A swiss high-tech startup in Iraq!

Swiss high-tech can now be found in Iraq thanks to the efforts of a company that provides surveillance systems. Their recent press release highlights recent products used with success in the battlefield....
Macroswiss S.A - Armed Forces International

Swiss innovation inspired by WEF?

Another short piece on some examples of missed opportunities for Switzerland.. and a roadmap based on the WEF meeting:

Swiss news from swissinfo, the Swiss news platform

OECD on Swiss Innovation

The OECD report surveys Switzerland's economy. THe part on innovation is a good read. No real brekathrough remedies but some suggestions always good repeating:
- focus on the innovative capacity of SMEs
- increase the participation in tertiary education
- shrink the gap between basic and applied research

For details, please check the report that you can find at:

Economic Survey of Switzerland 2006: Innovation: areas for improvement

An EPFL researcher in Red Herring

Christof Faller is part of Red Herring Cover Story "Lab Talent" (Nov 05) . Cristof has developed a new format for compressing surround sound so it can be transferred and then restored to full quality. His web page is here.

Venture Ideas @ EPFL

In collaboration with VentureLab, EPFL's Innovation Network has coorganized a conference on Innovation. Most of the presentations are available on video streams. The bad news is that they are in French. The good news is that people attending it loved some of the presentations. Feel free to view them when you have time!

Entrepreneurs needed also in the manufacturing sector!

Switzerland needs to innovate its industrial base. This is the rallying cry from a group of political and business leaders. It's great to see entrepreneurship cited as a key component of this sector as well. CTI is involved in the effort. Article in Swissinfo

A Swiss master entrepreneur

Willy Michel has built up two successful high tech Swiss companies, a feat that has won him a Master Entrepreneur award from Ernst & Young Switzerland.

It is only the second time in the eight-year history of the Swiss Entrepreneur of the Year competition that the jury has granted the distinction...

You can read my story about Willy Michel's rise from the lab to chairman of the board on the front page of swissinfo by clicking the title of this entry.

Kelkoo founder joins Index Ventures

Index Ventures announced today that Pierre Chappaz, the founder of the online shopping engine Kelkoo, is now an Entrepreneur in Residence, with the Swiss-UK fund manager.

In case Kelkoo doesn't ring a bell. It was a French dotcom acquired in 2004 by Yahoo! for about half a billion euros. It was a "deal of the year".

Chappaz is well known among French entrepreneurs and investors. He also spent about six months with Yahoo after the acquisition, so he has a lot of experience and a valuable network to bring to Index' portfolio companies, at least to the ones doing business on the Internet.

He's already on the board of at least one Index Ventures investment, Photoways, a French online photo company.

The French entrepreneur is based in Geneva now and has his own blog Kelblog where you can find is his point of view (in French) on spam, online business models, and mountain climbing.

"Pierre's experience is highly unique in Europe and we are delighted that he has chosen to join us as an Entrepreneur in Residence," said Index Ventures in its press announcement on the topic.

Top 100 Swiss startups (by Valerie Thompson)

Actelion, a biotechnology company, The Bee Company, a call center and CRM outsourcing company, and Mobilizone, a wireless gadget retailer and service provider, what do these three Swiss tech firms have in common?

Besides all being less than ten years old, they have all created employment, some 1678 jobs, if my math is correct.

This is just one nugget of information that can be found at Top 100 Swiss Start-ups.http://www.venturelab.ch/dt/top100.asp.

The list is still under construction and new entries can be added. It is being maintained by the people at «venturelab», the entrepreneur education organization funded by the Swiss CTI, a federal innovation promotion agency.

The main criteria for being "Top" is the number of jobs created, as opposed to financial performance or rate of growth. A pre-condition for entry is that these Start-ups founders took a risk to get the business off the ground. And that the firms are no older than ten years (founding year is 1995 or later).

Financing for Swiss-based startup increases!

An article from Valerie Thompson on the Swiss Ventures web site sums up recent VC deals in Switzerland. She tracked close to CHF 100 mio VC investment in Swiss startups. Is the startup scene coming to maturity? We believe so. Many of the university spinoffs are now backed by leading VCs and ready to compete in the big league.

Index on the A-list of investors?

An article in the MIT Tech Review Big Payday for a Skype Investor wonders whether the latest success of Index Ventures paves the way for its inclusion in the best VC funds? A great recognition for the Swiss-based venture capitalists who have not only invested in successful Sillicon Valley deals but also close to home with early-stage efforts in two EPFL spinoffs. Web site: www.indexventures.com

Spinx raises 10 mio Euros

Good news from a CERN spinoff, Spinx, which recently raised a Series B round of financing from a pool of international investors. At the same time, the microfluidics company announced new appointments. Swiss microfluidics companies such as Diagno Swiss and Mimotec can rejoice! Read the details in this

Small Times article

PharmaLive: Xigen Closes Its Series A Financing Round with CHF 26m (21m USD)

Check the press release announcing a large first round of financing for a NETS alum, Christophe Bonny, who is developing intracellular peptide therapeutics for the treatment of stroke, myocardial infarction and cancer. The syndicate has several local investors that have joined forces to pool a round with promising activities for Xigen.

Another Swiss startup attracts US VC money

After BeamExpress and Innovative Silicon earlier this year, Nemerix is another startup which attracts tier1 VC Money. The startup just announced a new round of $31M with Oak Partners and Cadence Design Systems as new investors. If you add that Index Ventures was a major investor in Skype, you see that Switzerland is experiencing a positive year 2005.

Hocoma cited in the MIT Tech Review

Interesting article in the famous MIT Tech Review about robotic help for rehabilitation. The article Robotic Rehab briefly mentions Hocoma, a Zurich-based company that has received the CTI startup label.