Nothing but winners

Dear reader

The technical functioning of the Swiss financial centre is guaranteed largely by the stock exchange operator SIX. The security of SIX applications is literally business-critical for Switzerland as a business location. In search of a new, and at the same time simple and highly secure, user two-factor authentication, SIX has now found it right on its doorstep: at ETH spin-off Futurae.

Six is not the only company that relies on the expertise of start-ups. At the beginning of the week, SBB started a pilot of Oureka’s bike-sharing service MatchMyBike at three major railway stations in western Switzerland.

For the Valais-based company, it is the first step into the national market – a step that Zurich’s Komed Health has already achieved. Now an expansion into Europe is on the agenda, helped in large part by winning the Charité Digital Health Award, awarded by Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, one of the largest university hospitals in Europe.

Digital Switzerland, the initiative of large companies, also collaborates with start-ups. Read our interview with Ringier CEO Marc Walder.

Last week’s financing rounds: Basel-based biotech company Polyneuron and Zurich AI start-up Deepcode successfully completed seed rounds. Polyneuron’s investors include Zürcher Kantonalbank. We spoke to Daniel Schoch, head of Startup Finance at ZKB, about its strategy and goals.

The application deadline for the Swisscom Startup Challenge expires at the beginning of next week. A week later, the registration window closes for the Blockchain Competition, Kickstart Accelerator and the Agri & Co Challenge. Incidentally, the latter competitions not only have their deadline in common, the organisers also expressly invited foreign start-ups to submit their dossiers. Finally an event note: The first IPO Day in Lausanne will take place on 13 June. 

Have a happy Pentecost.

Jost Dubacher
Editor startupticker.ch