Swisspreneur Show

Timestamps:

1:25 - Business is psychology

9:19 - Validating the Relai idea

18:34 - Building an MVP during a Hackathon

33:47 - Simplifying bitcoin

54:06 - Showing investors traction

About Julian Liniger

Julian Liniger is the co-founder and CEO at Relai, the world's easiest Bitcoin investing app. His educational background is in Business Administration and Psychology an he has previously worked for Gsponer Consulting Group International and synfluence.

He was originally introduced to bitcoin by a nerdy friend of his, through whom Julian bought his first bitcoin. Despite having had little talent for "techy" things all his life, he eventually grew to understand cryptocurrency.

The idea for Relai came from Julian's own experience. Before, if you wanted to start buying or trading bitcoin, you had to:

- Find an exchange and create an account, which required uploading all of your personal info and having it checked, which took a couple of days;

- Wiring money from the bank to the exchange and waiting for that process to be completed, so that you could then exchange the money into bitcoin;

- Creating a wallet, then withdrawing the bitcoin from the exchange to the wallet (since exchanges — and the bitcoin that is stored within them — are at the mercy of hackers).

The whole process took about 1-2 weeks and required 2-3 different service providers.

The fact that the process needed to be simplified was a no brainer. Together with his co-founder Adem Bilican, Julian started the pre-seed fundraising process. It took them 5 months to raise a meager 20k. In hindsight, Julian blames his lack of track record and the typical Swiss hesitancy, but also the fact that they were approaching the wrong investors: people who didn't understand crypto and sometimes weren't even that interested in fintech.

Once they got the money, Adem and Julian built the MVP in 3 months and went live — from this point onwards, investors were the ones approaching them. And it's no wonder: Relai allows you start buying, trading and saving bitcoin within just 1 minute, and they don't even need to know your name.

Memorable Quotes:

"More than half of Gen Zs and Millennials say they'll be investing in bitcoin. These are the people who are gonna control more than half of all money in the future."

If you would like to listen to our previous episode with Julian Liniger, click here.

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:

2:17 - The problem Linia solves

7:23 - Acquiring your first international customer

10:00 - The biggest competitor

15:18 - Product market fit by trial and error

19:53 - Being bootstrapped

About Lorenzo Arizzoli-Bulato

Lorenzo Arizzoli-Bulato is the co-founder and managing director at LINIA, a startup manufacturing drone software for power line inspection. His educational background is in Electrical Engineering and before starting LINIA in 2018 he worked for companies such as IASTE, Axpo Group and EWZ.

Despite being in a rather niche market, Lorenzo has no trouble finding customers, in part because he knows the problem and buyer persona intimately (having worked in the industry for a while himself), and in part because power grid operators are under a lot of pressure:

- Due to the climate emergency, weather impact on power grid infrastructure is worsening;

- Due to decarbonization, more and more traffic is being brought to existing power grids;

- Building new power lines is usually met with quite a lot of resistance from local communities, so operators are wary to do so;

- The time frame for maintenance work is getting shorter as more and more people need to use electricity all of the time.

In November 2021 LINIA won the Energy Startup Day 1st place Public Choice Award.

Memorable Quotes:

"I see companies which offer similar products more as partners than as competitors."

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:

01:00 - What we mean when we say "strategy"

2:22 - Knowing you value proposition

11:13 - Strategy and KPIs

26:06 - Humility and seeking out help

About Elisabete Ramalho

Elisabete Ramalho is an international executive with 20 years of experience in digital transformation, technology, manufacturing and consumer goods, who is currently active as an industry lead at Google.

For Elisabete, strategy is, naturally, about making choices. These choices should be informed by answers to the following questions:

- What is my product really about?

- How am I gonna market it?

- Should I target B2B? B2C? B2B2C?

When answering these questions, there is no exact "right" or "wrong" answer; only answers which mean accruing more or less risk.

Another thing which needs to serve as your strategy's compass is the value proposition. If you have yet to land on a definitive value proposition, consider these questions:

- Does your product already exist in the market?

- Could your success be detonated by lower prices from the competition?

- Do you have a core competence relevant to building this product?

Speaking of competition: Elisabete recommends that you be aware of what they are doing, but that you don't fixate on it — you only know what their current and past moves are, not what they're ultimately aiming at, so you may severely misinterpret their actions.

When drafting an actual plan, try to answer these three points:

- Where are you going?

- How much do you need?

- What role will each team member have?

You might also want to work with OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). Your annual OKRs should tie in with the team OKRs, which in turn connect to the individual OKRs. When setting goals, do so in a way that will push you out of your comfort zone. If you know full well you'll reach them, then those aren't goals — they're a checklist!

Lastly: allow your team members to shape the company strategy with you. They'll be more personally committed to achieving the goals if they themselves had a role in determining them.

"The right product to sell isn't necessarily the cheapest one. Because when you start pricing down, you cannot price up again."

"If you set yourself goals you know you will reach, then those aren't goals. It's a checklist."

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:

5:03 - Going all in from the beginning

14:00 - The problems of marketplace entrepreneurs

20:22 - The Covid effect

26:22 - Höhle der Löwen appearance

33:37 - Canton-specific regulation

About Oliver Huber

Oliver Huber is the founder and CEO of Nomady, a Swiss sustainable camping platform. Previously he worked for VP Bank and Schwyzer Kantonalbank, and has a background in Business Admin, Finance and Banking from Hochschule Luzern.

Oliver has always been an outdoors and camping enthusiast, so the Nomady idea — landowners becoming hosts and renting out their campsites — seemed only natural to him. Having successfully flipped a house in the past, he had enough capital to quit his day job and start going all in on Nomady from day one.

When answering whether Nomady is capitalizing on the sustainable tourism craze, Oliver replied that wanting to get away from crowded places and connect with nature has always been a human necessity, so the growth of this market comes as no surprise. He also feels a responsibility to play his part in answering the climate emergency.

He began in earnest by going around his hometown and pitching the idea to landowners — 5 or 6 of them said yes and this allowed him to test his MVP. His first customers had a very positive experience, and word of mouth really helped Nomady expand, as well as some Facebook posts from Oliver himself.

Covid had both a positive and negative effect on his business: on the one hand, when the pandemic crisis began in March 2020 Oliver was in the middle of negotiations with investors, after having spent 1 year and a half bootstrapped, and his investors immediately quit. But on the other hand, since during the pandemic people couldn't travel abroad and felt safer vacationing in remote places, Nomady came as a perfect solution for their tourism needs.

Memorable Quotes:

"It was important for me to have real entrepreneurs on the board and as investors, because in an early stage you need to call them up and ask them difficult questions."

Resources Mentioned:

The Packraft: https://packrafteurope.com/

If you would like to listen to more episodes on camping, check out our conversation with Michele Matt.

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:

5:00 - The essence of entrepreneurship is timeless

10:08 - What makes a good leader?

18:55 - Biased language

25:46 - Being inclusive in a cost-efficient way

28:34 - Few women in top positions

About Elisabete Ramalho:

Elisabete Ramalho is an international executive with 20 years of experience in digital transformation, technology, manufacturing and consumer goods, who is currently active as an industry lead at Google.

Elisabete's maternal grandparents were a big inspiration for her. They ran a successful bakery in a small town in Portugal during the 50s and travelled all over the world. Elisabete's grandparents taught her the value of working hard and of staying humble, and also of intimately knowing the needs of each of your clients — they knew everyone's name and order as soon as they walked through the door.

During her career Elisabete has formed a clear opinion on what it takes to be a good leader. According to her, a good leader:

- Allows their team members to co-create the company strategy;

- Is always ready to acknowledge they're wrong, and always eager to learn;

- Focuses on a person's strengths when giving feedback;

- Avoids biased language and promotes diversity in hiring;

- Makes people feel comfortable enough to speak up, and gives credit where credit is due.

At Google, good leadership is measured by cross checking someone's annual performance review with employee retention, talent acquisition and team satisfaction rates.

Memorable Quotes:

"If you have the right people on your team, goals should be co-created. It can't just be up to one person to decide."

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:

4:14 - The business model of uploading old exams onto a server

17:19 - Winning clients with basic functionalities

28:51 - Acquiring competitors

32:47 - Using investor money for acquisitions

49:20 - Your main competitor is yourself

About Philippe Willi

Philippe Willi is a co-founder and CFO/COO at TrekkSoft, a booking solution for the tour and activities market. He studied business administration at HSG and soon after started his first business, the web agency zimtkorn, together with DeinDeal co-founder Adrian Locher and Valentin Binnedijk. There they built websites for SMEs.

In 2007 he met Jon Fauver, a former raft guide and American living in Switzerland, who invited Philippe to join him at the water sports company Outdoor Interlaken. Then in 2010, Philippe and his old co-founder Valentin started TrekkSoft, as a booking solution for Outdoor Interlaken. They even put in their own money, to ensure they really had skin in the game.

TrekkSoft's main innovative feature was its "book now" button — though nowadays it seems absolutely obvious, this button was at the time quite revolutionary.

Philippe describes finding product-market fit as a moment when things suddenly just click, and you can stop relying solely on assumptions. However, Trekksoft's whole addressable market was rather large, so this product-market fit was only truly valid for certain market segments. Since trying to address the whole market with just one service seemed too risky to them, they opted instead for acquiring a number of competitors which addressed other market segments, and used investor money to do so.

Being in the travel industry, the TrekkSoft Group was hit hard by Corona. Though one company in their group made 1M in net profit in 2020, the group overall lost 30% of its revenue (which put them close to breakeven) and had to let go of a number of employees. Several other employees left of their own accord due to the lack of immediate careers prospects.

Memorable Quotes:

"Solving your own problem means product-market fit comes easier. But it also might result in conflicts of interest."

Resources Mentioned:

Weg zum erfolgreichen Unternehmer, by Stefan Merath

The Entrepreneurial Operating System

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:

8:47 - Getting people to join a revolutionary platform

17:10 - Diseo's revenue sharing model

36:25 - Financing a social platform

38:00 - Regulation ruins scaling

42:05 - Doing a security token offering

About Urs Aebischer:

Urs Aebischer is the CEO at Diseo, a decentralized ecosystem of interconnected social platforms of brands and organizations where users exclusively control their data and earn from it. Urs is also the co-founder and CEO at Swiss Impulse Group, which focuses on disruptive digital media. He has a background in Physics.

Urs has always been one to search out new ideas. Back in 1995, when he was getting his PhD in Atmospheric Physics at the ETH, he was one of the first people to have an email address. In today's world of ubiquitous social media networks, Urs (as well as many others) has identified a problem: people's data is being harvested, used and monetized by third parties, without people ever receiving any sort of compensation for the value they provide. Urs does not believe we can legislate our way out of this; the social dilemma requires a solution built from the ground up.

That's why he created Diseo. On Diseo, sharing data and giving something your attention creates revenue which can be shared between up to 16 different people. Every time a user clicks on an advertisement, they earn income for doing it and for giving permission to be targeted by this advertiser. When a user clicks an ad, they also see which of their friends have already bought the product/used the service — this is what Urs calls "social selling". Users can also recommend ads to their friends, who, if they see it, will also receive money. Every single action in favor of the product creates a revenue share.

Additionally, both users and companies on Diseo have a trust rating and get to rate each other. If a company uses child labor, they get downvoted. Urs hopes that through this process dialogue and reform will follow.

Memorable Quotes:

"Facebook and Google could easily copy what we're doing. But that would ruin their entire business model."

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!

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Timestamps:

1:51 - The ideal founder team

7:09 - When to quit your day job

19:51 - Life after MVP

41:40 - Hiring for skills and culture

49:40 - The exit to Google

About Alain Chuard

Alain Chuard is a Swiss serial entrepreneur best known as the founder and Chief product officer of Wildfire Interactive, the social media marketing technology company acquired by Google in July 2012. At Google, Alain was responsible for overseeing Wildfire’s strategy, integration into Google’s Display Ads Division, and external representation of the product. He also co-created Swisspreneur with Christian Hirsig in 2016.

Here are some of his answers to every founder's burning questions:

- What's the ideal founder team? Alain prefers 2 founder teams with complementary skills: 1 product rockstar with an eye for design and strategy, and 1 marketing and sales machine. The founders should of course also share similar values.

- Where should I search for my co-founder? Look for high talent-density places, like Ivy League universities, On Deck Fellowship and Y Combinator.

- When should I quit my day job? Keep your day job during the idea validation phase, but go all in once that phase is through. You want to give your startup the best chance possible, and that requires you to give it your all.

- How do I know if I've got a good business idea? Start with your own problems and look for inflection points, or shifts in tech and user behavior. Ask yourself: why was this idea not possible 5 years ago? How do I currently have an unfair advantage?

- What makes a good MVP? MVPs should be barebones in terms of features and design but still provide a solution that captures a pivotal need the customer has. Basically: it should have achieved product market fit.

- How do I know whether or not to pivot? You should pivot if you're consistently failing to see demand or if you have a high churn rate.

- Should I bootstrap my company or raise funds? If you have a product that can scale through tech, raise funds. If you're running a business which grows in a more linear fashion, it's worth it to bootstrap. Either way, if you should choose to fundraise, approach it as a partnership rather than a transaction.

Currently Alain is the president of Prisma, a digital first school that adapts to every child's unique needs and abilities and to every family's lifestyle.

Memorable Quotes:

"I see a lot of founders that look at the fundraising process like a transaction, rather than as a partnership."

Resources Mentioned:

The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz

High Growth Handbook, by Elad Gil

How Superhuman Built An Engine To Find Product Market Fit, by Rahul Vohra

Essays by Paul Graham

The Product Market Fit Survey

If you would like to listen to our very first episode with Alain, click here.

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.

Timestamps:

2:17 - A family of feminists

15:25 - Finding a job in Switzerland as a foreigner

27:05 - Most people in Velandia's team are women

30:27 - The refugee crisis

51:55 - The nationalist sentiment

About Valentina Velandia

Valentina is a co-founder and partnership curator at Capacity Zurich, an incubator for startups built by refugees or migrants. She is originally from Colombia, but moved to the US after finishing high school to study Communications at California State University.  She then went on to work for the UN in Singapore while getting her master's in Diplomacy and Gender Policy.

Despite coming from a family of matriarchs, Valentina initially had some misgivings about feminism: she thought feminism and femininity were mutually exclusive. However, this and many other opinions of hers changed when she took a class at University with a really amazing teacher.

When Valentina moved to Switzerland, she worked in Geneva for a time, after which she relocated to Zurich. Despite having worked in Geneva, being highly qualified and speaking several languages (namely German), it took her more than a year to find a job. Naturally, this took a toll on her self-esteem — she blamed herself.

One of her co-founders to be, psychiatrist Alexa Kuenburg, also came to this conclusion while working with war victims and refugees: the higher someone's education level, the more difficult the integration process becomes, because there is often difficulty in finding a job which matches the person's abilities, and this mismatch can put into question a fundamental part of people's identity.

Initially, Valentina and her co-founders wanted Capacity Zurich to be a labor market integration program for refugees and migrants, which would also educate Swiss companies on how to navigate the bureaucratic hoops of hiring people with a migrant or refugee status. It ended up becoming a startup incubator.

Memorable Quotes:

"Diversity-wise companies are beginning to realize that if they don't jump on the bandwagon soon, the wagon is gonna run them over."

Resources Mentioned:

Afghan Laziz, the foodtruck project

Don't ask me where I'm from, ask where I'm a local TED Talk

White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo

Quiet: The Power Of Introverts In A World That Can't Stop Talking, Susan Cain

If you would like to listen to more conversations on refugees in Switzerland, check out our episode with Bettina Hirsig and Mannar Hielal.

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!

03:17 – Schritt in die Digitalisierung

10:54 – Der typische Atlanto-Kunde

15:22 – Atlanto’s Geschäftsmodell

18:11 – Kundengewinnung

23:28 – Lessons learned

Oliver ist der CEO des Helvetia Spinoffs Atlanto AG, einer digitalen Administrationsplattform für KMU. Ursprünglich war Atlanto als Projekt innerhalb von Helvetia geplant und wurde schliesslich als Tochterunternehmen ausgegründet. Oliver, welcher in einer Unternehmerfamilie gross wurde, war immer interessiert daran, in die Selbstständigkeit überzugehen. Nach seinem Studium an der HSG in St. Gallen, wo er sein Bachelor- und Masterstudium absolvierte, arbeitete er fast sechs Jahre bei Helvetia. Seit Januar 2021 ist er nun CEO der Atlanto AG.

"Der Prozess, Dinge manuell abzutippen, liegt in Zukunft einfach nicht mehr drin. Dafür werden wir keine Zeit mehr haben."

"Wir wollen das Leben von kleinen Unternehmen vereinfachen."

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