20 years of world-class start-ups - Swiss Made
In 2004, the Venturelab founding team led by Jordi Montserrat and Beat Schillig set out with the aim of launching world-class start-ups from Switzerland. At the beginning, the venture seemed just as audacious as the Swiss Alinghi team's plan to win the Americas Cup against the team from Silicon Valley. 20 years later, both teams are still successfully sailing close to the wind.
Schillig, an entrepreneur and passionate sailor, had already set the IFJ Institute for Young Entrepreneurs on course when he was offered the opportunity to set up a Swiss-wide training program for high-tech entrepreneurship for the Swiss Confederation in 2004. His team won the Innosuisse tender for this program of national importance. Schillig was fascinated by Alinghi's success and said to himself: "If we can beat Silicon Valley in sailing, then we can do the same with start-ups!"
Since its launch 20 years ago, Venturelab has inspired and trained more than 100,000 academics at Swiss universities and research institutes and helped thousands of innovative start-ups to build successful global high-tech companies. Jordi Montserrat, the founding partner of Schillig, sums up Venturelab's recipe for success: "The young must learn from the best!". Accordingly, Venturelab has promoted global dialog between founders and successful start-up companies, investors and leading industry representatives from the very beginning.
Every year since 2006, Venture Leaders teams or "Swiss Startup National Teams" in biotech, cleantech, fintech, medtech, mobile or technology have traveled to the leading startup hubs around the globe to meet investors and learn.
In 2007, the Venturelab team launched the Venture Kick program on behalf of the Gebert Rüf Foundation and the Ernst Göhner Foundation. Today, founders from Swiss universities can win more than CHF 1 million in seed capital in a competitive process. To date, a total of 1,084 start-up projects have been financed, creating over 13,000 jobs.
In 2011, the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award was launched by Venturelab to celebrate the best Swiss startups every year. The TOP 100 magazine is now published in five different languages (German, French, English, Chinese and Japanese) and enjoys a growing global fan base.
Today, Venturelab can look back on world-class start-ups such as Climeworks, GetYourGuide, InSphero and Scandit, among many others, which were able to rely on its navigation aid in the start-up phase. The economic significance of these start-ups is considerable: Venturelab estimates an investment volume of around CHF 15 billion and 25,000 jobs created. The Swiss ecosystem has also gained international recognition and respect.
"The race is far from over. We feel a strong tailwind, but we still see an incredible amount of potential in new technologies relating to AI, quantum computing and our sustainable supply of energy, food and medicine. Our team is continuing to trim its sails and wants to make up further ground in the global competition," says Co-Managing Director Stefan Steiner from Venturelab.
Source: www.venturelab.swiss
