Swisspreneur podcast

This episode was produced in collaboration with startup days, taking place this year on May 14th 2025. Click ⁠⁠here⁠⁠ to purchase your ticket.

About Georges Khneysser:

⁠Georges Khneysser⁠ is the founder of ⁠QBIT Capital⁠, an early-stage venture capital firm with headquarters in Zurich and an office in Los Angeles. Georges is originally from Lebanon, where he completed his education. He went on to work in Brussels as a trader and later as the head of a family office, before moving to Geneva to work in banking and wealth management. He started QBIT in Zurich in 2021.

QBIT specializes in investing exclusively in Switzerland and Swiss startups and currently has 8 portfolio companies: Demosquare, LogBook, Largo.ai, Helio, Duramon, Relio, Agrinorm, Everon. Georges credits three key pillars for the success of the fund:

• 6 of their LPs are entrepreneurs themselves, and are passionate about the Swiss ecosystem;
• QBIT offers their portfolio companies the services of their “pirates”, i.e. growth hackers, free of charge. Each company gets 800 hours per year of support with building their website, improving their pitch deck, developing their pricing and growth strategy, etc…
• QBIT has connections all over the world which help them make informed investment decisions and provide a network to their portfolio companies.

Georges is not a proponent of the “spray and pray” investment strategy (meaning investing in a diversified manner and hoping it works out for the best). At QBIT capital, he and his fellow VCs often spend several months getting to know founders better before making an investment decision.

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About Karim Saleh:

⁠Karim Saleh⁠ is the co-founder and CEO of ⁠Cerrion⁠, a startup developing digital AI workers for the manufacturing industry. He holds a BSc in Information Technology and Electrical Engineering from ETH, and worked at Unicorn Labs and Assaia – The ApronAI before co-founding Cerrion in 2022.

Cerrion’s AI workers use standard video cameras to monitor production, detect deviations and respond to them on their own, empowering production teams to make better and more timely decisions. Cerrion’s platform is currently deployed across factories in eight countries, including the USA, Germany, Italy and Turkey, where it has already reduced production losses by over 30% on average.

Cerrion participated in Y Combinator back in 2022. During his time in San Francisco, Karim highly valued the fact that YC holds founders accountable to what they say they’re trying to achieve. He was also glad to benefit not only from his batch’s network but from the entire YC community, which includes many top 1% founders. YC perks notwithstanding, Karim still thinks Zurich is the best headquarters for Cerrion, as it boasts a very strong talent density. 

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This episode was co-produced with the⁠ Deep Tech Nation Switzerland Foundation⁠.

About Geri Kirilova:

⁠Geri Kirilova⁠ is a partner at ⁠Laconia⁠, a seed stage fund focused on B2B software companies. Geri holds a BA in Information Systems & Management from the NYU Stern School of Business, and worked as a VC for funds like Credo Ventures and LAUNCHub before joining Laconia in 2017. She recently moved to Switzerland with her husband.

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According to Geri, Laconia mainly invests in industries like retail tech, ecommerce enablement, proptech, fintech and digital health, and their investment strategy focuses on three key aspects:

- Strong unit economics;

- The ability to grow in a capital-efficient manner;

- The ability to make decisions in a repeatable fashion.

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As a rule, Laconia does not require a warm intro, and encourages companies to cold email them. This is because nowadays warm intros have become so standard that they no longer hold any value in Geri’s eyes. What used to be “Hey, this person I worked with before is the smartest person I know, and they’re raising funds for their company” has become “Hey this person I know is raising funds for their company”, so to Geri and her team, a “lukewarm intro” is the same as a cold email.

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When evaluating deals, Geri thinks of the following questions:

- What are the key beliefs, risks and hypotheses of this company?

- Is there market demand for their product?

- What’s this company’s go-to-market strategy?

- Can this company acquire significant market share over time?

- Do the founders have the right balance of ambition and realism to execute their vision?

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This episode was co-produced with⁠ EO Zürich⁠. Check out their upcoming event,⁠ Entrepreneurs Summit 2025⁠.

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About Wendy Jordan:

⁠Wendy Jordan⁠ is the co-founder and former COO of ⁠Encuentra24⁠, the leading marketplace and fully integrated business solution in Central America. She holds a BA in Marketing and Advertising from Universidad Latinoamericana de Ciencia y Tecnología (Panama), and previously worked for companies like Publitesa and Gold Dragon Capital Management Ltd before starting Encuentra24 in 2005.

Wendy and her husband built Encuentra24 at a serendipitous time: back in 2005, the Panama government was just starting to show interest in attracting foreign investment. Based on their own experience of having difficulties buying an affordable home in Panama, Wendy and her husband decided to create Panama’s online marketplace themselves, and focused on the items/issues which are essential to people’s lives: a home, a job, a car, etc.

Encuentra24 was bootstrapped for 10 years. Wendy and her team advertised the business B2C by placing ads on buses and taxis and running radio ads; when it came to B2B, they initially sought each and every partner for a 1-1 conversation. They grew the business slowly, through trial and error, and in 2013 faced perhaps their biggest challenge when OLX built offices in Central America in an attempt to take them over. Despite OLX hiring Harvard-educated staff and resorting to things like exclusivity contracts with partners and hiring people fired from Encuentra24, Wendy and her team stayed laser-focused on their goals and the quality of their product, and ended up acquiring OLX’s Central American operations a few years later.

In 2015 Encuentra24 welcomed Shaun Di Gregorio, founder and CEO of Frontier Digital Ventures, as an investment partner, which enabled them to list themselves on international stock markets and, most prominently, in the Australian Stock Exchange. In 2022 Encuentra24 had a successful exit, after which Wendy left her operational role at the company. Nowadays she’s active as a business angel and will soon take on the role of president at EO (Entrepreneurs Organization).

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This episode was produced in collaboration with startup days, taking place this year on May 14th 2025. Click ⁠⁠here⁠⁠ to purchase your ticket.

About Simon Michel:

⁠Simon Michel⁠ is the CEO of ⁠Ypsomed⁠, the leading developer and manufacturer of injection systems for self-medication. He is also the head of ⁠Swiss Startup Supporters⁠, a new startup days initiative. Simon holds an MA in Media and Communications Management from HSG and worked for the consultancy Arthur D. Little and the telecommunications company Orange Communications SA before joining his father’s company, Ypsomed, in 2006.

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In 1984, a company named Disetronic was founded by the brothers Willy and Peter Michel (Willy being Simon’s father), in Burgdorf, Switzerland. Disetronic was the first company to introduce a micro insulin pump to the medtech/pharma market. Besides its infusion systems, Disetronic also specialised in injection systems. In 2003, co-founder and main shareholder Willy Michel sold Disetronic’s infusion business to Roche and kept the injection business — that’s how Ypsomed was born.

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Simon first joined Ypsomed as a Business Development Manager of Diabetes Care, and rose through the ranks until he became CEO in 2014. He credits this gradual rise, based on concrete achievements within the company, as the reason for his easy integration in its team. 

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Nowadays Ypsomed focuses on the treatment of chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, polyarthritis, Alzheimer and migraines. On 22 September 2004, Ypsomed was registered on SIX Swiss Exchange under the ticket SWX:YPSN.

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Simon is also affiliated with FDP (The Liberals party) and is a member of Switzerland’s National Council. When asked about Switzerland’s political strengths and weaknesses, he identified the following strengths:

- Strong majority support: Switzerland takes an average of 6 years to get a new law approved. This makes its political system quite slow, but this slowness has the advantage of ensuring majority support for many of the laws approved.

- Strong R&D: The Swiss government invests CHF 10B per year in education and research, out of a CHF 90B budget. This results in a robust education system.

- Independence and neutrality, which give Switzerland international credibility.

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Simon also identified 2 weaknesses in Switzerland’s political system:

- Speed: This system is, indeed, quite slow, and unnecessarily so, in Simon’s opinion.

- Left vs Right disagreements: Simon opposes the Swiss left’s ideas of rebuilding Switzerland as a state-run operation less reliant on private enterprise. He considers this a political weakness.

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This episode was co-produced with ⁠SEF.Growth⁠, the Swiss Economic Forum's Growth initiative to support Swiss startups and SMEs with growth plans free of charge.

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About Thomas Schori:

⁠Thomas Schori⁠ is the co-founder and CEO of ⁠tide ocean⁠, a startup turning 100% ocean-bound plastic into safe, useful products. Thomas worked for his family’s business, Braloba Group, before co-founding tide ocean in 2018.

Originally linked to the Swiss watch industry through its mother company, Braloba Group, tide ocean was founded when Thomas investigated the possibility of using recycled polyester yarn for watch straps. Nowadays, tide ocean has teamed up with multiple partner organizations to collect and reuse what already exists. The result is an award-winning material that comes in the form of recycled plastic pellets for plastic injection, recycled polyester yarn for textile applications, and recycled plastic filament for 3D printing.

Already when founding the company, Thomas and his team realized that their business model could not be founded solely on fixing the damage of plastic pollution, but must also strive towards preventing it. This means they not only clean oceans and rivers, but they also prevent plastic from ending up in the ocean by employing plastic collectors in developing countries (like Mexico and Thailand) and paying them by the kilogram.

This plastic is brought to tide ocean’s ecohubs, where salaried employees sort the plastic, so that it can then be shredded, washed and reshaped, resulting in a new plastic of 97% virgin quality — quality so high that consumers can’t tell the difference. These employees also get health insurance and support with language learning, IDs (which are not as common or as easy to obtain in developing countries) and education.

tide ocean’s opportunity is huge: 14 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean every year, and if we recycled merely 1% of it, we would run a turnover of 300M. Not to mention, of course, the social and environmental impact. tide ocean currently counts among its customers brands like Migros and Tom Ford. They recently raised money through the ⁠Swisspreneur Syndicate⁠.

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This episode was co-produced by the ⁠SalesPlaybook⁠, DACHs' leading B2B Sales & HubSpot agency for fast-growing 7-8 figure entrepreneurs to increase pipeline, revenue & sales efficiency. 

About Manuel Hartmann:

⁠Manuel Hartmann⁠ is the founder and CEO of ⁠SalesPlaybook⁠, a sales agency with 7-figure annual revenue helping clients like bexio, Beekeeper, Skribble, Brame & Urban Connect. He holds an MA in Business Innovation from HSG and worked for companies such as Tesla, Accenture and Onedot before founding SalesPlaybook in 2019.

During his chat with us, Manuel discussed “speed of trust”, a concept first developed by Stephen M.R. Covey in his ⁠book of the same name⁠. Speed of trust is the speed at which trust is established with clients, employees, and all stakeholders. Manuel applies this concept specifically to sales, where, according to him, trust is currently rather broken, due to practices like sending mass AI-written cold emails and email-bombing prospects who have not opened a salesperson’s previous emails. 

It’s easy for us to understand and recognize trust in our personal lives: we do not need a 17 page contract to move in with our best friend — we simply trust that it will work out fine. But how can we scale this, especially in a field where trust needs to be restored? Manuel recommends doing things that don’t scale: send postcards, meet people in person. He is also a fan of the 4/7/11 framework, according to which salespeople need to meet a prospect in 4 different locations, spend 7h with the prospect in total (not necessarily consecutively) and have 11 touchpoints with them (email, whatsapp, etc). This framework has been proven to work at a neurobiological level when it comes to creating trust. Finally, Manuel urges salespeople to ask for referrals. Only 10% of salespeople do so, when 90% of happy customers would gladly give a referral — so there’s an 80% gap that is ours for the taking.

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‍About Gian Reto à Porta:

⁠Gian Reto à Port⁠a is a serial entrepreneur and business Angel. He co-founded and successfully exited Contovista, a 2013 fintech pioneer, and nowadays is active as a co-founder and CEO at ⁠Norm⁠, a startup which wants to help drive the decarbonization in the building sector. Gian holds a MSc in Computer Science from UZH.

Gian started Contovista in 2013, and the company quickly garnered so much success and media attention that he had to quit his corporate job. Despite its very small number of employees, Contovista began working with most of the banks in Switzerland. They were acquired by Aduno Group in 2017 for an undisclosed amount, and Contovista’s early investors received a 33x return on their investment.

After working a few years solely as a business angel, Gian descended once more into the startup trenches by founding NORM, a company which assesses the energy efficiency, CO₂ emissions and renovation costs of buildings. They saw a need for this product not only because Swiss banks will soon have to mandatorily discuss energy efficiency with clients when issuing mortgages, but also because there was no “centralized” way to improve the energy efficiency of your home outside of finding an energy consultant, who may or may not be acting in their clients’ best interest. 

The NORM co-founders, of which there are 6, started their business because they wanted to work with tech which had a positive impact on society. They’ve certainly hit the nail on the head with NORM, considering that in Europe 30-40% of all CO₂ emissions come from the building sector.

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Resources Mentioned:

⁠The 4 Levels of PMF, First Round Capital⁠

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This episode was produced in collaboration with startup days, taking place this year on May 14th 2025. Click ⁠⁠here⁠⁠ to purchase your ticket.

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About Alessandra Agnello:

⁠Alessandra Agnello⁠ is the principal at ⁠ACE Ventures⁠, a VC fund backing early stage Swiss tech founders across the globe. She holds a MSc in Energy and Nuclear Engineering from Politecnico di Torino and worked as an oil trader in Zug and Geneva before joining ACE in 2021.

Looking back, Alessandra thinks many of the lessons she learned in oil trading have been useful to her as a VC investor, namely:

• Having a keen understanding of risk-reward profiles;
• Being comfortable with losing money;
• Moving with conviction. As an oil trader or a VC, you’ve got to be confident in your bets.

During her chat with Silvan she stressed that VC money is not compatible with every company’s journey, but only with those companies who have a real shot at and are structured for achieving exponential growth, and can therefore deliver “fund returns”. Alessandra has also noticed that founders in Switzerland tend to focus too much on investors, and not enough on customers; she suggests doing the opposite, instead: delivering value, making customers happy and showing traction. If all of that is achieved, says Alessandra, investors will take it upon themselves to reach out to the founders, instead of it happening the other way around.

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About Victoria Ransom:

⁠Victoria Ransom⁠ is the co-founder of Wildfire, a social marketing software-as-a-service company which was acquired by Google, and of ⁠Prisma⁠, a global virtual school (grades 4-12). She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and worked as a Financial Analyst at Morgan Stanley before co-founding Access Trips, the travel startup that led her to creating Wildfire.

During her chat with us, Victoria reflected back on the values which sustained Wildfire and which drive Prisma nowadays. She thinks they boil down to 5 characteristics:  

• Being non-hierarchical (though this also created some problems further down the line at Wildfire);
• Being transparent, i.e. sharing both the good and the bad with your employees;
• Being scrappy, or resourceful: even though Wildfire’s biggest competitor raised about 10x more money, Wildfire still beat them, because they knew how to do more with less;
• Encouraging innovation and accepting failure, i.e. showing enthusiasm for employees who decide to try new things, and understanding that it’s okay if these experiments fail;
• Being humble and down to earth.

Victoria is not surprised that the same culture reproduced itself at Prisma, since startup cultures are, in her opinion, a reflection of the founders’ values. When it comes to maintaining your culture, Victoria thinks this can be achieved by ensuring 4 things:

• That you hire the right people;
• That you often reward the people who live up to your values;
• That you are quick to fire those who don’t;
• That you yourself are seen upholding these values.

This means making tough decisions at times, like when Victoria had to fire their top sales person at Wildfire.

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About Joel Roos & Ben Simon:

⁠Joel Roos⁠ and ⁠Ben Simon⁠ are the co-founders of VAY, a startup offering motion tracking technology for fitness and physical therapy. Joel holds a MSc in Robotics Systems and Control from ETH and worked at Rapyuta Robotics before co-founding VAY in 2018. Ben holds an MA in Accounting and Finance from HSG and worked for atfinity and EY before co-founding VAY with Joel.

VAY digitizes human movements through human motion analysis, to make products more competitive, immersive, and intelligent. They provide real-time tracking and audio feedback from any device and camera. Their target industry is physical therapy, rehabilitation, and digital health apps.

VAY was acquired by Nautilus (now called ⁠Bowflex⁠) in 2021 for an undisclosed amount. Alex Ilic is one of their board advisors.

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About Guy Kawasaki:

⁠Guy Kawasaki⁠ is the chief evangelist of ⁠Canva⁠ and the creator of the ⁠Remarkable People podcast⁠. He is an executive fellow of the Haas School of Business (UC Berkeley), and adjunct professor of the University of New South Wales. He was the chief evangelist of Apple and a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation. He has written Wise Guy, The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media, Enchantment, and eleven other books. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University, an MBA from UCLA, and an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

During his chat with Silvan, Guy recalled his “religious experience” witnessing Mac products at work for the first time, explained why he thinks MBAs may be a hindrance to your entrepreneurial success, and also reflected on why becoming remarkable means giving up a work-life balance. On his podcast, Remarkable People, he’s interviewed the likes of Tim Ferriss, Gary V, Jane Goodall and Neil Degrasse Tyson. He makes no advertising money on his podcast and in fact spends 1-2K on producing each episode, but is glad to do so: there’s no other hobby that could bring him as much joy as this one (except, perhaps, surfing).

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Über Hans-Peter Strebel:

Hans-Peter Strebel ist der Gründer von Fumapharm, einem Unternehmen, das ein bahnbrechendes Medikament zur Behandlung von Psoriasis und Multipler Sklerose (MS) entwickelt hat. Sein Weg führte von einer kleinen Apotheke im aargauischen Muri bis zum erfolgreichen Verkauf von Fumapharm an ⁠Biogen⁠.

Strebel gründete auch das ⁠OYM⁠, ein hochmodernes Sportzentrum in der Schweiz, das seine Leidenschaft für Innovation und einen wissenschaftlich fundierten Ansatz für sportliche Leistungen widerspiegelt.

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About Laurent Decrue & Boris Manhart:

⁠Laurent Decrue⁠ is the co-founder of the moving company ⁠MOVU⁠ and the software company ⁠Holycode⁠, and the former CEO at ⁠Bexio⁠. Currently he is active as CFO and co-CEO at Holycode. He holds an MBA from the University of Basel and previously worked at DeinDeal.

⁠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.

During their chat with Silvan, they discussed how to achieve the all-coveted product-market fit. Naturally, this journey starts with defining and testing your ICP, i.e. your Ideal Customer Profile:

• You’ll create an ICP in your head based on assumptions, at the beginning. That’s normal. You might even be more or less right. But you can’t rely on your intuition alone; 
• First of all, niche down. Go for a smaller market than the one you had in mind;
• Then conduct interviews to find out if it’s the right market. This is how you can actually test all your customer development assumptions.

Once you’ve more or less figured out your ICP based on real customer data, you can start thinking about metrics. Which ones can tell you if you’re really selling your product/service to the right market? Boris and Laurent don’t like the common overreliance on figures like Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) or the 1M ARR benchmark. They both prefer to use the Sean Ellis test, which consists of asking people how disappointed they’d be if they could never use your product again. But don’t get too hung up on the “40% were very disappointed” metric one sometimes sees floating around: each company is its own unique case.

It’s often considered that once PMF is reached (or, at least, once you reach it for the first of many times), that’s when you should start scaling your company. But you might want to think carefully about how to go about it: during his chat with us, Laurent shared his story of how Holycode made the mistake of hiring 2 new sales people in Switzerland and Germany to move from founder-led sales to employee-led sales, when in fact they should have hired a growth marketing team to help generate more leads — because without generating more leads, what use is having the sales people to convert them?

Check out the conversation for more valuable learnings on how to (continuously) reach PMF. 

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This episode was co-produced with Switzerland Global Enterprise.

About Britta Thiele-Klapproth & Tobias Britt:

Britta Thiele-Klapproth is the Head of Export and Investment Promotion at Swiss Business Hub Germany, helping Swiss companies do business in Germany. Tobias Britt is the founder and CEO of iunctum, which supports companies to create digital twins by running cloud solutions. 

During their chat with Silvan, Britta and Tobias discussed expanding to Germany.  Although it makes total sense to start with your homemarket of Switzerland, to test the waters and iterate, if you want to scale your company up and grow sustainably, you need to go beyond Swiss borders. But why expand to Germany first?

• Germany is the only EU country which is 10x bigger than Switzerland, and also (obviously) a German-speaking nation. 

• Testing the waters and optimizing your product never stops. You do it when you first build the product, and you do it every time you enter a new market. Testing your product within Europe is beneficial because of the cultural proximity. 

What are the differences between Germany and Switzerland?

• Switzerland is so small, everyone knows everyone. Potential business partners like to establish trust firmly before jumping on a venture together. The same can be said for Germany, despite its larger size.
• However, Germans are, stereotypically, louder, more self-confident, and more aggressive in regards to company acquisitions. The modest, shy Swiss mentality may mean you run the risk of not being heard.

Definitely do not plan on expanding your Swiss company to Switzerland without first allocating a budget to explore the German market, but neither Britta nor Tobias can give you a minimum budget, because it highly depends on the industry. Swiss Business Hub Germany can help you tailor a solution to your specific industry needs. 

How should you change your pricing when approaching the German market? Again, it will completely depend on your product. But Tobias advises you not to overfocus on the pricing, especially considering costs in Germany can be lower in certain aspects. He encourages listeners to first get to know the market well and then think of how to finetune their German pricing.

Both Tobias and Britta recognize that in Germany one observes a unique relationship between companies and the government (which often results in a lot of bureaucracy, that Swiss Business Hub Germany is ready to assist you with). As his main challenge in expanding to Germany, Tobias cites the development of intercultural competence.

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About Abouzar Rahmani:

Abouzar Rahmani is the co-founder and CEO of FoodYoung, a consumer food innovation company developing high-quality, clean, and sustainable food solutions. He is originally from Iran and holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and Management from UBI Business School, Brussels. He worked for a few years at Mani Foods Industry LLC, his family’s business (which was founded in 1877), before starting FoodYoung in 2012.

Abouzar created FoodYoung for two reasons: firstly, because he wanted to provide entrepreneurs with the resources and support that he thought were lacking, and secondly because Abouzar himself saw a significant improvement in his health through a change of lifestyle, having lost 35kg. 

FoodYoung develops and commercializes food solutions that are inflammatory oil-free, have no refined sugar, are additive free, non-GMO, gluten-free, organic, plant-rich, made with fairly traded ingredients, and packaged sustainably. Throughout his years at FoodYoung he has found that food trends tend to happen in reaction to overconsumption patterns: gluten-free is trendy in Italy, meat-free in Germany, dairy-free in Switzerland, and sugar-free in America.

At FoodYoung Abouzar works with 3 types of customers:

• Big food retailers and large corporates looking for innovation, but without the inhouse capacity to develop it
• Scaleups in the food space
• New startups with revolutionary ideas 

In the case of this last group, FoodYoung takes equity through their venture studio and helps them build their business. With the first two groups, there is an amount paid for FoodYoung’s services. In no case do they take a cut from the sales of their customers.

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Resources Mentioned:

• Remarkable notepad
• Think again, Adam Grant
• Zero to one, Peter Thiel

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This episode was produced in collaboration with startup days, taking place next year on May 14th 2025. Click ⁠here⁠ to purchase your ticket.

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About Barbara Horvath:

Barbara Horvath is the co-founder and CEO of Inveel, a startup providing technology for low-cost and high speed production of extreme-high resolution printed electronics. She holds a PhD in Materials Science & Engineering from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, and worked as a researcher at the National Institute for Materials Science (Japan), the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France) and the Paul Scherrer Institut (Zurich) before starting Inveel in 2024.

Inveel fabricates 100 nm - 2 µm linewidth wires and electrodes with low resistivity — this what they term their “high precision electronics”. At first they struggled with finding a market, since the applications for their tech were very numerous, but eventually settled on robotics. Inveel adds value to a robot by basically giving it another layer of “skin”, full of “nerve endings”, which help the robot better understand how it is interacting with the world. For instance:

• If a robot is holding an egg, having an Inveel skin is useful to know how much pressure to apply in order to maintain grip but not crush the egg. If the egg starts slipping, the robot will know because it will feel the egg in different parts of their “hand”, and can adjust the movements of their “hand” to prevent the egg from escaping their grasp.
• If a robot bumps their knee, it is very easy for their whole balance to be thrown off and for them to fall over. If their knee is wearing an Inveel skin, the robot can react faster to the perception of having bumped it and more quickly readjust their body posture so as not to fall down.
• If a robot needs to go up and down stairs, or walk in terrain where there are voluminous rocks, having an Inveel skin on the soles of their “feet” will help them ascertain whether they’re placing their “feet” correctly on the steps of the stairs, and will help them quickly realize they’ve stepped on a rock, and again adapt their body posture so as not to fall over.

Inveel skins also give robots proximity sensors, which allow them to sense if a person (or object) is nearby. Currently, robots have cameras through which they perceive the presence of people, and when they detect people, they slow down quite a lot as a form of risk mitigation. Inveel’s proximity sensors allow robots to remain fast even in environments filled with people, because they make them much quicker in reacting to the presence of a person and avoiding collision. 

Inveel is currently establishing pilots with big players and kicking their R&D into turbo mode in order to cater successfully to the robotics industry.

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This episode was co-produced with EO Zürich. Check out their upcoming event, Entrepreneurs Summit 2025.

About Samy Liechti:

Samy Liechti is a co-founder and the former CEO of BLACKSOCKS, the Swiss e-commerce sock company that invented the “sockscription” back in 1999. He holds a BA in Business Administration from HSG and worked for marketing agencies like Leo Burnett, Burson-Marsteller and Wirz before starting BLACKSOCKS in 1999.

It all began when Samy found himself at a tea ceremony, after a business meeting with some Japanese clients, where he had to take off his shoes, and embarrassingly found he was wearing mismatched socks. The solution to the problem of forgetting to replace old socks was, in his mind, an online sock subscription — but it was 1999: if you sold socks, you did it on catalogs or through the phone; e-commerce was still called e-business back then, and vanishingly few people ever bought anything online. To make matters even more difficult, Samy’s co-founder quit after a few months. But none of these deterrents could stop Samy, and 6 months after the official launch of the company, BLACKSOCKS had already 1000 customers. 20 years in, some of their sock models have been sold millions of times. 

In 2023 BLACKSOCKS was acquired by Rohner Socks, and Samy left the company.

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The cover portrait was edited by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. 

This episode was produced in collaboration with startup days, taking place next year on May 14th 2025. Click ⁠here⁠ to purchase your ticket.

About Frédéric Loizeau:

Frédéric Loizeau is the co-founder and CRO of Lightium, a Swiss startup enabling the next generation of photonic integrated circuits. He holds a PhD in Microsystems from EPFL and worked as a researcher at Stanford and as a key account manager at Sensirion and Business & Technology Development Manager at CSEM before starting Lightium in 2023.

Lightium provides production-grade TFLN PIC foundry services to customers in the datacom, telecom, AI, Quantum, and aerospace industries. What does this mean? It means they manufacture photonic integrated circuits, which are essential to making the transfer of information faster. This is relevant for fiber optic internet, in the telecom industry, but also quite relevant for space satellites. Lastly, it’s crucial for AI: the recent developments in this field have increased our need not only for computing power (which NVIDIA solved by providing their GPUs to data centers), but also for greater bandwidth — that’s where Lightium’s tech comes in.

They frame their technology as a service, through which people from different industries can design their own photonic integrated circuits that will then be manufactured by the Lightium team. Lightium has had great success since the very beginning: when they were still working on their idea at the CSEM research center and tentatively reaching out to customers asking for letters of recommendation, they got cheques instead. Nowadays their success continues: they recently raised a CHF 7M seed round.

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About Marko Bjelonic:

⁠⁠Marko Bjelonic⁠⁠ is the co-founder and CEO of ⁠⁠Swiss-Mile⁠⁠, a deep tech ETH spin-off connecting AI with the physical world through autonomous machines. He holds a PhD in Robotics from ETH and worked as a researcher at NCCR Robotics, NCCR Digital Fabrication and the Robotic Systems Lab (ETH), before starting Swiss-Mile in 2023.

Marko was born in Yugoslavia and left the country as a child, together with his family, to escape the Yugoslav wars, which started in 1990. Growing up as an immigrant in Germany, he helped his dad recover from job loss by encouraging him to start his own business and helping him with digitization and with the linguistic aspect. This company was eventually sold, giving Marko an advantageous small business experience.

In 2023 he started Swiss-Mile with friends and colleagues he’d known since 2018. Their USP was simple: they were incorporating neural networks on wheeled-legged robots, helping them to navigate complex environments. Their robots can walk, drive, stand upright, open doors, and manipulate packages. Ever since launch, they’ve had a huge amount of success on social media — their videos have gotten a total of 100M views. This, of course, resulted in over 150 companies reaching out to them to inquire about their product, with leads coming in on a daily basis.

With such an innovative and useful product, Marko and his team had trouble picking the best industries to focus on. After much reflection and many feedback loops with their leads, they decided on security and logistics. When it comes to the security industry, Swiss-Mile robots are useful for maintaining critical infrastructure which must be checked 24/7, since this is a boring, repetitive job for which it is harder and harder to find human workers. In the logistics field, the operations which take place inside warehouses are already quite automated, but the transportation of merchandise from warehouses to the outside world is not, because that is a much more complex environment for a robot to navigate — but not too complex for Swiss-Mile robots! 

Swiss-Mile has had astounding fundraising success. They raised a $3.5M pre-seed round in 2023, and then a $22M seed round in 2024, co-led by Jeff Bezos and the Chinese fund HongShan.

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This episode was co-produced with the ⁠⁠⁠Female Founders Initiative⁠⁠⁠. The conversation originally took place at the ⁠Rise Up Summit 2024⁠.

Answer our quick questionnaire about entrepreneurial skills ⁠here⁠.

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About Lida Ahmadi & Adam Korczak:

⁠Lida Ahmadi⁠ is the founder of ⁠Sproutd⁠, a foodtech venture studio partnering with corporates to tackle current food system challenges. She holds an MA in Accounting and Finance from HSG and co-founded Snäx in 2018 (acquired by ⁠FELFEL⁠ in 2023) before beginning her new venture in 2024.

⁠Adam Korczak⁠ is the co-founder and CEO at ⁠Treeless⁠, an ETH Zurich Spin-off developing microorganism-based cellulose materials with the goal to end plastic pollution. He obtained his education in Biomedical/Medical Engineering at ETH and incorporated the company in 2023.

During their chat with Merle, Lida and Adam reflected on the skills which have bolstered their unique founder journeys. The abilities needed to build a successful startup were not always what this pair of founders expected: Lida recalls being surprised and feeling challenged by the need to develop her analytical mind and to gain the habit of making data-based decisions, and Adam remembered how difficult it was at first to have to make such a inordinate amount of phone calls every single day. 

Both founders value the technical skills they learned in school, but most of all they appreciate how their education taught them resilience — the ability to cope with stress.

Adam continues to scale Treeless successfully and Lida is currently working on a new project that is still in stealth mode.

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Resources Mentioned:

⁠⁠Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman⁠⁠ (Lida Ahmadi)

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The cover portrait was edited by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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This episode was co-produced with ⁠Innosuisse⁠.

About Cyrill Gyger:

⁠Cyrill Gyger⁠ is the co-founder and CEO of ⁠QUMEA⁠, a company that offers digital mobility monitoring for patient safety. Cyrill holds an MSc in Engineering from Berner Fachhochschule BFH and worked for Zühlke Group and Xovis before starting QUMEA in 2019.

QUMEA uses a one-of-a-kind sensor and companion software to continuously monitor the activity and mobility of every patient inside a hospital or care facility, and is able to automatically call for help, depending on the individual needs of each patient. This prevents falls, makes therapy success measurable, improves patient outcomes and noticeably relieves the burden on care. Their radar is capable of sending signals of extremely different wavelengths in very quick succession, which allows them to measure whether the patient is walking about the room, but also whether the patient is even breathing. The fact that their product is a radar, and not computer vision, enables the assurance of data protection. 

QUMEA sells mostly to public hospitals in Switzerland, Germany and Sweden. Their usual first point of contact are nurses, who are also the product’s users. QUMEA’s very clear ROI is what gets them the attention of these institutions, but they still have to bear with rather long sale cycles (due to the nature of public sector constraints, and to the amount of stakeholders within each hospital), and they almost always have to go through a pilot phase with their prospective customers first.

Cyrill is a strong believer in aligning co-founder incentives with the success of their company, which is why all 4 co-founders have invested their own money to buy shares from QUMEA. Other employees have also done so. This way, everyone rows in the same direction and gives it their all, because if the company tanks, it’s their money that’s gone forever, too.

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The cover portrait was edited by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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Über Sergio P. Ermotti:

⁠Sergio P. Ermotti⁠, Group CEO der ⁠UBS⁠, ist eine der prägendsten Persönlichkeiten der globalen Finanzwelt. Geboren und aufgewachsen im Tessin, träumte er zunächst von einer Karriere als Fussballprofi, bevor er im Banking seine wahre Leidenschaft fand. Seine beeindruckende Laufbahn führte ihn von der lokalen Corner Bank über Stationen in London und New York bis an die Spitze der UBS. Besonders bekannt ist Ermotti für seine Führungsrolle bei der Integration der Credit Suisse, ein Meilenstein, der ihn sowohl beruflich als auch persönlich herausgefordert hat. Mit klarer Vision und unermüdlichem Einsatz steht er für Leadership, Nachhaltigkeit und soziale Verantwortung – Werte, die er in der globalen Finanzbranche eindrucksvoll vorlebt.

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This episode was co-produced with ⁠smzh⁠, your independent go-to partner in all matters relating to finance.

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About Florim Cuculi:

Florim Cuculi is a Swiss cardiologist and chief of the cardiology department at Luzerner Kantonsspital. He was born in the Republic of North Macedonia in 1976 and moved to Switzerland when he was 14. He initially had a difficult time in Switzerland, having no friends and speaking no German, but eventually worked his way to fluency and was moved from Realschule to Sekundarschule by an observant teacher, who realized his potential.

In 2019 Florim established the Cardio Center Luzern, a new cardiology practice in the city center of Lucerne. He is also active on social media, where he often gives health advice. 

During his chat with Silvan, he discussed his rules for good leadership:

• Fairness: value the people who work harder and achieve better results;
• Humility: realize that you are not perfect, and be willing to listen to criticism (which is only possible if you have cultivated the kind of psychological safety that naturally allows your underlings to speak up);
• Understanding: be willing to support and go easy on team members who are experiencing personal crises;
• Know that there is no golden rule. Often you’ll have to rely on your intuition.

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Resources Mentioned:

Homo Faber, Max Frisch

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SMZH: tailor-made .holistic. for you.

smzh is an independent financial services provider who is assisting both private and corporate clients with individual advice in the areas of finance & investments, pensions, mortgages, insurance, real estate and tax & law. Through a 360° Check-Up, smzh ensures that you receive customized and comprehensive financial planning according to your initial situation and with a view to achieving your wishes and goals, as well as being accompanied by our experts during implementation.

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The cover portrait was edited by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

About Nikolai Schröder:

⁠Nikolai Schröder⁠ is the co-founder and COO of ⁠FINN⁠, a German car subscription startup. He holds a MSc in Industrial Engineering from FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg and previously worked as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group before starting FINN in 2019.

FINN offers a car subscription which includes everything: the vehicle, insurance and maintenance. With traditional car purchases, you receive the financing (if you require a loan) from one person, insure the car with another person, send it to be repaired by a third person, etc., whereas with FINN you pay the same amount each month and can safely budget for it. FINN is aiming to become profitable by the end of 2024.

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The cover portrait was edited by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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This episode was co-produced with the ⁠⁠Female Founders Initiative⁠⁠.

About Leonie Flückiger:

⁠Leonie Flückiger⁠ is a co-founder of ⁠Adresta⁠, a company which creates digital certificates for luxury watches. She holds a MSc in Micro- and Nanosystems from ETH and previously worked for ETH Juniors and BCG before starting Adresta in 2019.

Adresta is a Swiss tech company redefining the ownership experience by creating digital certificates or NFTs for physical products purchased and owned by end consumers. The Adresta ecosystem embeds an end2end digital watch insurance process, enabling owners to get insurance for their watch in under 90 seconds. The NFT proves the product's authenticity and represents a tamperproof, scarce, and tradable asset.

The company was acquired in Autumn 2022 by Bucherer, one of the world's largest retailers of luxury watches and jewelry. While the Adresta CEO, Mathew Chittazhathu, stayed on, Leonie preferred to take a new consulting job at McKinsey.

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This episode was co-produced with the ⁠Deep Tech Nation Switzerland Foundation⁠.

About Joanne Sieber:

⁠Joanne Sieber⁠ is the CEO of the ⁠Deep Tech Nation Switzerland Foundation⁠, which acts as a catalyst for the Swiss innovation ecosystem. She holds an MA in International Management from HSG. Prior to joining the Deep Tech Nation Switzerland Foundation in 2023, Joanne worked in a number of industries, from microcredit to consultancies, and even ran her own sandstone business.

The Deep Tech Nation Switzerland Foundation is financed in part by their founding partners, UBS and Swisscom, and in part by their corporate partners, like SwissRe, Rolex and SIX. Their mission is to help Switzerland successfully commercialize Swiss innovation, through growth financing (covered by their Venture Hub Switzerland, which collaborates with Swiss pension funds) and by working to change the regulatory framework surrounding these questions. They want to make Switzerland the number 1 deeptech nation worldwide, and have committed themselves to help raise CHF 50B in VC capital for Swiss startups and to help create 100K jobs in Switzerland within the next 10 years.

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The cover portrait was edited by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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This episode was co-produced by ⁠smzh⁠, your independent go-to partner in all matters relating to finance.

About Pascal Jenny:

⁠Pascal Jenny ⁠is the former managing director and current president at ⁠Arosa Tourismus⁠. He holds a BA in business administration from UZH and worked in Swiss sports television before founding Arosa Tourismus in 2008. He’s also the founder of tfy-consult, a company offering sustainability checks for other businesses, and is active as a board member at smzh. 

Pascal’s connection to the Arosa region is long-standing: he vacationed there every single Summer until he was 25, and his great-great-grandfather used to be a priest there, as well. As a young person, he always enjoyed Arosa, but found its tourism industry lacking in certain respects, which motivated him to create a business which not only functioned as a hotel but also hosted events and offered experiences, and, most importantly, which measured its results and iterated accordingly. 

Sustainability is a very important topic for Pascal, not only ecologically but also socially and economically. Arosa’s investors are aware that they’re unlikely to get back their investment, but still they offer their money because they want to build something beautiful. And when it comes to the relationship between Pascal’s business and the local Arosa population, clear and constant communication is key — and it served Pascal and his team well both when they came up with the idea to create a bear sanctuary, and when they thought of doing a gay ski week. Arosa Tourismus very intentionally does not invest much on social media marketing in order to avoid swaths of mass tourism coming their way.

Pascal stepped down from his managing director role in 2020 and is nowadays involved solely as president.

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SMZH: tailor-made .holistic. for you.

⁠⁠smzh⁠⁠ is an independent financial services provider who is assisting both private and corporate clients with individual advice in the areas of finance & investments, pensions, mortgages, insurance, real estate and tax & law. Through a 360° Check-Up, smzh ensures that you receive customized and comprehensive financial planning according to your initial situation and with a view to achieving your wishes and goals, as well as being accompanied by our experts during implementation.

‍

The cover portrait was edited by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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This episode was sponsored by ⁠smzh⁠, your independent go-to partner in all matters relating to finance.

About Samir Ounzain:

⁠Samir Ounzain⁠ is the co-founder and CEO of ⁠HAYA Therapeutics⁠, a precision medicines company targeting the regulatory genome for cardiovascular diseases, fibrosis and cancer. He holds a PhD from the University of Leicester and was previously a researcher at Imperial College London, University College London and CHUV Lausanne University Hospital before starting HAYA in 2019, together with his co-founder Daniel Blessing.

Early on in his academic career Samir studied the so-called “dark genome” (also known as the “regulatory genome”), which at the time of discovery (2001) was considered “junk DNA”, i.e. the 98% of our DNA that apparently did not make or in any way affect our genes. More recent scientific research has discovered that this regulatory genome is key to understanding how our genes interact with our environment, and can therefore be useful in targeting environment-caused diseases like heart failure and cancer.

HAYA’s lead therapeutic candidate is HTX-001, an antisense oligonucleotide targeting Wisper, which is a tissue and cell-specific cardiac lncRNA known to play a role in heart failure. The company is also developing a pipeline of lncRNA-targeting candidates for the cell-specific treatment of diseases in other tissues, including the lungs and the microenvironment of solid tumor cancers. The added benefit of their drugs is that by targeting the “dark” 98%, instead of the 2%, they result in zero side effects: conventional drugs help patients treat their diseases but they also produce secondary unwanted effects because the proteins that they are targeting (in our 2%) are also responsible for other functions — this same issue does not exist when it comes to drugs which interact with the dark genome.

They have raised a total of $25M in funding backed by a strong consortium of investors, including Broadview Ventures, Apollo Health Ventures, 4SeeVentures, BioInnovator, Bernina Bioinvest, Humboldt and Schroder Adveq.

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This cover portrait was edited by ⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠

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This episode was produced in collaboration with startup days, taking place next year on May 14th 2025. Click ⁠⁠here⁠⁠ to purchase your ticket.

About Pascal Weber:

⁠Pascal Weber⁠ is the co-founder and CEO of ⁠Manukai⁠, an ETH spin-off automating repetitive programming tasks by leveraging available production data. He holds a PhD in Computational Science and Engineering from ETH and worked at Harvard and the ETH AI Center before starting Manukai in 2023.

The Manukai name comes from the agglutination of “manu”, short for “manufacturing”, and “kaizen”, a Japanese term often used to refer to the principle of continuous improvement in manufacturing. Manukai’s goal is to take each and every task that a polymechanic may be responsible for and automate them, while still requiring confirmation from the technician — think of it like AI playing autocomplete, and you telling it “yes” or “no”. This technology will help improve quality in these processes and increase their speed. It will also free the polymechanic to spend more of his or her time doing creative work, instead of repetitive, manual drudgery.

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This cover portrait was edited by www.smartportrait.io

This episode was sponsored by ⁠NordPass⁠. Use code “swisspreneur” at checkout to get 30% off Business and Teams plans.

About Nicole Kleger:

Nicole Kleger is the co-founder and CTO at sallea, a biotech startup enabling the cultivation of high-value, textured whole cuts of (lab) meat and fish. She holds a PhD in Materials Science from ETH and has been a Sports Instructor at Akademischer Sportverband Zürich since 2015. She started sallea in 2022.

sallea’s propriety scaffolds enable the cultivation of whole cuts of meat and fish, as opposed to the thin layers currently being produced. This in turn will enable the sale and consumption of these products in a non-processed way: we’ll be able to eat a lean fillet of lab meat, instead of eating lab meat sausage or ground lab meat. Furthermore, sallea’s scaffolding platform allows each of their customers to pre-define the texture, nutritional value, taste, and other key attributes of the end product.

They are currently raising CHF 2.2M in external funds. 

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This cover portrait was edited by www.smartportrait.io

This episode was co-produced with ⁠smzh⁠, your independent go-to partner in all matters relating to finance.

About Gzim Hasani:

⁠Gzim Hasani⁠ is the CEO of and a partner at ⁠smzh⁠, an independent financial advisory company headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. He holds a MSc in Banking and Finance and started his career working for Credit Suisse and Julius Baer, before venturing into entrepreneurship. In 2018, Hasani left the bank and founded Impegno & Partners, before then taking over smzh in 2019.

smzh’s goal is to join all types of financial advisory in one, thereby truly putting the customer in the driving seat, by allowing him or her to make holistic decisions. They offer advice in the areas of finance and investments, pensions, mortgages, insurance, real estate, and tax and law. smzh’s vision is to offer the best possible advice to all clients.

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Check out our FREE ⁠go-to-market masterclass⁠ with Ankita Mehta and Soumya Dash.

About Jürg Jost:

⁠Jürg Jost⁠ is the founder, former CEO and current CTO of the semiconductor manufacturer ⁠Spacetek Technology⁠. He holds a BSc in Electrical Engineering from Berner Fachhochschule BFH. Prior to starting Spacetek, Jürg worked as Head of Electrical Engineering Space Research & Planetary Sciences at the University of Bern.

Spacetek designs and builds time-of-flight mass spectrometers (TOF-MS), bringing space technology to Earth. Their focus is semiconductor manufacturing and the issues of process engineers, end-users (foundries) and OEMs (wafer fab equipment). In 2023, Spacetek closed its seed financing round with Swisscom Ventures and the Moonshot Fund (from Spectrum Value Management), and they also accelerated their commercial developments with leading semiconductor manufacturers.

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Check out our FREE ⁠go-to-market masterclass⁠.

About Gaëlle Andreatta:

⁠Gaëlle Andreatta⁠ is the co-founder and CTO of ⁠apheros⁠, a startup manufacturing metal foams for thermal, catalysis, and battery applications. She holds a PhD in Physics from Pierre and Marie Curie University and an MBA from ETH/HSG. Gaëlle worked for companies like Oxford Nanopore Technologies and CSEM before co-founding apheros in 2023.

apheros’ novel metal foams offer unprecedented properties due to their extremely high surface area and low density. The best way Gaëlle has of explaining how metal gets turned into a foam to people with little scientific background is through the metaphor of making meringue. apheros makes metal foams in a way that is “similar” to how you would froth your egg white. They foam their metal, shape it, and then use very high temperatures to set the shape. Their metal foam is useful for cooling down certain materials (in a similar way to how liquid cooling works), for kickstarting certain chemical reactions, and for ensuring the current collectors in lithium ion batteries work optimally. 

apheros is currently working closely with between 60 to 70 customers, and in talks with a dozen more. Their team is 2/3s women, which Gaëlle attributes not to any conscious decision on their part but to the fact that both co-founders are women, which probably encourages female applicants to apply.

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This episode was co-produced with ⁠smzh⁠, your independent go-to partner in all matters relating to finance.

About Stefan Schärer:

⁠Stefan Schärer⁠ is the co-founder and former CEO of the proptech startup ⁠Houzy⁠. Stefan previously founded the software company Fairgate and the real estate project management company Neubau Portal, and was briefly the CEO of Moneyhouse AG, before founding Houzy in 2017.

Houzy offers services like property search, mortgage comparison, a renovation costs check and energy efficiency optimization. In the beginning they chose not to overspend on complex marketing tools and instead worked hard to optimize their SEO, which gradually became easier as they drew more users to the platform. Stefan credits Houzy’s great marketing and product teams, as well as their smart money investors, with the success of the company. 

In 2022 UBS and Baloise acquired a joint majority stake in Houzy, and one year later Stefan stepped down from his CEO role. Nowadays he’s the President of the Swiss Ice Hockey Federation. 

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SMZH: tailor-made .holistic. for you.

⁠smzh⁠ is an independent financial services provider who is assisting both private and corporate clients with individual advice in the areas of finance & investments, pensions, mortgages, insurance, real estate and tax & law. Through a 360° Check-Up, smzh ensures that you receive customized and comprehensive financial planning according to your initial situation and with a view to achieving your wishes and goals, as well as being accompanied by our experts during implementation.

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The cover portrait was edited by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

About Fabio Ronga:

⁠Fabio Ronga⁠ is the co-founder and CEO of ⁠beqom⁠, a cloud-based compensation management solution. He holds a master's degree in Business Information Systems from HEC Lausanne and previously worked at Hyperion (bought by Oracle) and Outlooksoft (bought by SAP) before starting beqom in 2008.

Together with his co-founders (including Tanya Jansen and Stephan Pohl, who are still active in the company), Fabio built beqom to solve HR problems he himself had encountered earlier in his career. Serendipitously enough, someone Fabio used to know from Hyperion was on the board of a French company who had built the exact tech that Fabio and his co-founders needed, but was using it for different purposes. beqom was born out of a partnership with that company. Later on, when beqom was coming into its own, it merged with this French company.

beqom started out with Swiss headquarters and maintains them to this day. Fabio thinks this helped them be global-minded about their product building from day one: since Switzerland is such a linguistically and culturally fragmented country, Swiss founders cannot rely on their domestic market to keep them in business, like US companies can.

In 2022 beqom received a strategic investment of USD 300M from Sumeru Equity Partners. A few years prior, beqom had received another investment from Goldman Sachs, in exchange of which they promised a favorable exit scenario — this was their motivation for the 2022 Sumeru investment.

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The cover portrait was edited by⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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Check out our FREE go-to-market masterclass with Ankita Mehta and Soumya Dash.

About Priyanka Dutta Passecker:

⁠Priyanka Dutta Passecker⁠ is the co-founder and CEO of ⁠Healiva⁠, a biotech startup using advanced cell therapy to treat acute and chronic wounds. She holds a PhD in Neuroscience from Trinity College Dublin and worked for companies like UCB Pharma, Axol Bioscience Ltd and Bioseutica before starting Healiva in 2020.

2-3% of the elderly suffer from painful venous/arterial leg ulcers and nearly 25% of diabetics may develop diabetic foot ulcers in their lifetimes. This burden is borne by healthcare systems, which spend 2% of their budgets on wound management. Worst of all, about 60% of chronic wounds remain unhealed. That’s why Healiva is such a game changer: they use 3 non-virus-based enzymes from codfish pancreas, which, due to their provenance, are quite stable at room temperature, and therefore can be stored in a liquid form and used as a spray. They’re currently getting ready for pre-clinical studies to prove the safety and efficacy of their product.

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The cover portrait was edited by⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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This episode was co-produced with ⁠smzh⁠, your independent go-to partner in all matters relating to finance.

About Andreas Krümmel:

⁠Andreas Krümmel⁠ is the former CEO at Generali Switzerland and a current board member at ⁠SMZH⁠, an independent partner in all matters related to finance, insurance, real estate, tax and law, for both private and corporate clients. He holds an MBA from HSG and spent 20 years working in insurance, for companies like Winterthur Group, AXA and Generali. 

During his chat with Silvan, Andreas discussed his key leadership principles (which boil down to simplifying things to the maximum, and listening before deciding), reminisced over Switzerland’s slow digitization process from the 80s until now, and reflected on the role insurtech startups are playing in today’s landscape.

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SMZH: tailor-made .holistic. for you.
smzh is an independent financial services provider who is assisting both private and corporate clients with individual advice in the areas of finance & investments, pensions, mortgages, insurance, real estate and tax & law. Through a 360° Check-Up, smzh ensures that you receive customized and comprehensive financial planning according to your initial situation and with a view to achieving your wishes and goals, as well as being accompanied by our experts during implementation.

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The cover portrait was edited by⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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This episode was sponsored by ⁠NordPass⁠. Use code “swisspreneur” at checkout to get 30% off Business and Teams plans.

About Alessandro Ofner:

⁠Alessandro Ofner⁠ is the co-founder and co-CEO of ⁠Microcaps⁠, a startup developing breakthrough technology to naturally encapsulate ingredients and fragrances into visually appealing micro-capsules. He holds a PhD from ETH and started his company in 2018, as soon as he finished his postgraduate studies.

Microcaps’ use cases range from nutrition (natural encapsulation of nutrition products to protect ingredients and improve performance), to cosmetics (encapsulation solutions for ethanol-free perfume and serum products) and pharmaceuticals (a patented approach to sustained release with oral and injectable application). To protect their product, they’ve successfully applied for 11 different patents, which makes it so that their partners don’t have to worry about copycats. 

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The cover portrait was edited by⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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This episode was co-produced with the ⁠Female Founders Initiative⁠.

About Regula Buob:

⁠Regula Buob⁠ is the founder of ⁠SoftTec⁠, a consultancy that offers services related to both technical and soft skills. She is also a coach for early stage startups and scale-ups. Regula holds a master’s degree in Special Education and another one in Career Counseling. She founded SoftTec in 2009. 

Regula went into the education field because it was a way to convince her somewhat conservative father to allow her to study at university — in this field, she could reliably make money. Her background in education is what sets her apart as a startup coach. During her chat with our co-host Merle, Regula discussed why Switzerland supports its startups well in terms of education but not in terms of funding, why she thinks we should invest 1-2% of Switzerland’s pension fund into Swiss startups, and why there is an urgent need to change the Swiss “failure culture”.  

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The cover portrait was edited by⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

This episode was sponsored by ⁠⁠smzh⁠⁠, your independent go-to partner in all matters relating to finance.

About Tobias Reichmuth & Marc P. Bernegger:

⁠Tobias Reichmuth⁠ and ⁠Marc P. Bernegger⁠ are two serial entrepreneurs and startup investors who together have built ⁠Maximon⁠, an incubator for impactful, science-based and scalable companies providing healthy aging and rejuvenation solutions. Tobias holds a PhD in Business Administration from EBS Universität für Wirtschaft und Recht, and Marc holds a master’s degree in Law from UZH.

Tobias’ interest in the longevity topic was first sparked back in 2016, when he was studying at the Singularity University, in California, and heard the process of aging referred to as a sickness — which, given the right tools and science, could be combatted. In 2021 he started Maximon together with his friend, Marc.

Maximon builds companies along the longevity value-chain, from enablers such as science-based supplements, genetic improvements, and personalized treatments, to necessities such as life-long learning, healthspan-insurances for centennials, to sustainable asset management solutions replacing today’s pensions and co-living for active and healthy seniors. Marc and Tobias also host a longevity conference, called Longevity Investors, which addresses the investor community and brings together science and capital. 

Maximon holds substantial shares in all of their ventures. This way there is no need for hidden fees, and the incentives of both Maximon and the founders are aligned: their common goal is to increase the value of company shares as much as possible. Founders also receive funding up to Series A, as well as hands-on operational support from Marc and Tobias. 

Marc and Tobias have invested CHF 10M of their own money into the Maximon fund, and they don’t pay themselves salaries. It’s the long term upside that interests them. 

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SMZH: tailor-made .holistic. for you.smzh is an independent financial services provider who is assisting both private and corporate clients with individual advice in the areas of finance & investments, pensions, mortgages, insurance, real estate and tax & law. Through a 360° Check-Up, smzh ensures that you receive customized and comprehensive financial planning according to your initial situation and with a view to achieving your wishes and goals, as well as being accompanied by our experts during implementation.

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‍The cover portrait was edited by⁠ ⁠⁠⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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This episode was co-produced by ⁠smzh⁠, your independent go-to partner in all matters relating to finance.

About Aurelia Frick:

⁠Aurelia Frick⁠ is an advisory and board member and the former Foreign Minister of Liechtenstein. She’s got a PhD in Law, but her journey took some unexpected turns. After working in a big law firm in Zurich, she quickly realized that the life of a lawyer wasn’t for her. She felt isolated and bored, missing the chance to interact with people and make a real difference. So she leaped into politics, where she could actually see the impact of her work.

She spent 10 years in the government, tackling everything from foreign affairs to culture, and learned a lot about navigating complex environments. Now, she’s on the executive board at SMZH, a company helping people with finance, insurance, real estate, and more. She’s passionate about supporting startups, pushing for better education, and finding new ways to solve old problems. For Aurelia, it’s all about doing what matters and making a real impact, whether it’s in the boardroom or the classroom.

The cover portrait was edited by⁠ ⁠⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠⁠.

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SMZH: tailor-made .holistic. for you.
smzh is an independent financial services provider who is assisting both private and corporate clients with individual advice in the areas of finance & investments, pensions, mortgages, insurance, real estate and tax & law. Through a 360° Check-Up, smzh ensures that you receive customized and comprehensive financial planning according to your initial situation and with a view to achieving your wishes and goals, as well as being accompanied by our experts during implementation.

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Über Beni Huggel:

⁠Benni Huggel⁠ ist Gründer und Head of Sales bei der ⁠Athlete's Network⁠, einer Organisation, die Athleten beim Übergang in ihre Nachsportkarriere unterstützt. Der ehemalige Profifussballer spielte für den FC Basel und die Schweizer Nationalmannschaft, für die er über 40 Länderspiele absolvierte. Nach seinem Rücktritt gründete er die Athlete's Network, um Sportler dabei zu unterstützen, ihre Fähigkeiten und Erfahrungen in die Arbeitswelt einzubringen.

Die Idee für das Athlete’s Network kam Beni auf einer Autofahrt im November 2019. Am nächsten Tag schrieb er einen LinkedIn Post darüber und erhielt nicht nur enormen Zuspruch, sondern fand auch seine späteren Mitgründer über diesen Weg.

Das Athlete’s Network unterstützt ehemalige Spitzensportler:innen und -sportler beim Einstieg in die Arbeitswelt nach der Sportkarriere. Mit über 2500 Athletinnen und Athleten und über 100 Partnerfirmen funktioniert das Athlete’s Netzwerk wie eine two-sided Plattform, bei der die Partnerfirmen explizit nach Spitzensportlern, weil sie davon überzogen sind, dass diese Fähigkeiten mitbringen, die man nur im Spitzensport lernt. Das sogenannte Athlete’s Mindset - Disziplin, Fokus, Ausdauer, Resilienz - ist für diese Firmen Grund genug, um über fehlende Arbeitserfahrung hinwegzusehen.

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Das Titelbild wurde von⁠ ⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠ bearbeitet.

This episode was co-produced/sponsored by ⁠NordPass⁠. Use code “swisspreneur” at checkout to get 30% off Business and Teams plans.

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About Karolis Arbaciauskas:

⁠Karolis Arbaciauskas⁠ is the Head of Product & Business Development at ⁠NordPass⁠, a password management solution and part of Nord Security, the world’s leading cybersecurity company. He holds an MA in Economics from The Berlin School of Economics and Law and previously worked for companies like L'Oréal, Nordea and Danske Bank before joining NordPass in 2020.

During his chat with Silvan, Karolis tried to dispel the myth that cybersecurity concerns are a milestone which ought only be available to developed scaleups — he thinks being safe online should be something which startups tackle from day one. He also provided insight into the main causes of data breaches, spoke about how cybersecurity and the dark web are connected and introduced the concept of Ransomware as a Service, which basically consists of more skilled hackers building and selling software that less skilled hackers can use to hack their victims.

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The cover portrait was edited by⁠ ⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠.

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About Samantha Anderson:

⁠Samantha Anderson⁠ is the co-founder and CEO at ⁠DePoly⁠, a cleantech startup recycling hard-to-recycle plastic. She’s originally from Canada and holds a PhD in Carbon Capture and Storage from EPFL (her studies being the reason she moved to Switzerland). Sam worked as a researcher for some years before starting DePoly in 2019. 

DePoly tackles a very pressing issue: out of all plastics produced, 90% are not recycled, but instead get incinerated (resulting in atmospheric pollution), or end up in the ocean (which is how we get microplastics in our food), or simply become litter (and take 500 years to decompose). Only “easy to recycle” plastic items such as bottles or clean packaging are actually recycled.

DePoly’s cutting-edge recycling process converts plastics into high-quality raw materials without compromising their quality. Not only is it energy-efficient, but it also has the remarkable ability to handle even the most challenging streams of PET plastic and textiles, including mixed, dirty post-consumer and post-industrial waste that are traditionally considered unrecyclable.

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This cover portrait was edited by ⁠www.smartportrait.io

About Silvan Leibacher:

⁠Silvan Leibacher⁠ is the co-founder and CEO of ⁠Eggfield⁠, a startup replacing eggs in the food industry through plant-based and clean label ingredients. He holds a BSc in Business Management from ZHAW, and previously co-founded the bakery Leibacher Biber-Manufaktur AG in 2010 with his siblings, before starting Eggfield in 2020.

During his time at his family bakery, Silvan realized the impact that the use of animal products has on CO2 emissions. While there were well-known alternatives to dairy products, this was not the case for eggs, which motivated Silvan to search for a solution. He found it in History: back in WW2, soldiers were already using aquafaba (which is the water used for boiling chickpeas) as an egg substitute. 

Together with his food engineer co-founder, Silvan decided to build Eggfield, a company selling clean label egg alternatives based on aquafaba to other companies, which then use them to bake cakes or create sauces. They are not (at least for the moment) interested in going B2C or selling alternatives to scrambled or boiled eggs.                                      

Eggfield is currently fundraising through the Swisspreneur Syndicate. Check out ⁠their deal⁠ to learn more.

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The cover portrait was edited by⁠ www.smartportrait.io⁠.

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About Johannes Tiefenthaler:

⁠Johannes Tiefenthaler⁠ is the co-founder and co-CEO of ⁠neustark⁠, a cleantech startup deploying carbon dioxide removal technology. He holds a PhD from ETH and started neustark back in 2019.

neustark’s ambition is to remove one million tons of CO2 by 2030. After three years in business, neustark has 10 operational CO2 storage plants, and a dedicated team of over 50 professionals driving this mission forward. Limiting global warming to 1.5°C implies reaching net zero CO2 emissions by 2050 according to the IPCC, and next to substantially reducing emissions, this target will only be possible by globally deploying carbon removal (CDR) solutions at the scale of billions of tons of CO2.

They have received a Gold Standard certification for their CDR methodology and have raised a total of $20K in funding over 3 rounds, with Innosuisse and Technology Fund being their most recent investors.

The cover portrait was edited by⁠ www.smartportrait.io⁠.

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About Christian Hirt:

⁠Christian Hirt⁠ is the co-founder and CEO of ⁠AtlasVR⁠, a startup harnessing the power of virtual reality for vocational training. He holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from ETH and previously worked for Rheinmetal Air Defence and the Swiss Armed Forces before starting Atlas VR in 2022.

AtlasVR provides a solution to complement and substitute industrial vocational training, while eliminating many challenges faced by traditional training. They achieve this by harnessing the potential of virtual reality technology, which allows trainees to learn and practice industrial tasks such as operating complex production machines in an interactive virtual environment.

AtlasVR has planned to raise a total of CHF 900K in 2024, of which CHF 200K have already been closed. They hope to close the remaining CHF 700K until the end of October, and will be doing so partially through the Swisspreneur Syndicate. Click ⁠here⁠ to learn more about the deal.

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About Francisco Fernandez:

⁠Francisco Fernandez⁠ is the founder and former CEO of ⁠Avaloq⁠, a front-to-back software provider for financial institutions around the world. He holds a MSc in Computer Science from ETH, and was CEO at Avaloq until 2017, chairman from 2018 to 2021, and has been a board member since 2021.

Avaloq develops software that can be deployed flexibly through cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) or on-premises, and they also offer Banking Operations outsourcing through their Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) model. They have 160+ clients in 35 countries and currently employ over 2500 people. In October 2020, Avaloq was acquired by NEC Corporation for $2.2B.

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This episode was co-produced by the ⁠⁠Female Founders Initiative⁠⁠.

About Greta Preatoni:

⁠Greta Preatoni⁠ is the co-founder and CEO of ⁠Mynerva⁠, a startup developing a groundbreaking device for the treatment of neuropathy. She holds a PhD in Neuroengineering from ETH and started Mynerva in 2023, as soon as she finished her studies.

Neuropathy in general is a condition which causes both loss of sensation in the nerves and, paradoxically, chronic pain. It can be caused by diabetes, chemotherapy and even by COVID. Most of Mynerva’s patients are diabetics, who before accessing their solution were forced to rely on opioids with severe side effects. Despite relieving pain, the drugs also increased the likelihood of falls (from lack of sensation in the patient’s foot soles). 

The Mynerva team created Leia, a peerless non-invasive device with a sensorized insole that captures the information from the foot-ground interaction and translates it into electrical impulses delivered on the skin. The optimally designed electrode placement and shape, together with AI-based algorithms, are able to directly target the nerves and reduce neuropathic pain. All health-related parameters are collected by the sensorized insole and a wearable bracelet to drive data-driven individualized therapies.

At present, Mynerva is actively focusing on obtaining the necessary certifications for their medical device. 

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