Swisspreneur Show

Timestamps: 2:34 - Why study law and not business? 18:06 - Can you work on a startup part-time? 34:46 - Being motivated by challenges. 48:31 - Having a big client not renew the contract 59:58 - Companies asking for discounts About Tobias Häckermann and Sherpany: Tobias Häckermann is the co-founder and CEO of Sherpany, a provider of meeting management software for leadership meetings. Tobias started his first company right out of high school. As a long time practitioner of martial arts, he was the go-to person if one of his friends needed a bouncer for a party or other event. Seeing an opportunity, Tobias started PNC security. Through his first venture, he met Nathanael Wettstein, who would later become one of his co-founders at Sherpany. Tobias sold PNC security to a competitor for CHF 70k. He went on to start easyComm, a platform for digital events which he sold to Alphablue Eventmanagement. During this entire time, Tobias was still obtaining his law degree from the University of Zurich. During his semester abroad at University of Siena, the idea for Sherpany was born. Originally, Sherpany was conceived as a communication tool between companies and their shareholders. For nearly two years, Sherpany was trying to bring the product to the market, until the founders realized they were not solving the right problem for their customers. The company pivoted to providing software for agile meeting management in leadership teams and has since grown to a multinational company with offices in Paris, Lisbon, Milano, Wroclaw, Berlin and Zurich. Memorable Quotes "It's okay to work part-time on a startup at the beginning. But at some point you've got to start giving it your all, otherwise you're gonna iterate too slow and you're gonna get frustrated, because you're going nowhere." "I always thought the bigger your company gets, the more things it should be able to do. But it's the opposite — the bigger you get, the more focus you need." Tobias Häckermann's Favorite Resources Blinkist If you would like to listen to other episodes on organizational matters, check out our conversation with Christian Burger. Don’t forget to give us a follow on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, so you can always stay up to date with our latest initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows, weekly give-aways or founders dinners!

Timestamps: 2:00 - Why start your own company? 7:29 - Winning Investor's Choice at Energy Startup Day 12:15 - How to stand out from competition 28:24 - Closing a funding round 33:23 - Choosing between Germany, Switzerland and Austria About Liliane Ableitner and Exnaton: Liliane Ableitner is the co-founder and CEO of Exnaton, a software provider for energy communities, allowing neighbors to trade renewable energy amongst each other. Before starting Exnaton, Liliane was a Doctoral Researcher at the Bits of Energy Lab at ETH Zurich. She met her two co-founders, Arne Meeuw and Anselma Würner, during her work on the research project "Quartierstrom", funded by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy. The project resonated well with all stakeholders involved and the three PhD students decided to spin it out into an independent company in 2019. Since then, Exnaton has signed 2 pilot customers and is currently fundraising. In December 2020, they won the Investor’s Choice award at Energy Startup Days, which helped the company to gain exposure amongst relevant stakeholders. Contrary to some of their competitors, Exnaton doesn’t sell their software to end consumers. Rather, they cooperate with local utility companies and allow them to white label their solution and distribute it to their customers. Exnaton is greatly benefiting from the liberalization of European energy markets because it has been driving competition for innovative products between utility companies. They are hoping to further benefit from an opening of the Swiss market, which has traditionally been very protected. Memorable Quotes "If you're in a market with 0 competition, then you're in the wrong market, because either you're on a completely wrong track or you're way too early." If you would like to listen to more conversations on green tech, check out our episodes with Mark Essam, Anaïs Matthey-Junod, Alessandra Rojas and Sébastien Jaffaux. Don’t forget to give us a follow on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, so you can always stay up to date with our latest initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows, weekly give-aways or founders dinners!

Timestamps: 2:11 - Typical pivoting mistakes 5:41 - Finding the right customer 15:32 - Generating your first revenue 18:49 - Maximizing growth 25:19 - Product-market fit The episode in 60 seconds Pivoting your business idea to success. Mistakes to avoid - Waiting too long to pivot because you have gotten emotionally attached to the solution or somehow locked yourself in too early. - Iteration cycles which are too long. Building out a finished and polished product for every iteration will make you slow and waste large amounts of resources. The Startup Pivot Pyramid by 500 Insights - The Pyramid gives you an idea of how aspects of your product build on each other (customer, problem, solution, tech, growth). - This helps you understand, for one, which areas you need to define first in order to move up the pyramid, and two, how consequential a potential pivot in one area is for other areas of your business (i.e. a pivot in customers you are addressing is far more consequential than a pivot in the tech stack you are using) Customers and their problems - Finding enough customers in a big enough market that have the same problem is always the first problem you’ll want to solve when looking to achieve product-market-fit. - Talking to potential customers under the pretense of collecting data for a survey can be a subtle entry point to start a conversation. - Your primary goal in customer conversations should be to evaluate how the problem you are trying to solve for them ranks amongst their other problems and how much they’d be willing to pay for solving it. Ideally, if the problem is big enough, customers will ask about buying your solution once it’s live already at this stage. - Try to interview 50 to 100 potential customers and narrow down the hypothesis about your customer profile as you go. - Analyze the results of your conversations based on the $ amount each type of customer is willing to pay to have their problem solved. - Clarify the 3 whys for your customers in detail: why buy anything, why buy us and why buy now. As for the “why buy now”, it often pays off to have a fix point to create urgency: a product release, a trade show, a board meeting or something else your customer cares about and that encourages them to move the deployment of your product along quickly. Solution - Once you think you have an idea of who your customer is and what problems you are solving for them, come up with the simplest version of your product that addresses the most pressing points of the problem. - You’d be surprised how much can be faked in these early product versions. Don’t worry about having efficient code and well-trained algorithms. Most likely, hardly anyone will be using this first version anyway and you’ll have to rebuild your tech stack anyway as you learn and scale. Growth - Today it’s cheap to run growth experiments across different channels, so there is really no excuse not to do it. - Notice that growth sits at the top of the pyramid. There is really no point in throwing money into growth marketing if you are not certain yet that you have found the problem and solution that really works for your customers.

Timestamps: 2:18 - Being André Borschberg's son 15:45 - The market for voice AI 21:08 - A co-founder leaves the company 26:52 - How to look for advisors 32:59 - Having offices in several countries About Teo Borschberg and OTO.ai: Teo Borschberg is the co-founder and CEO of oto.ai, an AI-powered voice intelligence solution. Teo started his entrepreneurial career after obtaining his maturité (high school diploma). He relocated to China, where he spent 8 months working in a factory, 6.5 days a week. During this time, he started to resell paintings and furniture from China to Europe, and his first company, Artefact Co, was born. Three years later, upon the completion of  his Bachelor in Hospitality Management at Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne, Teo returned to China to start his second company, the media advertising business Good Media. In 2015, he sold Good Media and reoriented himself towards the US. He joined SRI International, a renowned non-profit research institute as Entrepreneur in Residence. In this position, he was tasked with finding business opportunities for the cutting edge technologies the Institute was developing. This is where the idea for OTO.ai originated. Three years later the company has raised $ 5.8 m in seed financing, has analyzed over 10 m conversations and serves 10 large customers globally. While OTO.ai was originally selling mainly to call centers, they - as so many others - had to pivot during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Within a few short months, the company set itself up to offer an API / SDK to its product in order to let developers use it in almost any context imaginable - from wearables to smart home devices, and even telemedicine. Memorable Quotes "It's always dangerous to have a technology and be looking for a market, instead of having a market and be looking for a technology." "I will only say we have a product-market fit the day we have customers kicking down our door to get their hands on the product." If you would like to listen to more episodes on AI, check out our conversations with Aldo Podestà, David Alain Bloch and Martin Keller. Don’t forget to give us a follow on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, so you can always stay up to date with our latest initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows, weekly give-aways or founders dinners!

Timestamps: 1:39 - The START Lausanne 6:07 - The team 9:25 - The Covid challenge 11:58 - The resources of the Romandy ecosystem 15:09 - What's next for Tatiana? About Tatiana Cogne and START Lausanne: Tatiana Cogne is the President of START Lausanne and Head of Communication at Swiss Solar Boat. Tatiana joined START in 2019 as an event organizer, after having participated in START Hack and START Summit in St. Gallen. After 9 months as Event Organizer, she advanced to President of the chapter in June 2020. Under her leadership, START Lausanne has been reinventing itself over and over again during the last couple months in order to comply with ever changing COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Beyond that, Tatiana initiated the forming of a network of entrepreneurship organizations across the Swiss Romandy: rather than each organization working independently in their city, they now collaborate on news distribution and other opportunities. START Lausanne offers events, workshops and mentoring to students and other people interested in entrepreneurship. They also participate in the "Road to START Summit" initiative, a 6 month competition where startups receive support to refine their business idea and potentially win a CHF 30k prize. START Lausanne is one of 10 chapters of the START Global organization in Europe. START Global was founded in 2005 out of the University of St. Gallen (HSG) and has since become one of Europe’s top startup events. Memorable Quotes "When I finish my presidency at START Lausanne, I want to do so with the knowledge that I motivated every single one of my colleagues to surpass themselves." If you would like to listen to more conversation with entrepreneurs from the Swiss Romandy, check out our conversations with Anaïs Matthey-Junod, Alessandra Rojas, Sébastien Jaffaux and Aldo Podestà. Don’t forget to give us a follow on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin accounts, so you can always stay up to date with our latest initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows, weekly give-aways or founders dinners!

Timestamps: 1:26 - From Milano to Zurich 9:08 - The problem with the inspection of inaccessible areas 17:13 - Getting business know-how for your all-tech team 20:56 - New drones in town 32:44 - Preparing for the future About Mina Kamel and Voliro: Mina Kamel is the co-founder and CEO of Voliro, a producer of robotic drones for inspection and light maintenance at height. Mina obtained his Bachelors in Automation Engineering Technology from the Politecnico di Milano before moving to Zurich to obtain his Masters and eventually his PhD in Mechatronic, Robotics and Automation Engineering from ETH Zürich. During his PhD, he contributed to the Aeroworks project, where much of the inspiration for Voliro was drawn from. He also met his 4 co-founders, Timo Müller, Dr. Marius Fehr, Dr. Anurag Vempati and Dr. Thomas Schneider, during this time. With all five co-founders coming from a technical background, they supplemented their business knowledge through advisors and coaching by Venture Lab. The team quickly realized that the timing for Voliro was right. Not only had the technology for robotic drones matured, but there was a strong pull from the oil, gas and infrastructure industries to lower operational costs through increased efficiency in maintenance. Voliro closed a CHF 2m seed round in 2020 with Alex Fries's Alpana Ventures as lead investor. They will use the seed round capital to get their product to the market faster and are planning to raise a series A round towards the end 2021 for CHF 5-10m. Memorable Quotes "Falling from a great height is the number 2 biggest cause of workplace injuries. With our solution, robots do the dangerous work, and people stay safely with their feet on the ground." "Product development is a skill you can develop, but it takes a very long time. Sometimes it's just more practical to hire professional help." Mina Kamel's Favorite Resources Garmin Sports Watch Dare To Lead, by Bréne Brown If you would like to listen to more of our ETH co-productions, check out our conversations with Caspar Coppetti and Mark Essam. Don’t forget to give us a follow on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin accounts, so you can always stay up to date with our latest initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows, weekly give-aways or founders dinners!

Timestamps: 1:29 - Why create an AI startup? 9:00 - Having a great team 10:33 - Combining vision with short-term strategy 16:57 - Creating a company narrative 19:07 - Tips for students today About Aldo Podestà: Aldo Podestà is the founder and CEO of L2F, the company behind the platform Giotto.ai, which builds and hosts high performance machine learning applications. Before starting Giotto in 2017, Aldo Podestà worked in Sales Strategy at Philip Morris, in Lausanne. The idea for Giotto was born when he presented at a high level management meeting and was asked to provide an explanation for the recommendations his machine learning based strategy model had provided. When he was unable to explain the recommendations of his own model, he suspected that there would be tremendous value in a solution that would increase a machine learning model’s interpretability. Not long after its inception, Giotto.ai won a competition on Kaggle, one of the most prestigious data science platforms globally. In 2019, the company closed a CHF 3.2 Series A round which allowed them to pursue their ambitious vision. As a CEO, Aldo initially struggled to assemble the right team around him: betting on exclusively young and ambitious employees proved to be a mistake. Today, he counts on a more mixed team with various levels of experience. Memorable Quotes: "You don't run a company alone. You run it with every single one of your employees." Resources Mentioned: - VentureLab (Venture Kick) - Innosuisse If you would like to listen to more episodes on AI, check out our conversations with David Alain Bloch and Martin Keller. Don’t forget to give us a follow on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, so you can always stay up to date with our latest initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows, weekly give-aways or founders dinners!

Timestamps: 2:19 - Why doesn't Europe get employee participation plans right? 7:04 - How much equity should you give your employees? 16:26 - How to communicate stock option plans to your team 23:35 - The politics of stock option plans 27:53 - Rapid fire questions Episode in 60 seconds Getting employee participation plans right. Why participation plans are important - As a startup, you’ll often struggle to compete with established companies on the salary front. Stocks are your secret weapon to attract top talent in spite of limited cash. - Holding stocks factually makes the employees co-owners of the company. It’s easy to see the positive influence on mindset and attitude that co-ownership can bring. Participation plans in Europe vs the US - Employees in Europe hold less than half of the company stock than their US counterparts. This is among other things due to lower awareness of the value of participation plans amongst the European workforce. The mechanics of participation plans - How much stock should you reserve for employees? Generally good bench marks are 5-10% in the early stages of your company and up to 20-30% in later stages - Who should receive stocks? Ideally, everyone. Large companies like Google still offer stocks to every new employee which joins the company. Long term employees should get regular “refreshers” i.e. more stock added to their portfolio - How do you decide who gets what? There are 3 dimensions to get you started. Depending on your priorities and culture, you might to weigh them differently - Seniority level: more responsibility means more stock - Employee number: early joiners took a higher risk when betting on your company and should be rewarded accordingly - Tech vs non tech talent: the truth is, tech talent is much harder to compete for in today’s labor market, so it’s common to offer them larger participation options Pitfalls of participation plans - When you are short on cash, it’s tempting to think you can make up for a low salary with stocks. This is not a fair way to treat your employees as you are forcing them to bet their financial security almost entirely on the success of your company. - It may also be tempting to oversell the value of participation plans to your employees. Wile it’s certainly not wrong to strive for a unicorn valuation, the truth is most companies will never get there and you should be honest with your employees about this. - Be aware that in Europe, every country has their own rules for how employees participation plans work and how they are taxed. Consider getting some legal help when you want to internationalize. If you want to listen to more conversations with Yoko, check out our story episode with her. Don’t forget to give us a follow on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, so you can always stay up to date with our latest initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows, weekly give-aways or founders dinners!

Timestamps 1:21 - Motivation for starting your own business 4:24 - Rocking with your friends 7:46 - Struggling with team management 10:54 - What is the Swiss Romandy ecosystem doing well? 16:07 - More about Sébastien Biography Sébastien Jaffaux is the founder and CTO of the Swiss Solar Boat Association, a project created by engineering students from EPFL and HEIG-VD. Swiss Solar Boat aims to create a solar powered racing boat from scratch, to compete in contests such as the Monaco Solar & Energy Boat Challenge 2021. Swiss Solar Boat is not your typical startup. It emerged from the EPFL Hydrocontest Team which represented the EPFL at the Hydrocontest competition for maritime energy efficiency. Sébastien started out as communication manager at the Hydrocontest Team and became president of the association in 2018.  As president, he led the transition from Hydrocontest to Swiss Solar Boat in 2019. Today, the Swiss Solar Boat Association is made up of over 60 students from various technical backgrounds who work together to create a solar powered boat from scratch, including producing the individual boat parts. Currently, Sebastien lives and breathes his project and enjoys pulling off such a challenging feat with some of his closest friends. But due to the nature of the association, he will be handing over his responsibilities as CTO and Vice President once he finishes his Masters degree in mechanical engineering at EPFL in the Summer of 2021. Memorable Quotes "The Swiss Romandy is missing a place where all entrepreneurs can meet to exchange know-how and enrich their perspective." For more marine tech episodes, check out our conversation with Christian Fehr. Don’t forget to give us a follow on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, so you can always stay up to date with our latest initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows, weekly give-aways or founders dinners!

Timestamps: 2:37 - From studying physics to becoming an entrepreneur 9:55 - Splitting roles 18:01 - The initial idea for Ledgy 22:10 - Finding your first clients 30:12 - Dealing with American competitors Biography: Yoko Spirig is the co-founder and CEO of Ledgy, an equity management company for startups and high growth companies. Yoko studied Physics at ETH Zurich, the University of Oxford and CERN. She was also project lead of Swissloop, helping to build the first Hyperloop pod in Switzerland. Yoko met her two co-founders, Ben Brandt and Timo Horstschaefer, during her time at university. It was also during that time that they were first made aware of the problems related to equity management that many young companies (and their investors) face through a conversation with the Doodle founders, Michael Näf and Paul Sevinç, who were looking for a startup team on cofoundme. After graduating from ETH Zurich, the three friends went on a journey with the transsiberian railway from Vladivostok to Moscow where they read up on startup business strategy and sharpened the idea which would eventually become Ledgy. The company pivoted after 1.5 years from a free product to introducing business pricing and targeting larger companies rather than early stage startups. In the early days, the co-founding team also toyed with the idea of using Blockchain technology to enable their product. They however abandoned that plan after evaluating the regulatory framework and their customer needs. Today, Ledgy serves companies like Frontify, VIU and Sherpany and employs a team of over 10 people. Resources Mentioned: Zero to One, by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries Memorable Quotes: "A good board is a hands-off one — they don't try to micro-manage the company. But they are also always there to offer good advice." "I became an entrepreneur because I wanted to have a direct, short-term impact on society."