Dacuda was acquired by Magic Leap in 2017, she started PXL Vision together with three colleagues. To date, PXL Vision is most renowned as the technology provider for the SwissID solution and for their customer verification and onboarding solutions for enterprises. In May 2020, PXL Vision secured CHF 4.6 m in seed financing. The investment round was led by SIX Fintech Ventures. The company has also been awarded the Swiss Economic Award and was admitted to the SEF Upscaler Program. Going forward, PXL Vision aims to expand into the DACH region beyond Switzerland and branch out into additional use cases beyond customer onboarding.

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Memorable Quotes

"I wouldn’t like to be a leader without also being a team-player."

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About Simon Scheurer and Qumram

Simon Scheurer is the co-founder and former CTO of Qumram, a provider of session replay technology for digital compliance. Simon holds a Masters in Physics, Mathematics and Sociology from the University of Berne. He started his career as CTO at the digital agency Unic – the same company as Swisspreneur guest and Fashion Days Founder Markus Okumus. After 7 years in consulting, Simon left the company with the desire to start a product business. He started Milgram Media which at the time was a direct competitor to Doodle. The company struggled to stay ahead of Doodle with its offering and after losing several important deals, the founders decided to exit for a modest sum. Not at all discouraged by the failure, Simon started Qumram. The idea for the product had emerged years prior and he decided to turn it into a business when large corporates started asking for digital compliance solutions. With Qumram, Simon was able to get several renowned investors on board, among them Swisspreneur guest Ariel Lüdi and Investiere. In 2017, Qumram was acquired by Dynatrace for an undisclosed amount.

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Memorable Quotes

“When the employee number goes above 100 or so, maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit starts getting really tricky.”

“People are very reluctant to change. So you have to be massively better than the tool that they already know, use and like.”

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Resources Mentioned

The Calorie Myth, by Jonathan Bailor

Why We Sleep, by Matthew Walker

Thinking Fast And Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

Aurum Fit

About Michele Matt:

Michele Matt is the co-founder and CEO of MyCamper, a peer-to-peer camper rental platform. Michele started MyCamper in 2015 when he realized that his own camper, Charly, sat idle for a large part of the year. What started as a project to rent out his own vehicle soon turned into a two-sided marketplace idea. In spring of 2020, the company was closing their fist fundraising round with the Covid 19 pandemic in full swing. During the course of 2020, MyCamper hit the CHF 1 m threshold in revenue and now boasts 1000 campers on their platform. The MyCamper founding team also participated in the SEF UpScaler Program, which supports companies in accelerating international growth. For the next 3 years, MyCamper wants to drive an ambitious growth strategy, before focusing on profitability. In 2021, MyCamper wants to focus on doubling their numbers from 2020 and becoming the number #1 player in Sweden while keeping their position in Switzerland. From there they plan to expand across the entire Nordic region of Europe, beating their competitors in local markets.

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Memorable Quotes:

“I grew up in an entrepreneurial family, and it really inspired me. I wanted to have the freedom to explore my ideas.”

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About Gianluca Cesari & Gregory Hitz and Sevensense Robotics

Gianluca Cesari & Gregory Hitz are two of the 8 co-founders of Sevensense Robotics, as well as CEO and Business Development Lead, respectively. Gregory obtained his PhD from ETH Zurich later continued as Postdoc. Gianluca also received his Masters in Robotics, System and Control from ETH Zurich and afterwards continued as Robotics Engineer at the University’s Autonomous Systems Lab. The two worked together with their 6 co-founders on an autonomous robotics project together with two industry partners while still at university. Out of this initial research group, Sevensense Robotics was born. Running a business with 8 co-founders would be a challenge for many. Sevensense decided to mitigate the problem by clearly distributing roles. While some members of the founding team took on managerial duties, others stayed with their passion for engineering and have contributed to developing the product.

Autonomous robots have applications in various industries: Sevensense currently focuses on logistics. By applying Sevensense’s technology, logistics providers can enable their machines to safely and autonomously navigate in dynamic spaces shared with humans, in- and outdoors. To date, Sevensense has been able to work together with several important customers, such as Jelmoli and Wetork.

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Memorable Quotes

“Many people are actually really willing to help you — you just have to ask.”

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Resources Mentioned

Thinking, fast and slow, by Daniel Kahneman

The Harvard Business Review

Venture Kick

Wyss Zurich

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About Sreenath Bolisetty and Blue Act Technologies

Sreenath Bolisetty is the co-founder and CEO of BluAct Technologies, an ETH spin-off which provides a technology for water purification from heavy metals through milk proteins. In 2020, the company won the Expert’s Choice Award at the Energy Startup Days. Originally from a small village in India, Sreenath obtained his PhD from the University of Bayreuth. He went on to work as a Senior Researcher at ETH Zurich and in 2016, started BluAct Technologies as his first company. BluAct’s purifying system differentiates itself through its high level of effectiveness at a low cost point. Being able to run without electricity, it is the perfect choice for water purification in remote areas – something which BluAct Technologies has proven through their various pilots in remote communities around the world. Their milk protein membranes are suitable both for water purification in individual households and at large scales of thousands of cubic meters of water. With 2 products already on the market, BluAct Technologies wants to expand its offering to cover purification for radioactively polluted water. The company is planning to raise USD 3m in their next investment round to help with the commercialization and certifications of its products.

Memorable Quotes

“A very strong motivation to start BluAct was the fact that I come from India, where water problems are a very real day-to-day issue.”

The Episode in 60 seconds

Getting company culture right, according to Tobias Häckermann.

Common mistakes around company culture

• Underestimating its importance: Your company vision makes sure everyone pulls on the same rope. The culture ensures everyone pulls in the same direction. Having a strong culture helps employees take good decisions without always referring to their managers for guidance, therefore making the company more efficient and agile.
• Getting started too late: while a team of 5 might not need an explicit culture statement, it’s easy to miss the right moment to “get started with culture”. This is especially detrimental if you’ve already hired employees who are not a great cultural fit.

Finding and growing your culture

• Company culture is the result of shared values. Most often, these will be the values of the founding team.
• If you aren’t sure what your values are, a good place to start is by observing your feelings in your day to day business interactions. Do you get frustrated when someone doesn’t appreciate the work you do? Maybe appreciation is a value you hold dearly. Do you love to receive candid feedback from others? Maybe openness is important to you.
• Once the founding team is aligned on their values, make them explicit and talk about them often. Base your decisions (particularly around hiring and firing) on these shared values.

Scaling culture

• While you grow, it’s extremely important to stay true to your values and not to accept a culture misfit just because someone is good at their job and/or you struggle to find someone to replace them.
• Everyone is responsible for nurturing company culture and calling out cultural incompatibility. Don’t outsource this important task to a “Chief Culture Officer” or similar.
• Nobody is perfect and employees (and you as well) will sometimes fail to live up to your values. That’s okay, as long as you and the person in question clearly see the problem and a path towards improvement.

Measuring culture

• While there is no “right” or “wrong” culture, there is culture that works and culture that doesn’t. A way to measure the “health” of your culture is via employee happiness and employee Net Promoter Score (NPS).
• To add more color to the employee NPS, consider also measuring the number of employee referral hires you get. Referring a friend is a strong indicator of happiness and a well working culture.

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Memorable Quotes

“Establishing a great company culture reduces the amount of time you need to spend handling internal affairs, and leaves that time free for actually helping your customers.”

“If your core team does not share your company values, then you’re never gonna establish a culture. Culture is established through behavior.”

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About Laurent Coulot:

Laurent Coulot is the co-founder and CEO of Insolight, a photovoltaic startup. Laurent started Insolight in 2015, together with his two co-founders, Mathieu Ackermann and Florian Gerlich. Within 5 years, the company has grown to over 15 employees. With Insolight, the co-founders focus on a very specific area of the photovoltaic market which is not yet well served by mass produced photovoltaic panels – agrivoltaics. Insolight’s solar panels are both translucent and highly efficient. These properties make the panels uniquely suited to be  deployed on top of areas which are used for growing crops – therefore reducing the land use competition between agriculture and photovoltaic by allowing them to coexist in the same space. In 2020, Insolight closed a $ 5m series A and received its first orders from industrial customers. The company was also awarded the public choice award at the Swiss Energy Startup Days. In 2021, Insolight plans to build and ship more than 1000 panels.

Before starting Insolight, Laurent worked as an Applications Engineer at Melexis. He holds a Masters in Micro and Nanosystems from the EPFL.

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Memorable Quotes:

“We think market regulations should reflect the fact that solar energy has a pretty much non-existent carbon footprint.”

About Tobias Häckermann:

Tobias Häckermann is the co-founder and CEO of Sherpany, a provider of meeting management software for leadership meetings. Tobias started his first company right out of high school. As a long time practitioner of martial arts, he was the go-to person if one of his friends needed a bouncer for a party or other event. Seeing an opportunity, Tobias started PNC security. Through his first venture, he met Nathanael Wettstein, who would later become one of his co-founders at Sherpany. Tobias sold PNC security to a competitor for CHF 70k. He went on to start easyComm, a platform for digital events which he sold to Alphablue Eventmanagement. During this entire time, Tobias was still obtaining his law degree from the University of Zurich. During his semester abroad at University of Siena, the idea for Sherpany was born. Originally, Sherpany was conceived as a communication tool between companies and their shareholders. For nearly two years, Sherpany was trying to bring the product to the market, until the founders realized they were not solving the right problem for their customers. The company pivoted to providing software for agile meeting management in leadership teams and has since grown to a multinational company with offices in Paris, Lisbon, Milano, Wroclaw, Berlin and Zurich.

Memorable Quotes:

“It’s okay to work part-time on a startup at the beginning. But at some point you’ve got to start giving it your all, otherwise you’re gonna iterate too slow and you’re gonna get frustrated, because you’re going nowhere.”

“I always thought the bigger your company gets, the more things it should be able to do. But it’s the opposite — the bigger you get, the more focus you need.”

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Resources Mentioned:

Blinkist

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About Liliane Ableitner and Exnaton

Liliane Ableitner is the co-founder and CEO of Exnaton, a software provider for energy communities, allowing neighbors to trade renewable energy amongst each other. Before starting Exnaton, Liliane was a Doctoral Researcher at the Bits of Energy Lab at ETH Zurich. She met her two co-founders, Arne Meeuw and Anselma Würner, during her work on the research project “Quartierstrom“, funded by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy. The project resonated well with all stakeholders involved and the three PhD students decided to spin it out into an independent company in 2019. Since then, Exnaton has signed 2 pilot customers and is currently fundraising. In December 2020, they won the Investor’s Choice award at Energy Startup Days, which helped the company to gain exposure amongst relevant stakeholders. Contrary to some of their competitors, Exnaton doesn’t sell their software to end consumers. Rather, they cooperate with local utility companies and allow them to white label their solution and distribute it to their customers. Exnaton is greatly benefiting from the liberalization of European energy markets because it has been driving competition for innovative products between utility companies. They are hoping to further benefit from an opening of the Swiss market, which has traditionally been very protected.

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Memorable Quotes

“If you’re in a market with 0 competition, then you’re in the wrong market, because either you’re on a completely wrong track or you’re way too early.”

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The Episode In 60 Seconds

Pivoting your business idea to success, by Teo Borschberg.

Mistakes to avoid

• Waiting too long to pivot because you have gotten emotionally attached to the solution or somehow locked yourself in too early.
• Iteration cycles which are too long. Building out a finished and polished product for every iteration will make you slow and waste large amounts of resources.

The Startup Pivot Pyramid by 500 Insights

• The Pyramid gives you an idea of how aspects of your product build on each other (customer, problem, solution, tech, growth).
• This helps you understand, for one, which areas you need to define first in order to move up the pyramid, and two, how consequential a potential pivot in one area is for other areas of your business (i.e. a pivot in customers you are addressing is far more consequential than a pivot in the tech stack you are using).

Customers and their problems

• Finding enough customers in a big enough market that have the same problem is always the first problem you’ll want to solve when looking to achieve product-market-fit.
• Talking to potential customers under the pretense of collecting data for a survey can be a subtle entry point to start a conversation.
• Your primary goal in customer conversations should be to evaluate how the problem you are trying to solve for them ranks amongst their other problems and how much they’d be willing to pay for solving it. Ideally, if the problem is big enough, customers will ask about buying your solution once it’s live already at this stage.
• Try to interview 50 to 100 potential customers and narrow down the hypothesis about your customer profile as you go.
• Analyze the results of your conversations based on the $ amount each type of customer is willing to pay to have their problem solved.
• Clarify the 3 whys for your customers in detail: why buy anything, why buy us and why buy now. As for the “why buy now”, it often pays off to have a fix point to create urgency: a product release, a trade show, a board meeting or something else your customer cares about and that encourages them to move the deployment of your product along quickly.

Solution

• Once you think you have an idea of who your customer is and what problems you are solving for them, come up with the simplest version of your product that addresses the most pressing points of the problem.
• You’d be surprised how much can be faked in these early product versions. Don’t worry about having efficient code and well-trained algorithms. Most likely, hardly anyone will be using this first version anyway and you’ll have to rebuild your tech stack anyway as you learn and scale.

Growth

• Today it’s cheap to run growth experiments across different channels, so there is really no excuse not to do it.
• Notice that growth sits at the top of the pyramid. There is really no point in throwing money into growth marketing if you are not certain yet that you have found the problem and solution that really works for your customers.

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Memorable Quotes:

“You need to show to your customers why they need to buy your product now. This sense of urgency is the key to your startup’s success.”

“When it comes to pivoting, as with many other things, getting attached will hinder you from making the right move.”

About Teo Borschberg and OTO.ai

Teo Borschberg is the co-founder and CEO of oto.ai, an AI-powered voice intelligence solution. Teo started his entrepreneurial career after obtaining his maturité (high school diploma). He relocated to China, where he spent 8 months working in a factory, 6.5 days a week. During this time, he started to resell paintings and furniture from China to Europe, and his first company, Artefact Co, was born. Three years later, upon the completion of  his Bachelor in Hospitality Management at Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne, Teo returned to China to start his second company, the media advertising business Good Media. In 2015, he sold Good Media and reoriented himself towards the US. He joined SRI International, a renowned non-profit research institute as Entrepreneur in Residence. In this position, he was tasked with finding business opportunities for the cutting edge technologies the Institute was developing. This is where the idea for OTO.ai originated. Three years later the company has raised $ 5.8 m in seed financing, has analyzed over 10 m conversations and serves 10 large customers globally. While OTO.ai was originally selling mainly to call centers, they – as so many others – had to pivot during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Within a few short months, the company set itself up to offer an API / SDK to its product in order to let developers use it in almost any context imaginable – from wearables to smart home devices, and even telemedicine.

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Memorable Quotes

“It’s always dangerous to have a technology and be looking for a market, instead of having a market and be looking for a technology.”

“I will only say we have a product-market fit the day we have customers kicking down our door to get their hands on the product.”

About Tatiana Cogne:

Tatiana Cogne is the President of START Lausanne and Head of Communication at Swiss Solar Boat. Tatiana joined START in 2019 as an event organizer, after having participated in START Hack and START Summit in St. Gallen. After 9 months as Event Organizer, she advanced to President of the chapter in June 2020. Under her leadership, START Lausanne has been reinventing itself over and over again during the last couple months in order to comply with ever changing COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Beyond that, Tatiana initiated the forming of a network of entrepreneurship organizations across the Swiss Romandy: rather than each organization working independently in their city, they now collaborate on news distribution and other opportunities. START Lausanne offers events, workshops and mentoring to students and other people interested in entrepreneurship. They also organize the START Contest, a 6 month-long competition where startups receive support to refine their business idea and potentially win a CHF 30k prize.

START Lausanne is one of 10 chapters of the START Global organization in Europe. START Global was founded in 1996 out of the University of St. Gallen (HSG) and has since become one of Europe’s top startup events.

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Memorable Quotes:

“When I finish my presidency at START Lausanne, I want to do so with the knowledge that I motivated every single one of my colleagues to surpass themselves.”

About Mina Kamel:

Mina Kamel is the co-founder and CEO of Voliro, a producer of robotic drones for inspection and light maintenance at height. Mina obtained his Bachelors in Automation Engineering Technology from the Politecnico di Milano before moving to Zurich to obtain his Masters and eventually his PhD in Mechatronic, Robotics and Automation Engineering from ETH Zürich. During his PhD, he contributed to the Aeroworks project, where much of the inspiration for Voliro was drawn from. He also met his 4 co-founders, Timo Müller, Dr. Marius Fehr, Dr. Anurag Vempati and Dr. Thomas Schneider, during this time. With all five co-founders coming from a technical background, they supplemented their business knowledge through advisors and coaching by Venture Lab. The team quickly realized that the timing for Voliro was right. Not only had the technology for robotic drones matured, but there was a strong pull from the oil, gas and infrastructure industries to lower operational costs through increased efficiency in maintenance. Voliro closed a CHF 2m seed round in 2020 with Alex Fries’s Alpana Ventures as lead investor. They will use the seed round capital to get their product to the market faster and are planning to raise a series A round towards the end 2021 for CHF 5-10m.

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Memorable Quotes:

“Falling from a great height is the number 2 biggest cause of workplace injuries. With our solution, robots do the dangerous work, and people stay safely with their feet on the ground.”

“Product development is a skill you can develop, but it takes a very long time. Sometimes it’s just more practical to hire professional help.”

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Resources Mentioned:

Garmin Sports Watch

Dare To Lead, by Bréne Brown‍

About Aldo Podestà:

Aldo Podestà is the founder and CEO of L2F, the company behind the platform Giotto.ai, which builds and hosts high performance machine learning applications. Before starting Giotto in 2017, Aldo Podestà worked in Sales Strategy at Philip Morris, in Lausanne. The idea for Giotto was born when he presented at a high level management meeting and was asked to provide an explanation for the recommendations his machine learning based strategy model had provided. When he was unable to explain the recommendations of his own model, he suspected that there would be tremendous value in a solution that would increase a machine learning model’s interpretability. Not long after its inception, Giotto.ai won a competition on Kaggle, one of the most prestigious data science platforms globally. In 2019, the company closed a CHF 3.2 Series A round which allowed them to pursue their ambitious vision. As a CEO, Aldo initially struggled to assemble the right team around him: betting on exclusively young and ambitious employees proved to be a mistake. Today, he counts on a more mixed team with various levels of experience.

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Memorable Quotes:

“You don’t run a company alone. You run it with every single one of your employees.”

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Resources Mentioned:

VentureLab (Venture Kick)

Innosuisse‍

The episode in 60 seconds

Getting employee participation plans right, according to Yoko Spirig.

Common mistakes

• Not taking participation plans seriously in the early days and postponing it for later, therefor losing out on the motivational benefits for early employees
• Not being transparent and structured about participation plan, which can lead to a feeling of haphazardness among employees

Why participation plans are important

• As a startup, you’ll often struggle to compete with established companies on the salary front. Stocks are your secret weapon to attract top talent in spite of limited cash.
• Holding stocks factually makes the employees co-owners of the company. It’s easy to see the positive influence on mindset and attitude that co-ownership can bring.

Participation plans in Europe vs the US

• Employees in Europe hold less than half of the company stock than their US counterparts. This is among other things due to lower awareness of the value of participation plans amongst the European workforce.

The mechanics of participation plans

• How much stock should you reserve for employees? Generally good bench marks are 5-10% in the early stages of your company and up to 20-30% in later stages
• Who should receive stocks? Ideally, everyone. Large companies like Google still offer stocks to every new employee which joins the company. Long term employees should get regular “refreshers” i.e. more stock added to their portfolio
• How do you decide who gets what? There are 3 dimensions to get you started. Depending on your priorities and culture, you might to weigh them differently

• Seniority level: more responsibility means more stock
• Employee number: early joiners took a higher risk when betting on your company and should be rewarded accordingly
• Tech vs non tech talent: the truth is, tech talent is much harder to compete for in today’s labor market, so it’s common to offer them larger participation options
• What is vesting and why is it important? Stocks are usually not transferred to employees in bulk all at once but in smaller tranches over a period of time. This process is referred to as vesting. A 4 year vesting period for example means that the entire pool of assigned stock for an employee will be distributed to them over a 4 year period. It’s advisable to make the tranches fairly small  (i.e. distribute stocks every month rather than once a year) in order to avoid a situation where you give a large portion of stock to an employee and they leave the company immediately after.

Communicating participation plans to employees

• Be aware that many of your employees might not have heard of participation plans before and aren’t familiar with the ins and outs of venture capital. Therefore, take the time to explain and frame the participation plan for your employees as a way to become co-owners of the company
• Create a table that clearly shows who will receive how many stocks and based on what criteria. This will prevent employees from feeling treated in unequal ways.

Pitfalls of participation plans

• When you are short on cash, it’s tempting to think you can make up for a low salary with stocks. This is not a fair way to treat your employees as you are forcing them to bet their financial security almost entirely on the success of your company.
• It may also be tempting to oversell the value of participation plans to your employees. While it’s certainly not wrong to strive for a unicorn valuation, the truth is most companies will never get there and you should be honest with your employees about this.
• Be aware that in Europe, every country has their own rules for how employees participation plans work and how they are taxed. Consider getting some legal help when you want to internationalize.

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Memorable Quotes

“You shouldn’t let equity plans be an excuse not to pay your employee a decent salary.”

“I think it’s the immaturity of the European startup ecosystem that makes it not take employee participation plans seriously yet.”

About Sébastien Jaffaux and Swiss Solar Boat

Sébastien Jaffaux is the founder and CTO of the Swiss Solar Boat Association, a project created by engineering students from EPFL and HEIG-VD. Swiss Solar Boat aims to create a solar powered racing boat from scratch, to compete in contests such as the Monaco Solar & Energy Boat Challenge 2021. Swiss Solar Boat is not your typical startup. It emerged from the EPFL Hydrocontest Team which represented the EPFL at the Hydrocontest competition for maritime energy efficiency. Sébastien Jaffaux started out as communication manager at the Hydrocontest Team and became president of the association in 2018.  As president, he led the transition from Hydrocontest to Swiss Solar Boat in 2019. Today, the Swiss Solar Boat Association is made up of over 60 students from various technical backgrounds who work together to create a solar powered boat from scratch, including producing the individual boat parts. Currently, Sébastien Jaffaux lives and breathes his project and enjoys pulling off such a challenging feat with some of his closest friends. But due to the nature of the association, he will be handing over his responsibilities as CTO and Vice President once he finishes his Masters degree in mechanical engineering at EPFL in the Summer of 2021.

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Memorable Quotes

“The Swiss Romandy is missing a place where all entrepreneurs can meet to exchange know-how and enrich their perspective.”

About Yoko Spirig And Ledgy

Yoko Spirig is the co-founder and CEO of Ledgy, an equity management company for startups and high growth companies. Yoko studied Physics at ETH Zurich, the University of Oxford and CERN. She was also project lead of Swissloop, helping to build the first Hyperloop pod in Switzerland. Yoko met her two co-founders, Ben Brandt and Timo Horstschaefer, during her time at university. It was also during that time that they were first made aware of the problems related to equity management that many young companies (and their investors) face through a conversation with the Doodle founders, Michael Näf and Paul Sevinç, who were looking for a startup team on cofoundme. After graduating from ETH Zurich, the three friends went on a journey with the transsiberian railway from Vladivostok to Moscow where they read up on startup business strategy and sharpened the idea which would eventually become Ledgy. The company pivoted after 1.5 years from a free product to introducing business pricing and targeting larger companies rather than early stage startups. In the early days, the co-founding team also toyed with the idea of using Blockchain technology to enable their product. They however abandoned that plan after evaluating the regulatory framework and their customer needs. Today, Ledgy serves companies like Frontify, VIU and Sherpany and employs a team of over 10 people.

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Memorable Quotes

“A good board is a hands-off one — they don’t try to micro-manage the company. But they are also always there to offer good advice.”

“I became an entrepreneur because I wanted to have a direct, short-term impact on society.”

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Resources Mentioned

Zero to One, by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries

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About Alessandra Rojas and Tech4Impact

Alessandra Rojas is the manager of the EPFL Changemakers program, an incubator program which is part of the EPFL’s Tech4Impact initiative for accelerating ground-breaking and sustainable technological solutions to create positive societal and environmental impact. Alessandra Rojas was also a co-initiator of Versus Virus, a hackathon to develop solutions against the COVID 19 crisis.

As one of the world’s top universities for technology and science, EPFL is one of Switzerland’s most significant hubs for innovation. The EPFL Changemakers program emerged from the EPFL’s grant program and belongs to the unit of the Vice Presidency for Innovation at EPFL. Where previously entrepreneurs at EPFL were mostly supported through financial means such as grants, the goal of the Changemakers program is to provide more holistic support to early stage entrepreneurs and to make sustainability a cornerstone of what it means to be an  EPFL startup. The program was launched in October of this year with a first cohort of 20 students across the Bachelor, Master and PhD level. Due to the challenging circumstances presented by the pandemic, the program has had to evolve rapidly over the past months. Nevertheless, the 20 students will receive 6 months of intensive training and mentoring through peers and experts and are on track to graduate successfully from the program in February 2021.

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Memorable Quotes:

“Our GameChangers program has shown to us that the EPFL’s students’ interest in sustainable solutions is much higher than we had originally anticipated.”

“The changes that Covid has brought about have really helped startups with founders spread all across Switzerland cooperate better among themselves.”

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About Luiza Dobre and Komed Health

Luiza Dobre is the founder and CEO of Komed Health, a healthcare communications platform. She started Komed Health in 2016, after a long time toying with different ideas and struggling to find the right co-founder. Komed Health emerged from the realization that while communication is a challenge in every sector, in healthcare, the consequences of failed communicate faster and more effectively among themselves, which results in better decisions, a happier staff and healthier patients. With Marc Bornträger, Luiza Dobre has also finally found a technical co-founder to complement her skill set.

Before starting Komed Health, Luiza Dobre worked as marketing and sales specialist for major brands like Swarovski and Schindler. She also obtained a CEMS Master of International Management from the University of St. Gallen and ESADE Business School.
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Luiza Dobre’s Favorite Resources

Be Obsessed Or Be Average, by Grant Cardone

Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight

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Memorable Quotes

“I knew that I would only be the best version of myself if I were creating something.”

“I think life is too short to live in a certain country just because of a paycheck. To me, Switzerland is my home. My friends are here, I love the nature… I’ve found my place.”

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About Anaïs Matthey-Junod and Sun’n’go

Anaïs Matthey-Junod obtained a BA in Environmental Science and Engineering and an MA in Energy Management and Sustainability from the EPFL. In the last year of her masters, the idea for sun’n’go was born, after a trip to India with EPFL in 2019. In the following months, they developed their idea further, creating a portable energy center which can be used in impoverished communities to light up the community’s households and charge phones. These energy centers are sold through micro credit schemes. Running entirely on solar power, they are a green catalyst for economic development. In December 2020 Anaïs and her co-workers will be finalizing their prototype. In parallel, they are preparing to conduct their first field study in Malawi, as well as a pilot project in the first half of 2021. Anaïs Matthey-Junod is currently also a research assistant at the EssentialTech Centre, and has just joined the NORCAP Accelerator Program at NRC.

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About Caspar Coppetti and On Shoes

Caspar Coppetti is co-founder of On, one of the world’s fastest growing sports brands. Though initially quite hesitant to quite his well-paying corporate job and jump into such a crowded market, Caspar started On together with his two co-founders Olivier Bernhard and David Allemann in 2010, based on their patented CloudTec® technology. Why CloudTec? Well, because when you wear On shoes, you feel like you’re walking on clouds! They faced a good deal of social stigma at the time, since back then there wasn’t the huge buzz around startups that there is now — quite the contrary, actually. But through luck, perseverance and creativity, On shoes have climbed their way to the top.

They have famously been worn by  Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and of course, their brand ambassador, tennis star Roger Federer. Over the last 10 years, Caspar Coppetti and his co-founders have expanded the company to over 55 countries, turning it into one of the top 5 leading running shoe brands in the DACH area and in the US. Now On is expanding into the trekking shoe market, launching their extremely lightweight Cloudrock trekking shoe in 2019.

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The Episode with Jeremias Meier in 60 Seconds

How to find, optimize and scale your sales funnel from early stage to exit.

The early mistakes to avoid

• Sell like the incumbent: just because one sales funnel is working well for incumbents in your field doesn’t mean it will work for you. Especially if your unit economics are different (think for example on-premise software vs SaaS).
• Ignoring the unit economics: especially if you are entering the market with a new kind of business model, it’s very important to know your unit economics in order to understand if you are selling your product in a margin enhancing way or if every sale you achieve actually incurs a net loss.
• Only focusing on closing the deal: your long term goal will be to achieve negative churn (gaining more customers than you lose in a certain interval). This will not happen if your product does not delight customers across the entire lifecycle.

On data and experiments

• Data is your best friend when it comes to finding your most effective sales funnel. Don’t allow your organization to go astray on hunches and gut feelings.
• Becoming a data driven organization starts with the mindset and the mindset starts with the people you hire.
• Run experiments, and run them often. There is no way you’ll know from the start which funnels will work for you, so testing (and failing) is the only way to find out.
• To run a meaningful experiment you need two things: a quantifiable definition of success (and therefore failure) and a significant sample size. Leave either one out and the experiment will not deliver its value.

Customer Lifetime Value and Customer Acquisition Cost

• A good way to measure success of your sales funnel is the ratio between customer acquisition cost (CAC) and customer lifetime value (LVT). So what you spend to acquire a new customer and what they in turn spend on your product during all the time they are your customer.
• There are a variety of ways how to calculate these two numbers. Whichever you choose, make sure it is comparable to benchmarks in your industry.
• A good ratio of LTV/CAC is 3-4. If you are higher, you are not spending enough on marketing / growth. If you are lower, you either have a lifetime value problem or you are not spending your marketing /  sales budget effectively.

Scaling and optimizing your sales funnel

• Don’t forget that once your sales funnel works and you have an acceptable and proven LTV/CAC ratio, this will help you get money from investors, because you can say: for X amount of money in, we’ll very likely get Y amount of revenue out. That’s a pretty safe bet.
• If you are scaling one of your sales funnel rapidly (especially online), most likely prices will increase because of the higher demand. Therefore it’s important to continuously optimize. Optimization is never done.
• Over time, a funnel may change and become less valuable to you. It’s time to pull the plug when you see the quality of customers you are getting through that funnel decrease  (i.e. lower LTV).

If you would like to listen to our first episode with Jeremias Meier, click here.

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About Jeremias Meier and Bexio

Jeremias Meier is the co-founder and managing director of Bexio, a company offering SaaS around payrolling, invoicing and accounting. Bexio was born out of Jeremias’ first business iBrowse, that he started while still at university. The team had built Bexio (called Easysys at the time) for their internal invoicing needs but found that a lot of agencies like themselves were interested in using the product. In 2014, they separated the product and agency business and spun out Bexio into an independent company. iBrowse was acquired by PwC in 2015 and transformed into a digital experience center.

About Mark Essam and YASAI

Mark Essam is the co-founder of YASAI, a vertical farming startup and ETH spin-off. The idea to pursue vertical farming originated from the book  “The Vertical Farm: How to feed the world in the 21st century” by Dr. Dickson Despommier, which Mark read during his exchange semester in Mexico City in 2016. He subsequently wrote his thesis at ETH Zurich on the following topic: “How to integrate Vertical Farming within the Swiss landscape?”. The building material manufacturer, LafargeHolcim supported an initial feasibility study of the hypothesis brought forward in the thesis and allowed YASAI to grow. In October 2020, YASAI secured a collaboration with fenaco for a industrial-scale vertical farming pilot project in Zurich through a joint investment of CHF 1.5 m.

About Lukas Stuber and DEPT

Lukas Stuber is the Managing Director of Dept, a digital agency. Previously, he had founded Yourposition, a digital marketing agency specialized in search engine optimization, which was acquired  by Dept in 2018. In 2004, Lukas published the book “Suchmaschinen Marketing” (search engine marketing) and became known as one of the pioneers of this field in Switzerland. He also serves as a lecturer on the topic at several Swiss universities such as University of St. Gallen and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

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The Episode in 60 seconds

Why expand your business to Asia

• Asian markets are growing rapidly, with a strong increase in purchasing power.
• Asia’s entrepreneurial ecosystem has long caught up with the US and is almost unparalleled in its agility and speed.

Preparing to expand your business to Asia

• Make sure you get a very good understanding of the cultural differences, especially with regards to contract negotiations.
• Ensure that your war chest is large enough. Like everything, the expansion will take you twice as long and cost you twice as much as anticipated.
• Swiss Global Enterprise offers a market checkup to determine if you are ready to enter a particular market.

Market entry

• Out of all the Asian markets, Singapore is probably the most similar to Europe, so it’s usually a good place to start building your base.
• Get in touch with the Swiss Embassies and Chamber of Commerce on the ground. They can introduce you to their network and put you in touch with experts in the region.
• It’s advisable to have a legal entity in the market you are trying to enter, especially if you are a service business.
• English will only get you so far in Asia. Outside of Hongkong and Singapore it may get tricky, so invest into an interpreter or find an employee which is well versed in both English and the local language.

Corporate Governance and Regulations

• It’s important to have a good mix of people from your team in Europe and locals from the region. This will help you relay your company values and corporate governance while also adapting to the local ways of doing things.
• Especially in Mainland China, regulations are rapidly changing and violating them can have serious consequences. Get expert advice on how to navigate the regulations of your industry.

About Doris Albisser and CLS Communication

Doris Albisser is the founder and executive Chairwoman of Evaluglobe AG. Through Evaluglobe, she focuses on board mandates, growth investments and advising companies’ in their international expansion. Before starting Evaluglobe, Doris served as the Group CEO for CLS Communication AG for 16 years, developing CLS from a startup through a management buyout and internationalization, to a company with 600 employees and 5.000 freelancers in 10 countries across Europe, Asia and North America. Amongst others, Doris also served on the boards of Switzerland Global Enterprise, SOS Children’s Villages and the Psychiatric University Clinic of Zurich.

The Episode in 60 Seconds

Bootstrapping your marketing from scratch

• The first commandment of bootstrapping: do it yourself. Don’t pay agencies or lawyers for things you can do yourself or copy paste from templates.
• Don’t start with branding, start with the performance marketing of your product. This way, you’ll earn back your ad spend immediately (if you do it well).
• Use cheap CPM media (cost per 1 million clicks) such as Pinterest or snapchat for brand awareness. Facebook and Instagram for retargeting.
• A lot of world class knowledge about social media marketing is freely available on the Internet. Use it!

Experimenting and tracking success

• Experiment with a broad variety of channels to find out what works. Be sure you understand the basics of how the platform’s algorithm works, so you are able to interpret your data  (e.g. how long does the algorithm take to learn, i.e. how long until it produces significant results).
• Run experiments over 1-4 weeks. External events such as the weather or other events can significantly influence the performance and skew your data.
• Branding ads should have at least a return of 1x, performance ads a return of 2x or higher. This means, with every $ spent, you earn 2 $ in purchases or customer value.
• Watch the CTR (click through rate), engagement and ROAS (return on ad spend) to gauge how effective your campaigns are.

Tracking offline marketing

• Usually a billboard alone won’t cut it. Combine off- and online marketing to build strong brand awareness.
• Use custom links or discount codes in order to track your offline marketing.

Finding your target audience

• Google analytics or Facebook audience are great tools to help you with this.
• You can create “look alikes” based on your Facebook pixel. Be sure to integrate it on your website early, so it can collect data.
• Look into the other Facebook pages that your audience likes and build your targeting based on them.

Scaling your social media marketing

• If an ad performs well DON’T just double the ad spend. This will throw off the algorithm and it will start learning from scratch again (and you’ll pay again for the learning). Instead, increase your spend slowly or duplicate your campaign and launch a second one with the same spend, to immediately duplicate your spend.
• Don’t go too broad. When expanding, do so in narrowly targeted locations to help build word-of-mouth.

About Joseph Jung:

Joseph Jung is a historian, consultant and the author of one of the most influential biographies of Swiss entrepreneur Alfred Escher as well as “Laboratorium des Fortschritts – die Schweiz im 19. Jahrhundert”. Joseph studied Swiss history, modern general history, history of law and German language and literature at the University of Fribourg, where he received his doctorate in 1987. In 1998 he habilitated at the ETH Zurich and was a private lecturer there until 2006. In addition to his scientific activities, Jung was Managing Director and Head of Research at the Alfred Escher Foundation (2006 to 2016).

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About Alfred Escher:

Alfred Escher (1819-1882) is considered one of Switzerland’s most influential early entrepreneurs. Among his “ventures” are the ETH Zurich, Credit Suisse, the Gotthard railways and Swiss Life. He was also a prominent political figure of his time. He served as National Councilor (Bundesrat) for 34 years and was elected National Council President (Bundesratspräsident) four times during this period.

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About Nicholas Hänny and Nikin

Nicholas Hänny is the co-founder and CEO of Nikin, a sustainable fashion startup. Nicholas started Nikin in 2016 together with his childhood friend Robin Gnehm. Within only 4 years, the startup grew to 30 employees and CHF 7.2 m revenue. In 2019, Nicholas received the “Aargauer of the Year Award” as recognition for his work with Nikin. Nicholas has a background in marketing and business administration. He holds a Master of Arts in Business Innovation from the University of St. Gallen and was part of the CEMS program.

About Phil Lojacono and Advanon

Phil Lojacono is the co-founder and CEO of Advanon, one of Switzerland’s formerly fastest growing fintech startups. Advanon offers a platform for SMEs to bridge long payment terms by providing them with liquidity through financial investors. Phil started Advanon in 2015, shortly after his internship at Google, where he also met his co-founders. In January 2017, the company closed a financing round of CHF 13,5 m with investors such as Daniel Gutenberg, Partners-Group co-founder Urs Wietlisbach, Eric Sarasin und Moneypark founder Stefan Heitmann. In 2018, Advanon was confronted with a significant fraud case on its platform. Under Phil as their CEO, Advanon recovered, and in 2020 successfully sold to CreditGate 24. Phil has now started his own blog where he reflects on the learnings of his tumultuous 5 years at Advanon.

The episode in 60 seconds

Starting a business with your significant other can be a rewarding experience. In this episode, Dorina shared her insights about how to make it work.

Rules and communication

• Starting your business is a 24/7 endeavor and it can become overbearing if you also spend your free time with your business partner. Set clear rules about when you plan to take breaks from work.
• Set more rules than you think are necessary because you’ll likely underestimate the temptation of wanting to talk about your business on your date night out.
• Be realistic about the chances to succeed with your business and don’t make your relationship dependent on business success.

How to know if your partner would make a great co-founder

• As with all co-founding relationships, complementary skill sets are crucial.
• Working together on smaller projects (like building an IKEA shelf) is probably a good indicator on whether you function well in a business context or not.

Advantages of starting a business with your partner

• Studies show that family businesses on average are more sustainable than other businesses although with lower growth rates.
• Being able to share the roller coaster ride of entrepreneurship with your partner can be very valuable and rewarding.
• In tough times, you won’t have to put on a brave face for your partner because they’ll know what’s going on.

About Dorina Thiess and Piavita

Dr. Dorina Thiess is the CEO and co-founder of Piavita AG, a medtech startup that develops and distributes digital veterinary diagnostic systems. Previously, Dorina worked for the innovation team at BHS in Munich and in the US while completing her doctorate in entrepreneurship at the University of St. Gallen, where she also served as the Managing Director for the Center for Entrepreneurship. She started Piavita in 2016 together with her partner Sascha Bührle. Within three years Piavita has grown to over 30 employees and has obtained financing from renowned investors, among them Fyrefly Venture Partners and Investire.

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The Episode in 60 Seconds

Getting inspired for your brand

• Building a recognizable brand is like building a character – it can come with its own edges and quirks.

• Your brand is probably not the first thing you need to worry about but if you move beyond the proof of concept phase, you should invest some time into it.

• Get your inspiration from the how, what and why of your company.

• Looking around for inspiration is good but your brand needs to be unique and recognizable, so don’t just copy paste from someone else

Getting real with your brand

• Getting the branding right is important – and hard. If you can, work with specialists in your surroundings – friends, board members, investors…

• Your brand follows your purpose and mission, so make sure to have that defined first.

• Your brand is not just your logo and color palette. Take a holistic approach and include everything from the language you use to how you present yourself in pictures (and of course make sure those pictures are high quality).

5 steps to your first brand set up

• Choose a short, simple name.

• Add some simple and concise messaging (a claim).

• Define your core audience and how you’ll address them with visual, spoken and written language.

• Connect the dots between the three first steps.

• If you can, work with a specialist in the field to fine tune your branding work.

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About Peter Käser and VIU

Peter Käser is the Founder and COO of VIU Ventures AG, a Swiss eyewear brand. He started VIU in 2013, together with his co-founder Kilian Wagner, both of them bespectacled. VIU was originally conceived as an online-only store, integrating the entire eyewear supply chain and therefore offering higher quality at a lower price. But the founders soon realized that their customers like to physically try on their glasses before buying them. Today VIU has over 50 physical stores in 6 countries and several hundred employees. Peter holds a Masters in Banking and Finance from the University of St. Gallen (HSG).

About Renato Stalder and Klara

Renato Stalder is the Founder and CEO of Klara Business  AG, an accounting and administration software provider for SMEs. Previously, Renato rose through the ranks to become CEO at Soreco, where he served for 12 years. Afterwards, he held the CEO position at Axon Ivy, a digital platform provider which is part of the Axon Group. Renato holds an MBA in International Management from Fachhochschule Nordostschweiz.

The Episode In 60 Seconds

What is Generation Z?

Young people born between 1995 – 2010, NOT Millennials.

How to win Generation Z as customers

• Do not simply base your assumptions on conversations with your kids.
• Talk TO members of Generation Z instead of only ABOUT them.
• Your brand image is important
• Remember, members of Generation Z are activists.

How to win Generation  Z as employees and retain them

• A compelling company vision will be more important than high salaries.
• A clear path for growth within the organization.
• Meaningful and mission-driven work.
• Responsibility and appreciation.

What’s the deal with TikTok?

• Fast growing social media platform with over 2bn downloads (July 2020).
• Very young audience.
• Still high virality potential.
• Now is the time to get started with your company account.

About Yaël Meier and Zeam

Yaël Meier is an actress, journalist and the co-founder of Zeam, an agency helping companies leverage Generation Z. At the age of 14, Yaël held her first movie role in the Swiss Drama “Upload”. She later on also featured in movies such as «Die fruchtbaren Jahre sind vorbei» and «Blue my Mind». As a journalist, she worked for SRF, Ringier and Weltwoche in various roles. In January of 2020, she started Zeam together with her co-founder Jo Dietrich.

About Julian and Relai

Julian Liniger is the co-founder and CEO of Relai, a startup aiming to empower everyone to invest in Bitcoin. Julian was an early crypto currency aficionado and the go-to person for his friends for anything crypto-related. This made him realize that there was no easy way for the “average Joe” to purchase Bitcoin – and that’s how Relai was born. He and his co-founder, Adem Bilican, went from 0 lines of code in April to launching the first version of their app on July 1st of this year. Relai is looking to raise CHF 200k in order to scale their product and make it more user friendly.

About Verena Kaiser and UBS

Verena Kaiser served as the Head of Direct Investment at UBS before becoming Chief of Staff, Corporate & Institutional Clients International in May 2020. As Head of Direct Investment, she was responsible for due diligence and matching of growth stage startups with UBS private investors. The UBS Direct Investment arm has already provided over CHF 120m in capital, among them VIU Ventures AG, Coatmaster AG and Cutiss AG.

About Christian Fehr and Clickahoy

Christian Fehr is the CEO and co-founder of clickahoy, a Swiss marine-tech startup. The founding team behind clickahoy is the same as for ship-ahoy.ch, the boat sharing platform launched in 2016. The founders saw a personal need to make owning a boat “smart” the way owning a car or a house can be. The company is currently looking to raise CHF 400k to increase the number of connected boats 10x and expand outside of Switzerland within the next 18 months.

The Episode in 60 seconds

Considerations when deciding whether to bootstrap:

• Bootstrapping is a long term project which needs time and dedication.
• Once you decide to get on the VC train, you can’t go back.
• External funding rounds also mean valuation rounds, which you have to keep driving up. A downround can be detrimental.
• If you cannot get a top tier international investor, it may not be worth the trouble.

Bootstrapping a user base:

• Brand: building trust and recognition is a long term game that will pay off.
• SEO / organic search: quality content and a product that truly meets the user needs will go a long way. Of course, this makes you dependent on the search engine algorithm.
• Community: know your target audience and build a community around your product.

Running experiments:

• Once you have a user base, experiment everything and optimize whatever you can.
• Always test on a subset of users to minimize overall impact of negative test results.
• Monitor all KPIs, not just conversion (e.g. customer retention, customer lifetime value, satisfaction, etc.).

About Ketevani and Logmind

Ketevani Zaridze is the CEO and Founder of Logmind, an AI-accelerated log data analytics platform. Originally from Georgia, she got her Masters in Computer Science from EPFL in Switzerland. After gaining work experience at Xerox, Open Systems and Cern, she started Logmind in 2018. Recently the company signed their first enterprise customer. They are now looking to raise CHF 1.3m in their seed round in order to grow to CHF 1.5m in recurring annual revenue within the next 2 years.