Venturelab boosting Swiss start-ups

Are you a Swiss start-up in need a helping hand to progress? If so, look no further than Venturelab, which designs and implements programmes to bring the best start-up talents to the next level of development. Together with its successful founders and key academic and industry partners, Venturelab‘s team operates out of Zurich, Lausanne and St. Gallen. Its core mission is to support entrepreneurs and help them raise funding and achieve business growth during the course of their company’s evolution.

Venturelab has been running the Venture Kick programme successfully since its launch ten years ago. In the process, it has helped kickstart more than 530 spin-off projects with over CHF 20 million in seed funding, resulting in the creation of over 390 incorporated companies that have cumulatively raised CHF 1.8 billion of investment. And thanks to the Venture Leaders programme, Swiss National start-up teams have taken part to roadshows in Silicon Valley, Boston, New York and China, and received support on their fundraising and global expansion path. Venturelab has also been commissioned by Innosuisse, the Swiss Innovation Agency, to run the Innosuisse Start-up Training courses, where industry-specific entrepreneurs and investors share their know-how with young entrepreneurs, who also receive personal coaching.

“Switzerland offers a great environment for innovative and entrepreneurial minds, which is also leveraged by sport stakeholders,” says Venturelab managing partner Jordi Montserrat. “The Global Innovation Index ranked Switzerland the most innovative country for the seventh consecutive year. We are proud of the fact that 85 of the TOP 100 Swiss start-ups of 2017 started life with Venturelab. They include a number of young businesses operating in fields related to sport or physical activity, such as Mindmaze – which recently acquired sportstech start-up Gaitup –, Bcomp, Fieldwizz, Aerotain, BestMile, Climeworks, Flyability, L.E.S.S., and VirtaMed.”

Several Venturelab alumni also took part in the inaugural edition of THE SPOT, ThinkSport’s new sport and innovation event, held last month in Lausanne. An official partner of the event, Venturelab organised an international startup battle, which saw 40 startups pitching in front of a knowledgeable audience.

During THE SPOT it was also announced that a new incubator for start-ups specialising in sports-related fields will be set up to further stimulate the unique sports ecosystem in Lausanne and the region.

Find out more about Venturelab: www.venturelab.ch.