Meet Venture Leader Elena Gross and find out how procrastination helped her create KetoSwiss

17.08.2020 08:20, Isabelle Mitchell

Venture Leader Life Sciences Elena Gross co-founded KetoSwiss, a biotech startup that develops a novel medical food for the dietary preventive therapy of higher-frequency migraines. Learn more about Elena’s expectations for the Boston roadshow, and why passion, networking, and health are critical beyond her startup.

In November, the Venture Leaders Life Sciences 2020 will embark on their week-long roadshow to accelerate their expansion into the US market and build a business network through meetings with top-notch investors and industry leaders in Boston. To shorten the waiting time, we will introduce you to the members of the Swiss National Startup Team. We asked each entrepreneur to complete a short profile and choose three questions from a questionnaire about their personal and professional life: 

Name: Elena Gross
Job title: CEO of KetoSwiss
Location: Basel
Nationality: German
Graduated from: University of Basel (PhD)
Number of employees: 3 FTE (1 full-time, 6 part-time, as of 07/2020)
First touchpoint with Venturelab: I heard about it for the first time in 2015, at the Novartis BioLeadership Camp, via Seraina Vonmont, whose mother is working with Venturelab. 

“KetoSwiss is a biotechnology company that develops a novel medical food for the dietary preventive therapy of higher-frequency migraines and possibly other related diseases characterized by a metabolic dysfunction, such as Alzheimer's disease.”

How and where did you come up with the idea for your startup? 
Everything started with me getting migraines at the age of 14, and no one being able to explain to me what migraines are, let alone how to treat them adequately. When my migraines eventually turned chronic, and a normal life was impossible, I switched to reading neuroscience at Oxford to one day better understand my own condition and maybe even improve clinical care. While procrastinating from writing my second master thesis, I stumbled across an article on the oldest treatment for epilepsy. It was my most important “aha-moment” which not only turned my life around but also was the birth of my PhD project and later on, in addition to several other lucky incidences, KetoSwiss.  

What do you expect from the Venture Leaders roadshow, and how will it help you achieve your vision?
The Venture Leaders roadshow would greatly help us achieve market entry in the US, as the first step to reaching fellow patients or health-conscious consumers with energy-deficient brains worldwide. In addition, it would provide us with access to US-based investors, potential strategic partners or distributors, and US regulatory experts. This would broaden our network with regards to investors, experts, and peers alike, as well as giving us market exposure and business development opportunities. In brief, the roadshow has great potential for providing KetoSwiss with the necessary fuel that brings us closer to our mission of fueling brains.

What is the most rewarding aspect of being a founder?  
There are many aspects that are very rewarding about being a founder, such as working on something one is passionate about, the freedom and flexibility that comes with it, the possibility of making a positive impact on the world, the possibility of learning new things, and the opportunities of getting to know inspiring people. However, to me, the aspect that is probably the most rewarding is the ability to choose whom you are working with. Choosing your own team, carefully selecting your investors, advisors, board members, and surrounding yourself with people you can trust 150% is the greatest blessing. After all, the idea is very important, but your network and team are essential for turning a vision into a success, and I have been extremely lucky in that regard.

What is the best advice you have ever received and from whom?  
I think the best advice I received early on is that “network is everything.” While this sounds like a cliché, and of course, what you know matters in addition to whom you know, but without an ever-growing network of people who are willing to support this mission, I would have never ended up anywhere close to we are today. No matter what problem, question, or person we needed, conventional paid methods often failed, while asking around in my or my team’s network has rescued us quickly countless times, often for free. In my opinion, to get a quality network, one has to give and help without expecting a return from the beginning—in my opinion, it will pay back a thousand-fold in the long term.

What are you most proud of?  
I think I am most proud of turning my pain into passion, overcoming adversity, and using the immense energy that came after being healthier to help other people in a similarly desperate situation, as I was six years ago. First, I tried coaching individual patients, but when that was not scalable, I made YouTube videos, and, meanwhile, KetoSwiss has become my vehicle for positive impact. I am a bit proud of not forgetting where I came from and what my life used to be like. And I am using these memories as a continuous driver for my motivation to always learn more, fight harder, or hustle more until we have achieved our goal of fueling many brains worldwide—and afterward, there are several other pressing health problems to be solved. A healthy person wants many things; a sick person only wants one thing: health. Without health, nothing means anything, and if I can help some patients get there with what I am trying here, everything was worth it.

Last but not least, can you show us your workspace?
 

For more information and updates on KetoSwiss and the Venture Leaders Life Sciences, follow the Venture Leaders Life Sciences 2020 team with #VleadersLifeSciences on social media or subscribe to our newsletter. 
 
This year’s Venture Leaders Life Sciences roadshow to Boston is supported by EPF Lausanne, ETH Zurich, Hansjörg Wyss, Kellerhals Carrard, Paul Scherrer Institut, swissnex Boston, University of Zurich, Canton Vaud, YPSOMED, and the Canton of Zurich.