June 19, 2015
Girl power in the start-up scene
Dear reader
This year, venture competition celebrated its 10th anniversary and thus at its awards ceremony at ETH on Monday, 10 successful former winners of the competition were also in attendance. As so often is the case with Swiss start-ups, there was not a single woman among them – which made the subsequent awards ceremony all the more surprising. Both the start-up CUTISS, which won the award for the best business plan, and Pregnostics, winner of the business idea category, are run by women.
They were not the only female entrepreneurs to make headlines this week. Antje Kunze of SmarterBetterCities reported the completion of a financing round, and the two women founders of Sun Biosciences won $100,000 at the World FOUNDER Forum in Stockholm.
Their success demonstrates that the potential exists and various support organisations are endeavouring to better exploit it. The CTI will implement increased support for young female entrepreneurs as part of its measures for 2017-2020, which also include targeted promotion of transfer projects and start-up companies already in the growth phase. You can find out more in our exclusive article.
In addition, this week several Swiss start-ups announced collaborations with large companies: Easysys with UBS, Mila with ewz and CAScination with German medtech company Med-El; in addition, Debiopharm has acquired a processing technology from Spinomix. An interesting survey from Microsoft Germany, released this week, highlights the obstacles and opportunities that are a feature of such collaborations.
Numerous events are scheduled for the coming two weeks. The awards ceremonies of both the WA de Vigier Foundation and Startfeld Diamant take place next week; the following week, serial entrepreneur and top investor Christophe F. Maire is in Zurich, along with Asia Night and the Startupfair. And when it comes to women entrepreneurs, networker and entrepreneur Angie Chang from Silicon Valley will speak in Biel and Zurich, and eight female mentees from the Amplify Program 2015 will present their projects in Zurich.
Have an inspiring weekend.
Stefan Kyora
Managing Editor, startupticker.ch
News
The new Swiss Venture Capital Report was published on 26 January. It analyses 304 financing rounds closed in 2020 and includes further article such as an interview with Michael Hengartner, President of the ETH Board, and a list of Swiss "soonicorns". 
