How do start-ups struggle through?

Dear reader

In general, entrepreneurs are always faced with the question of which ideas should be vigorously pursued, even against resistance, and which ones should be adjusted or changed. The crisis has not really changed that, except that the uncertainty has become even greater and more is at stake. Find out in our article how Qualysense and UrbanAlps are tackling this challenge.

Crisis management is also an important topic in our interview with Jean-Michel Pittet. Today he heads the important Adobe location in Basel and was director and VP of engineering for many years at the Basel software house Day, which was taken over by Adobe 10 years ago. Day is one of the few Swiss software companies that survived the bursting of the dot.com bubble, was sold to a US company and where the team still plays an important role in the group.

On Monday, Seco announced how science and technology-based start-ups with scalable business models will be supported with guarantees. Start-ups can apply for guarantees of up to CHF 1 million only if their canton of location participates in the programme. Participation is high in western Switzerland, Ticino also takes part, but only a few cantons in German-speaking Switzerland are involved. Basel-Stadt, Zug and Bern will decide next week. Zurich will definitely not participate. The background can be found in our article.

The events show that the political framework plays an important role for start-ups. The new Swiss Entrepreneurs & Startup Association wants to influence politics on behalf of start-ups, and several young showpiece companies are already members.

In order to do justice to the importance of the political arena, we launched a new directory this week in collaboration with the Swiss Entrepreneurs Foundation. Our Initiatives Directory lists 30 important proposals from both parliamentary councils over the past five years and which phase these transactions are in. This directory will be updated after each session in future.

This week there was again a relatively high number of financing rounds in the millions. Many start-ups that are driving digitalisation in various industries received funding, including Altoida, Vereign and Locatee. But money also went to microtech company Eldico Scientific and Zippsafe, which has developed a space-saving cloakroom solution.

Speaking of financing, next week the first Joint Investor and Venture Day from SICTIC and Startup INVEST will take place online. More than 150 participants have already registered. We present the 10 start-ups that will pitch in front of investors.

Finally, deadlines: applications for the First Ventures programme for entrepreneurial university projects close on 15 May. The application deadline for Venture Leaders China ends on 18 May, and applicants for the IFAS Innovation Challenge and the ‘Solve for Tomorrow’ initiative have until 20 May.

Have a good weekend
Stefan Kyora

Editor in Chief, Startupticker.ch