This week, Stefan Kyora, editor in chief of Startupticker, will report directly from California. He joins the five Swisscom Startup Challenge winners on their trip to Silicon Valley and San Francisco. The program starts today with a visit of eBay and a pitching event at the Hana House in Palo Alto.
This year 201 start-ups applied for the Swisscom Startup Challenge. At the end of the process five start-ups were selected: Advertima, AlgoTrader, ecoRobotix, 1Drop, OneSky. The support program of the challenge started already during the finals. In August all finalists participated in a boot camp and pitch training with Chris Burry, Co-CEO of USMAC, a high-profile pitch coach from Silicon Valley.
Today, the week-long tailor-made development program in Silicon Valley starts. Swisscom has used its network to organise individual meetings for each participating start-up in order to meet investors and potential business partners. The quality and diversity of the meetings make the trip unique.
One of the winners, Advertima, decided to bring along another person to Silicon Valley - at their own expense. Iman Nahvi, CEO of the start-up, said, "We decided to travel in twos, as we believe that our technology and product are of Silicon Valley-caliber. We want to be challenged both technologically and from the business side. That is why our CTO Simon Ebner accompanies me. "
Its a well considered investment decision as Advertima's product has already proved its worth in Europe. Nahvi and Ebner are therefore primarily concerned with creating conditions for further growth. "We are looking forward to making contacts with potential scaling partners, as our technology is scalable primarily through partners who want to enable their customers to automate customer interaction in the physical world”, Nahvi explained.
The program starts today with a kick-off and „a look behind the curtains” at eBay followed by a first training session at the Swisscom Outpost in Palo Alto and an evening event with investor Alex Fries. For the five startups this is the first opportunity to pitch.
Several articles will be published on the website during the week, as we accompany the start-ups and talk to representatives of young and established Swiss companies with offices in Silicon Valley.
Stefan Kyora’s trip is supported by Swisscom.
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