Economic miracle from 1000 venture kicks
What happens when you give 1,000 researchers 10,000 Swiss francs each for their business idea and show them how to convince customers and win over investors? Innovative solutions for social challenges and promising jobs are created. Even Venture Kick never dreamed that this would lead to an economic miracle.
Swiss startup development accelerator Venture Kick can look back on a portfolio of 675 high-tech companies with 13,305 jobs and a financing volume of CHF 7.8 billion. This represents a veritable small economic miracle created.
World-class research as raw material
Research at Swiss universities is leading in many areas on a global scale. Switzerland is the world champion in patents and manages to attract the best talent. The PC, the computer mouse and the Internet were invented in Switzerland. Apart from the mouse (Logitech), however, the commercial potential of the inventions was primarily exploited in Silicon Valley. Venture Kick was launched in 2007 to change that and double the number of startups from Swiss universities. The idea was to kick researchers out of the labs and onto the market, turning them into successful entrepreneurs.
Over 50 million for 1000 startup projects
In addition to financial support of up to CHF 150,000, the company founders benefited from intensive coaching and a widespread network to international investors and industry experts. "To successfully bring innovations to market, startups need to build strong business cases that excite future customers, partners and investors," says Co-Managing Director Beat Schillig. As of today, 783 companies have been founded from the 1000 startup projects that have mastered the first stage and received 10,000 Swiss francs in the last 16 years. Of these, 675 companies are still on the market today.
In addition to the 50 million francs in seed capital from Venture Kick, the startups were funded with a further 7.8 billion francs from investors. Thanks to the newly launched Kickfund, startups can gain a total of more than one million in seed capital via Venture Kick.
More and more female founders create promising jobs
From 2007 to 2012, fewer than 20% of startups had women on their founding team. This proportion has risen to a pleasing 48% in the last three years. In addition to the high survival rate of 85%, Venture Kick startups show strong growth momentum. Over the last 10 years, jobs have grown by an average of 19% to 13,305 today. About half of the startups originate from ETHZ and EPFL. Today, Venture Kick startups can be found in 24 cantons.
Venture Kick's portfolio includes several global market leaders in high-growth future markets, such as Climeworks (CO2 direct air capture technology) or InSphero (3D cell cultures for pharmaceutical research). Nationally, startups like Planted (plant-based meat) are also making a splash with more and more consumers.
Number 1 in Europe with global impact
Venture Kick is organized as a foundation and is funded exclusively by private donors and foundations. "When we launched our initiative, we knew the importance of our mission," says Pascale Vonmont, president of the Strategy Committee. "But the results far exceeded our expectations. The 155-fold leverage of investors for every franc provided by Venture Kick and startups developing good solutions to global societal problems make us proud!"
The operational team behind Venture Kick doesn't want to rest on its laurels and aims to create more than 20,000 jobs by 2027. "The number of talented researchers from Swiss universities who apply to Venture Kick with start-up intentions is increasing. In order to fully exploit this potential for Switzerland as a business location, we are looking for more partners," says Beat Schillig. "The 1000th Kick is history. We will kick the next 1000 startup projects even faster and better."
Source: www.venturekick.ch
