Swisspreneur Show

Timestamps:

Biography

Christian is one of the co-founders of Swisspreneur.org and a passionate serial entrepreneur. He founded his first venture — Atizo, a crowdsourcing platform for ideas — in 2007. He eventually sold the company and went on to start the consulting business and startup incubator Pacific Catch Ltd. together with his wife, Bettina Hirsig. Under the umbrella of Pacific Catch, he has initiated and supported a wide variety of projects such as „Geile Eier“ — a breakfast franchise, Blacknose — a Swiss mountain pale ale brand and Powercoders — a coding academy for refugees. Additionally, Christian is the founder of TEDxBern and serves as a startup coach for be-advanced, Startfeld and Kickstart Accelerator. Christian was named one of the „Digital Shapers 2018“ by Bilanz Magazin and was invited to speak at TEDxZurich 2017.

Timestamps

2:06 - What makes a successful accelerator application

15:40 - Launching your first pilot

29:00 - Hiring and outsourcing

33:16 - Splitting shares

39:55 - Making it work without salaries

Biographies

Anastasia Hofmann

Naomi MacKenzie

Timestamps

9:00 - Deciding who to sell to

22:52 - Retaining confidence after your first failure

36:14 - What to look for in a headhunter

41:05 - Stock option plans

52:49 - Building a company, not a startup

Biography

Thomas is best known as the founder of jobs.ch, an online job market platform. In 2007, he and his partner sold the venture to an American holding company for a multi-million dollar sum. Since his successful exit, Thomas has built up a diversified portfolio of projects under the umbrella of his holding company “Tom Talent”. Examples include the online-TV portal Teleboy or the music festival Zermatt Unplugged. Thomas has also successfully produced several movies, amongst them “A Dangerous Method” starring Keira Knightley.

Timestamps

7:05 - Meeting President Reagan

21:15 - How a public speaker is born

28:12 - Skills for managing crises

34:34 - Why it's important to empower women in business

37:49 - Advice to young women

Biography 

Rosmarie Michel, now in her eighties, looks back on a lifetime of entrepreneurship and advocacy for women in business. In the 1970s she was one of the first women to be appointed to the board of major Swiss companies such as Valora and Volksbank, which later was bought by Credit Suisse. From 1983-1985 she held the presidency of the International Federation of Business and Professional Women (IFBPW). She also served over a decade as the vice chair of Women’s World Banking, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing female entrepreneurs with access to financial resources. During her career Rosmarie met and exchanged her thoughts on women in business with many influential personalities, such as President Ronald Reagan and Hillary Clinton. To this day, Rosmarie remains active as a mentor of female entrepreneurs and a driver for the empowerment of all women.

Timestamp

7:54 - The importance of your economic footprint

15:36 - Realizing you've chosen the wrong strategy

27:20 - The hard parts of entrepreneurship

35:11 - Does anyone have the recipe for success?

46:29 - Advice for young entrepreneurs

Biography

Markus Popp is best known as the founder of tilllate.com, a party event platform with photo gallery and community features. In 2009, Markus left tilllate.com and embarked on a half-year inspirational sabbatical. Upon his return, he founded the company builder Mühlemann & Popp Online Media AG together with one of his co-founders at tilllate.com, Silvan Mühlemann. Next to being engaged at Mühlemann & Popp, Markus has launched various other digital startups such as SOBRADO or eveni.to. Markus has a Masters in Management, Technology and Economics from ETH Zurich.

Timestamps

2:11 - The gender gap in the Swiss startup ecosystem

18:45 - Splitting up with your co-founder and abandoning the startup

34:05 - Startup competitions: yay or nay?

42:16 - The advantage of incubators

48:12 - Choosing the right idea

Biography

Lea is best know as the Co-founder and President of Ava Science, Inc., the company behind the Ava bracelet, the first fertility-tracking wearable device. Prior to starting Ava, Lea co-founded L’inouï, a premium chocolate production and retail chain in Bangalore, India. She also spent time working for the marketing division of Procter & Gamble in Frankfurt and for a strategy-consulting boutique in Paris. Lea holds a Master’s degree in global entrepreneurship from EM Lyon in France, Zhejiang University in China and Purdue Krannert University in the USA. She earned her Bachelor’s degree from the University of St.Gallen and HEC Montréal in Canada. In 2017, she was recognized by the University of St. Gallen with the HSG Founder of the Year award.

Timestamps

7:00 - Coming up with an initial marketing strategy

11:45 - Bootstrapping your business

16:06 - Measuring your ecological footprint

24:37 - What they look for in new employees

40:55 - How digitalization influences your business

Biography

In 1993, graphic designers Markus and Daniel Freitag were looking for a functional, water-repellent and robust bag to hold their creative work. Inspired by the multicolored heavy traffic that rumbled through the Zurich transit intersection in front of their flat, they developed a messenger bag from used truck tarpaulins, discarded bicycle inner tubes and car seat belts. This is how the first FREITAG bags took shape in the living room of their shared apartment. Today their products are available in 16 F-STORES as well as at over 450 resellers around the world.

FREITAG lab.ag has been headquartered at the Nœrd industrial complex in Zurich-Oerlikon since 2011. In 2014, FREITAG launched a new product, F-ABRIC. These completely compostable textiles are based on bast fibers that are produced using a minimum of resources within a 2500-kilometer radius of headquarters.

FREITAG lab.ag still belongs to the two Freitag brothers, and, as Creative Directors, they still oversee each new model through to series production.

Timestamps

6:44 - What to look for in a co-founder

11:38 - When is the right time to become an entrepreneur?

31:45 - How to steer a fast growing company

36:42 - Handling bad press

44:47 - The future of AI

Biography

Adrian is best known as Founder and COO of DeinDeal.ch, an e-commerce coupons and discounts platform for products and services. Within a year of starting the business, DeinDeal.ch was the fastest growing Swiss start-up and market leader in the group buying segment in Switzerland. After 18 months, the Swiss media group Ringier bought 60% of DeinDeal.ch as a strategic investment. At that time the company was valued at CHF 30 Mio. After his exit from DeinDeal.ch, Adrian went on to start new ventures that are leveraging Artificial Intelligence.

Adrian graduated with a degree in business and economics from the University of St. Gallen (HSG), where he started his very first business as a software developer. He was awarded “HSG Entrepreneur of the Year 2012”, “Swiss E-Commerce Champion 2015” and was ranked “40 under 40” by Swiss Bilanz magazine.

Timestamps

3:18 - Why say no to a banking career

23:34 - Having to shut down your company

27:30 - Recovering from the crash

36:34 - Why you could not want to sell your company to Facebook

44:49 - Knowing when to move on

Biography

Peter Schuepbach started his entrepreneurial career as a co-founder of Miracle Software AG back in 1986 and served as its Chief Executive Officer for more than 10 years. He grew the organization in 14 years to a 350 employee software company with offices in 5 countries and went public with an IPO at the Swiss Stock Exchange SWX in 1999.

Today he is engaged in several start-up companies and is a member of the board of several organizations, for example SwissCommerce, an internet platform that builds and buys E-Commerce companies in special interest markets. He received the award “Business Angel of the Year” from the ASBAN (Swiss Business Angel Association) in 2005.

Timestamps

7:32 - Realizing corporate life isn't for you

28:32 - Hiring strategies

32:57 - Handling divergent expectations within the company

45:14 - Setting and changing targets

49:17 - Work-life balance

Biography

Roman is best known as the Founder and CEO of UrbanFarmers, a company dedicated to building commercial food production systems in and around cities. Together with Andreas Graber, he has developed UrbanFarmers’ vision how food could be grown in an urban space at a large scale. He noticed the trend abroad and learned about a breakthrough Swiss technology that could make it more reliable and sustainable. Since 2011, UrbanFarmers has become a technology leader in Aquaponics, saving water, energy and nutrients to grow fish and plants in a closed-loop.