The Swiss Consulate in Boston held a Transatlantic Pitching evening at its trendy headquarters in Cambridge, MA, last week.  25 young Swiss entrepreneurs gave 30-second pitches outlining the start up companies they are leading down the slalom slope to success. 

It took significantly less than 30 seconds for the Consul to proclaim that Switzerland is the official European Champion of Innovation as measured by Red Herring.  A glance through Red Herring’s list of Europe’s most promising private technology companies shows that some small countries are home to a disproportionately high number of high-tech ventures – Switzerland (pop 7.6m) 14 firms; Israel (pop 7.4m) 14 firms; Denmark (pop 5.4m) 5 firms; Finland (pop 5.2m) 3 firms; Norway (pop 4.6m) 6 firms.  Although these types of lists are subjective, it’s disappointing that Scotland (pop 5.2m) is not represented.  Therein lies a challenge and an opportunity.

Switzerland’s approach to supporting young technology entrepreneurs is based around a programme called CTI Start-up.  Since its inception in 1996, CTI Start-up has reviewed more than 1,800 applications and supported over 200 start-ups.  These companies, 85% of which are still in business, have created more than 8,000 high quality jobs. 

Allied to CTI Start-up, the Swiss established CTI Invest to provide CTI Start-up graduates with access to business angel and VC funding.  As the Saltire Fellowship programme matures this may be something that we want to investigate.  CTI Invest was established in 2003, seven years after CTI Start-up, which suggests that the Swiss identified that a gap, and hence an opportunity, existed when their young entrepreneurs left the programme.  A number of public and private early stage funding options exist in Scotland and perhaps we need to investigate the optimum means to engage with these.  It’s something else for us to discuss when we next meet as a group in Stirling in August.......

All the best,

Martyn

PS If anyone is interested in looking at the Swiss entrepreneurs’ businesses, a couple of my favourites were Virginie Clement’s company Stemergie, which is developing stem cell based techniques to test anti-cancer drugs, and Michael Friedrich’s company Aïmago, which is commercializing medical diagnostic instruments that visualize microcirculation and capillary blood flow.