Network Partner

Q. Tell us a little bit about your organization?

 “We started to support startups in Switzerland exactly 20 years ago. In the meanwhile we have grown to a 25-person operation, running several programs and activities to bring entrepreneurs from zero to hero. Our claim: we support startups! Once a year we put together the ‘Swiss national startup team’ and visit the Boston Area to network our 20 brightest startups with the U.S. venture scene. And you know what? According Red Herring’s Global Top 100 startup ranking, Switzerland seems to be world champion. At least if you compare the number of top startups per capita! And we are proud to have contributed to this success during recent years.”

Q. What programs do you offer startups?

“We run 110 networking events per year to promote entrepreneurship and foster the ecosystem. We are present at all Swiss universities with events and courses to motivate students and postdocs to turn their science into business. The people with the best ideas are supported in hands-on training courses so they learn how to structure their businesses to attract investors and customers. During the last five years, we had more than 30,000 participants attend our networking events and more than 8,000 entrepreneurs in our ‘venturelab’ workshops. The ‘venturelab’ is the governmental training program of CTI, the Swiss Promotion Agency for Innovation, which is run by our organization. And out of this crowd we select 20 ‘venture leaders’ each year — we call them our ‘Swiss national startup team.’ These startups want to build global business success based on the best technology Switzerland has to offer.

“On top of the free training program for promising high-tech startups we offer seed capital in the framework of ‘venture kick’ (www.venturekick.ch). Researchers linked to Swiss universities can apply with their technology-based business ideas and present them in front of a jury. The best projects get up to $100,000 in funding. Foundations donate the money and there is no expectation of repayment or equity transfer involved. ‘venture kick’ is aiming to promote and speed up the process of finding and structuring new business ideas in the high-tech field and turning them into successful companies. So far, we supported 64 projects within the last 15 months.”

Q. You’ve been quite successful in recruiting startups, how do account for your success?

 “With all our startup programs, we established quite a unique position on a national level. Every month, hundreds of people in the startup process get in touch with IFJ. We serve 65,000 recipients monthly with e-newsletters and organize 110 free networking events with 8,000 participants a year. In addition, our online platforms, news channels, blogs, fairs, and partner events give us the chance to find the right people for our offers and our partners. So, it is our responsibility to support startups with everything that helps them to become more successful. And here we are convinced, that startups do not only benefit from money savings for software, but from a great global network. This is good news to spread across all our cross-media channels.”

Q. What do you think has been most effective for you?

“Most effective are our powerful communication channels and a strong network in the Swiss startup community. People interested in BizSpark have to register on the website startup.ch. The e-newsletters are very effective because with one click you are on this startup.ch/bizspark site. With our intranet, we can fast fact-check those applications and validate them. We have e-mail templates that enable a very quick response time. Applicants normally get an answer from us within 24 hours. In addition, we give them a few choices of other free activities. That is how everything gets connected.”

Q.  What feedback have you received from startups in the BizSpark Program?

“Our job is great because many of our startup people send e-mails thanking us for the validation and support. We get really good feedback almost immediately from half of the cases. They say that BizSpark helps them speed up their software programming projects, or save a lot of money. Some of them are happy about a personal contact to Microsoft. They now get an e-mail address and phone number of a Microsoft Champ they can contact.”

Q. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best, how would you rate the BizSpark program?

“For a Network Partner working with Microsoft, and from what we’ve heard from startups, it's closer to 10 than 1. Joke apart: We would live with an 8.5 to leave some room for improvements.”

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