Venture capital creates jobs

Dear reader

Sometimes I am asked why we pay so much attention to financing rounds at startupticker. A very good reason for this can be found in the third Swiss Startup Radar, which has just been published. Start-ups with venture capital create three times as many jobs as start-ups without investors. They thus have an importance from an economic point of view: the fact that 50,000 people now work in technology-based, ambitious young companies is thanks mainly to companies with venture capital.

This is just one result of our analysis in the new magazine. It also includes statements on the innovative strength of Swiss start-ups in an international comparison, foreign direct investment, the proportion of women at the top of companies, the effects of the corona crisis and the historical development of Swiss investments compared with benchmark countries, such as Sweden, Israel and UK. 

The results show that Switzerland has been slowly catching up in terms of the number of investments since 2017, but still cannot quite keep up with the best in terms of the total amount invested. So it’s good news that December started with several large financing rounds: CHF 20 million went to young robotics company Anybotics and to the electric aircraft start-up H55 run by Solar Impulse pilot André Borschberg, and biotech company Noema secured CHF 54 million. Corporations are also digging deep into their pockets to finance young Swiss companies: raw materials trading company Trafigura is investing a total of USD 62 million in its collaboration with hydrogen pioneer H2 Energy.

Clearspace also focused on a large number. The company has signed a contract worth EUR 86 million with the European Space Agency (ESA), and will conduct a space mission on its behalf to remove space debris from orbit around the earth. 

And another Swiss start-up, Lunchgate, has attracted the attention of Google. Lunchgate is the first Swiss reservation platform to be integrated directly into the various Google platforms via the international partner programme ‘Reserve with Google’. 

I would also like to point out two background articles. We asked CompPair – the start-up has recently won several awards – and Haelixa which milestones the two companies have achieved lately and what they are now working on. 

The application deadlines for several important awards are currently running: our list provides an overview. And yesterday the winners of the Boldbrain Startup Challenge were chosen: the overall winner is a cleantech company that wants to compete with Tesla’s wallbox.

Have a good weekend
Stefan Kyora

Editor in Chief, Startupticker.ch