20 years of world-class startups. Swiss Made.
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In 2004, the Venturelab founding team, led by Jordi Montserrat and Beat Schillig, set out to launch world-class startups from Switzerland. At the beginning, the venture seemed just as audacious as the Swiss Alinghi team's plan to win the America's Cup against the team from Silicon Valley. 20 years later, both teams are still successfully sailing close to the wind.
The entrepreneur and passionate sailor Schillig had already set the IFJ Institute for Young Entrepreneurs on course when he was offered the opportunity to set up a Swiss-wide training program for high-tech entrepreneurship for the Swiss Confederation in 2004. His team won the Innosuisse tender for this program of national importance. Schillig was fascinated by Alinghi's success and said to himself: “If we can beat Silicon Valley in sailing, then we can do the same with startups!"Since its launch 20 years ago, Venturelab has inspired and trained more than 100,000 academics at Swiss universities and research institutes, helping thousands of innovative startups to build successful global high-tech companies. Jordi Montserrat, Schillig’s founding partner, sums up Venturelab's recipe for success: "The young must learn from the best!" Accordingly, Venturelab has promoted global dialogue between founders and successful startup companies, investors, and leading industry representatives from the very beginning.
Today, Venturelab can look back on world-class startups such as Climeworks, GetYourGuide, InSphero, and Scandit, among many others, which relied on its guidance in the startup phase. The economic significance of these startups is considerable: Venturelab estimates an investment volume of around CHF 15 billion and 25,000 jobs created. Discover more details about the last 20 years of Venturelab in the press release.
20 years of world-class startups. Swiss made
We celebrated the 20 years anniversary together with our startup founders, jury members, experts, and academic and industry partners in a friendly “Swiss Startup Olympic” competition at startup space. The entrepreneurial spirit could be felt across all challenges: climbing to the top, hitting the target, riding a unicorn, mastering the knots, getting the best kick, and racing to the front until late in the night. Thank you to all the partners for their support and congratulations to the Olympic diploma winners and the overall winners Ulrike Pfreundt of rrreefs and Matthias Pfister of Helbling Technik.
To celebrate the work that we have done in the last 20 years, we organized a series of startup visits to get insights into entrepreneurial life and see their products in action or even taste them. Discover the startup visits across Switzerland:
The race is far from over. We feel a strong tailwind and we still see an incredible amount of potential in new technologies. We will continue building world-class startups. Swiss made.
