Endurance is worth it

Dear reader

From an economic point of view, the start-up ecosystem is a laboratory of ideas: it tests how far new concepts will carry, provides innovations for niche markets and taps findings from basic research for their economic potential. The philosophy behind it: make it or break it. But things are not going anywhere fast: in the area of infrastructure construction and large-scale industry, it can take years – as in drug development – for an innovation to prevail. Founded in 2007, Industry 4.0 start-up Casantec has stuck to it and has continued to optimise its forecasting software for plant maintenance. Now the Zurich company has been taken over by ABB, which will integrate Casantec’s tools into its own offering.

Another global megatrend is e-mobility: it will change vehicle construction fundamentally and along with it entire supply chains. Vaud-based Green Motion, founded in 2009, is prepared for this and builds highly efficient charging stations. Now it is launching a pilot project with the conglomerate Tata in three major Indian cities.

The interaction of big companies and start-ups is working better and better, demonstrated by the results of the most recent Kickstart programme released today: corporates like Credit Suisse, Migros or Swisscom have started 40 projects with the participating start-ups.

The conditions surrounding a thriving ecosystem were addressed in our report on ‘Dynamic Equity Split’. In future, the Zurich cantonal Department of Finance intends to allow founders to be able to adjust their share quotas easily to their actual commitment over a certain period of time.

Two financing rounds this week: the Lausanne-based seafood platform ProcSea collected EUR 6.5 million, and the initiators of the AI-based shopping platform masha.ai generated EUR 500,000 in seed funding.

In addition, the three founders of venture capital firm Wingman Ventures – Pascal Mathis, Lukas Weder and Alex Stöckl – announced that their new seed investment fund is now active. At the first closing, CHF 40 million of the targeted CHF 60 million had been pledged.

Today brought the first news on the next edition of >>venture>>. A total of CHF 500,000 can be won and applications are now open. The application deadline expires shortly for further competitions: you can apply for the IMD Startup Competition until 11 November; university spin-offs have until 15 November for First Ventures, and fintech start-ups have until 22 November to apply for the Swiss Fintech Awards.

You can meet me next week at the IPO Day in Zurich – the names of the start-ups involved are now known. The following week, Global Entrepreneurship Week takes place throughout Switzerland –  our article gives an overview. Finally, I would like to point out bench2biz, a workshop for scientists with entrepreneurial ideas, for which you can register until 14 November.

Have a relaxing weekend.

Jost Dubacher
Editor, startupticker.ch