A startup dream made in Switzerland: the AIT Camp
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Brazilian participants Murilo Penteado Del Grande and Guilherme Rinaldo share their experiences of what made the Academia-Industry Training camp so valuable.
Switzerland is one of the world’s most innovative countries. Swiss companies’ ability to transform scientific discoveries into valuable products – that’s what impressed us during our week in this beautiful country, with an amazing group of scientrepreneurs from Brazil, India and of course Switzerland..JPG)
The Swiss startup environment is among the best, especially for medtech companies like ours, Pocket Health Lab and VetImmuno. There are many opportunities. A high concentration of major corporations and top-level universities, providing both technical and entrepreneurial education to students and scientists, make Switzerland a great place to be for founders.
Several things made the week great. First off all, the cultural exchange with the Swiss and Indian teams was a fantastic experience. The meetings and visits to global company offices and development centers, as well as flourishing startups and technoparks, were a great opportunity to understand how the Swiss startup environment works, and how our companies could fit in.
The intense program of workshops and mentoring with experienced professionals from renowned institutions such as EPFL, University of St. Gallen, Venturelab and DEV gave us a taste of the fantastic support these institutions provide for innovation. We felt a strong synergy between market and academy, reflected in places like the Bio-Technopark in Schlieren, which offers everything a healthcare startup would need. As we see it, the most important feature of the Swiss innovation environment is the ability to connect people from many different fields – Life-Science researchers, engineers, business managers, marketing and financing specialists, lawyers, venture capitalists and so on – to make the engine run.
As a developing country, Brazil is years from accomplishing what Switzerland does today. But Brazil´s government initiative to fund young scientrepreneurs to travel to Switzerland is an important step. We are bringing back everything we learned and saw, so we can put it into practice at home. Initiatives like this are life-changing for any researcher-entrepreneur.
Our thanks to CNPq, swissnex Brazil and Venturelab for such an enriching week. We definitely recommend Switzerland for any startup company looking for opportunities to grow!
