Swisspreneur Show

Timestamps: 1:34 - The reason behind Tech For Impact 7:20 - Who's the target student? 11:51 - Milestones so far 17:40 - Toughest challenge 25:56 - More about Alessandra About Alessandra and Tech4Impact Alessandra Rojas is the manager of the EPFL Changemakers program, an incubator program which is part of the EPFL’s Tech4Impact initiative for accelerating ground-breaking and sustainable technological solutions to create positive societal and environmental impact. She was also a co-initiator of Versus Virus, a hackathon to develop solutions against the COVID 19 crisis. As one of the world’s top universities for technology and science, EPFL is one of Switzerland’s most significant hubs for innovation. The EPFL Changemakers program emerged from the EPFL’s grant program and belongs to the unit of the Vice Presidency for Innovation at EPFL. Where previously entrepreneurs at EPFL were mostly supported through financial means such as grants, the goal of the Changemakers program is to provide more holistic support to early stage entrepreneurs and to make sustainability a cornerstone of what it means to be an  EPFL startup. The program was launched in October of this year with a first cohort of 20 students across the Bachelor, Master and PhD level. Due to the challenging circumstances presented by the pandemic, the program has had to evolve rapidly over the past months. Nevertheless, the 20 students will receive 6 months of intensive training and mentoring through peers and experts and are on track to graduate successfully from the program in February 2021. Memorable Quotes:  "Our GameChangers program has shown to us that the EPFL's students' interest in sustainable solutions is much higher than we had originally anticipated." "The changes that Covid has brought about have really helped startups with founders spread all across Switzerland cooperate better among themselves." If you would like to listen to more episodes on green startups, check out our conversations with André Borschberg, Anastasia Hofmann & Naomi MacKenzie, Jutta Jertrum, Nicholas Hänny, Mark Essam and Anaïs Matthey-Junod. 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: 7:35 - Reasons for leaving the corporate world 16:19 - Finding the right problem to solve 23:11 - Do solo founders work? 38:09 - Dealing with rejection 46:07 - The scalability issue About Luiza Dobre: Luiza Dobre is the founder and CEO of Komed Health, a healthcare communications platform. She started Komed Health in 2016, after a long time toying with different ideas and struggling to find the right co-founder. Komed Health emerged from the realization that while communication is a challenge in every sector, in healthcare, the consequences of failed communication can be the difference between life and death. Four years onwards, Komed Health helps health practitioners all over Switzerland communicate faster and more effectively among themselves, which results in better decisions, a happier staff and healthier patients. With Marc Bornträger, Luiza has also finally found a technical co-founder to complement her skill set. Before starting Komed Health, Luiza worked as a marketing and sales specialist for major brands like Swarovski and Schindler. She also obtained a CEMS Master of International Management from the University of St. Gallen and ESADE Business School. Resources mentioned: Be Obsessed Or Be Average, by Grant Cardone Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight. If you would like to listen to more medtech episodes, check out our conversations with Lea Von Bidder, Michael Friedrich, Katja Berlinger, Sophia Borowka and Dorina Thiess. 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 liveshows, weekly give-aways or founders dinners!

Timestamps: 1:22 - Starting a student project 8:32 - The team behind sun'n'go 16:15 - Tips for making remote teams work 17:34 - Advice for future entrepreneurs 22:07 - The French-speaking Swiss startup scene About Anaïs and Sun'n'go: Anaïs Matthey-Junod obtained a BA in Environmental Science and Engineering and an MA in Energy Management and Sustainability from the EPFL. In the last year of her masters, the idea for sun'n'go was born, after a trip to India with EPFL in 2019. In the following months, they developed their idea further, creating a portable energy center which can be used in impoverished communities to light up the community's households and charge phones. These energy centers are sold through micro credit schemes. Running entirely on solar power, they are a green catalyst for economic development. In December 2020 Anaïs and her co-workers will be finalizing their prototype. In parallel, they are preparing to conduct their first field study in Malawi, as well as a pilot project in the first half of 2021. Anaïs Matthey-Junod is currently also a research assistant at the EssentialTech Centre, and has just joined the NORCAP Accelerator Program at NRC. 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:  2:30 - Meeting future co-founders  9:19 - Deciding to go up against Nike and Adidas  21:35 - Finding a business partner  47:14 - Dealing with competition  49:47 - Investors  About Caspar Coppetti: Caspar Coppetti is co-founder of On, one of the world’s fastest growing sports brands. Caspar started On together with his two co-founders Olivier Bernhard and David Allemann in 2010 based on their patented CloudTec® technology. On shoes have famously been worn by  Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and of course, their brand ambassador, tennis star Roger Federer. Over the last 10 years, the company has expanded to over 55 countries and has become one of the top 5 leading running shoe brands in the DACH area and in the US. Now On is expanding into the trekking shoe market, launching their extremely lightweight Cloudrock trekking shoe in 2019. 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: 10:22 - Understanding your clients (needle question) 14:55 - Getting your customers to use your product more often 17:00 - Achieving negative churns, incentivizing referrals 24:51 - The best lifetime value vs customer acquisition costs ratio 36:53 - When to pull the plug on a certain channel The Episode in 60 Seconds How to find, optimize and scale your sales funnel from early stage to exit. The early mistakes to avoid - Sell like the incumbent: just because one sales funnel is working well for incumbents in your field doesn’t mean it will work for you. Especially if your unit economics are different (think for example on-premise software vs SaaS). - Ignoring the unit economics: especially if you are entering the market with a new kind of business model, it’s very important to know your unit economics in order to understand if you are selling your product in a margin enhancing way or if every sale you achieve actually incurs a net loss. - Only focusing on closing the deal: your long term goal will be to achieve negative churn (gaining more customers than you lose in a certain interval). This will not happen if your product does not delight customers across the entire lifecycle. On data and experiments - Data is your best friend when it comes to finding your most effective sales funnel. Don’t allow your organization to go astray on hunches and gut feelings. - Becoming a data driven organization starts with the mindset and the mindset starts with the people you hire. - Run experiments, and run them often. There is no way you’ll know from the start which funnels will work for you, so testing (and failing) is the only way to find out. - To run a meaningful experiment you need two things: a quantifiable definition of success (and therefore failure) and a significant sample size. Leave either one out and the experiment will not deliver its value. Customer Lifetime Value and Customer Acquisition Cost - A good way to measure success of your sales funnel is the ratio between customer acquisition cost (CAC) and customer lifetime value (LVT). So what you spend to acquire a new customer and what they in turn spend on your product during all the time they are your customer. - There are a variety of ways how to calculate these two numbers. Whichever you choose, make sure it is comparable to benchmarks in your industry. - A good ratio of LTV/CAC is 3-4. If you are higher, you are not spending enough on marketing / growth. If you are lower, you either have a lifetime value problem or you are not spending your marketing /  sales budget effectively. Scaling and optimizing your sales funnel - Don’t forget that once your sales funnel works and you have an acceptable and proven LTV/CAC ratio, this will help you get money from investors, because you can say: for X amount of money in, we’ll very likely get Y amount of revenue out. That’s a pretty safe bet. - If you are scaling one of your sales funnel rapidly (especially online), most likely prices will increase because of the higher demand. Therefore it’s important to continuously optimize. Optimization is never done. - Over time, a funnel may change and become less valuable to you. It’s time to pull the plug when you see the quality of customers you are getting through that funnel decrease  (i.e. lower LTV). 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: 12:56 - Turning a company tool into a product 25:00 - Developing a brand with 25 other people 34:53 - Dealing with the complexity of a growing company 43:23 - Being laughed at by more traditional companies 56:38 - Finding work-life balance About Jeremias Meier: Jeremias Meier is the co-founder and managing director of Bexio, a company offering SaaS around payrolling, invoicing and accounting. Bexio was born out of Jeremias’ first business iBrowse, that he started while still at university. The team had built Bexio (called Easysys at the time) for their internal invoicing needs but found that a lot of agencies like themselves were interested in using the product. In 2014, they separated the product and agency business and spun out Bexio into an independent company. iBrowse was acquired by PwC in 2015 and transformed into a digital experience center. 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: 5:11 - Getting fired 18:42 - The business model behind vertical farming 22:19 - Having to change your founding team 32:40 - Having an employee steal data from you 37:17 - The ETH Entrepreneur Club About Mark Essam: Mark Essam is the co-founder of YASAI, a vertical farming startup and ETH spin-off. The idea to pursue vertical farming originated from the book  "The Vertical Farm: How to feed the world in the 21st century" by Dr. Dickson Despommier, which Mark read during his exchange semester in Mexico City in 2016. He subsequently wrote his thesis at ETH Zurich on the following topic: "How to integrate Vertical Farming within the Swiss landscape?". The building material manufacturer, LafargeHolcim supported an initial feasibility study of the hypothesis brought forward in the thesis and allowed YASAI to grow. In October 2020, YASAI secured a collaboration with fenaco for a industrial-scale vertical farming pilot project in Zurich through a joint investment of CHF 1.5 m. 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: 3:54 - Most relevant digital marketing channels 13:50 - How do you know you're on the right track? 19:33 - Talking budget 31:15 - When should you switch to an offline marketing channel? 38:41 - Best tool setup About Lukas Stuber: Lukas Stuber is the Managing Director of Dept, a digital agency. Previously, he had founded Yourposition, a digital marketing agency specialized in search engine optimization, which was acquired  by Dept in 2018. In 2004, Lukas published the book “Suchmaschinen Marketing” (search engine marketing) and became known as one of the pioneers of this field in Switzerland. He also serves as a lecturer on the topic at several Swiss universities such as University of St. Gallen and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. 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: 8:03 - When to expand to Asia 17:54 - Knowing how to change your mentality 19:21 - Will English take you far? 28:26 - What can Europe learn from Asia? 30:25 - What can Asia learn from Europe? The Episode in 60 seconds Why expand your business to Asia - Asian markets are growing rapidly, with a strong increase in purchasing power. - Asia’s entrepreneurial ecosystem has long caught up with the US and is almost unparalleled in its agility and speed. Preparing to expand your business to Asia - Make sure you get a very good understanding of the cultural differences, especially with regards to contract negotiations. - Ensure that your war chest is large enough. Like everything, the expansion will take you twice as long and cost you twice as much as anticipated. - Swiss Global Enterprise offers a market checkup to determine if you are ready to enter a particular market. Market entry - Out of all the Asian markets, Singapore is probably the most similar to Europe, so it’s usually a good place to start building your base. - Get in touch with the Swiss Embassies and Chamber of Commerce on the ground. They can introduce you to their network and put you in touch with experts in the region. - It’s advisable to have a legal entity in the market you are trying to enter, especially if you are a service business. - English will only get you so far in Asia. Outside of Hongkong and Singapore it may get tricky, so invest into an interpreter or find an employee which is well versed in both English and the local language. Corporate Governance and Regulations - It’s important to have a good mix of people from your team in Europe and locals from the region. This will help you relay your company values and corporate governance while also adapting to the local ways of doing things. - Especially in Mainland China, regulations are rapidly changing and violating them can have serious consequences. Get expert advice on how to navigate the regulations of your industry. 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: 2:25 - Turning a translation company into a profit center 15:21 - Finding your core values 19:48 - Dealing with employees who don't fit your culture 25:13 - Going international 46:34 - Working with investors About Doris Albisser: Doris Albisser is the founder and executive Chairwoman of Evaluglobe AG. Through Evaluglobe, she focuses on board mandates, growth investments and advising companies’ in their international expansion. Before starting Evaluglobe, Doris served as the Group CEO for CLS Communication AG for 16 years, developing CLS from a startup through a management buyout and internationalization, to a company with 600 employees and 5.000 freelancers in 10 countries across Europe, Asia and North America. Amongst others, Doris also served on the boards of Switzerland Global Enterprise, SOS Children’s Villages and the Psychiatric University Clinic of Zurich. 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!