09.09.2019 16:00, Guillaume Tinsel
Since end 2015, Alpana supported 40 startups in various financing rounds with a strong focus on new technologies and digitalization of the economy. We met Pascal H. Widmer during the TOP 100
Swiss Startup Award who shared his vision on the trends of early-stage investments in Switzerland.
Christophe Chemtob and Pascal H. Widmer from Alpana Ventures.
How do you differentiate yourself from other VC players?We have a unique investment model whereby we invest early and help companies bridge to the US and Asian markets for their growth strategy. We also support them with fundraising of growth capital.
With co-founder Alex Fries based and active in Silicon Valley for more than 20 years, we can tap in a very strong network with key VC actors there. This approach has already brought great added value to a large number of our portfolio companies. Through a strategic cooperation with a Hong Kong based business developer, Alpana is strengthening its ties with Asia in order to follow the same path.
By creating
Alpana Ventures, founders envisioned to gather the core competences required in the VC business: investor relations, sourcing, technical expertise, management skills, business acumen and network. We also benefit from a very strong advisory board, with a large network and in-depth knowledge of developing trends.
You have invested in 40 companies in the 4.0 economy. Why did you choose them?
We invest early stage. The company must have a true innovation that is difficult to replicate and a real scale up potential. We look at the team and the ability of the CEO to assemble a great team of smart people around her/him in order to scale up and grow sales.
We then support with a first ticket early stage and follow the best performing companies with larger amounts. We also support their management by advising at Board level or on business development matters. On fundraising, Alpana also introduces them to some larger institutional investors.
What are your biggest wins?
Alpana currently runs two investment vehicles. For Fund 1, out of 29 companies, half are doing very well in terms of sales. We start seeing some very nice figures with 4 companies that are valued around CHF 100mio or above, hence tripling the invested capital.
We are very proud to have great companies in our portfolio that have been ranked regularly in the TOP100 Swiss Startups Award like
Ava,
Lunaphore,
Beekeeper,
Codecheck,
Altoida,
Nezasa and
OneVisage. Some other portfolio companies are also doing very well, such as
Inpher, an EPFL crypto company, that had JP Morgan as lead investor in their last financing round, or
Lyric,
Procsea,
iGroove and crowdlending platform
Lend which recently entered a partnership with PostFinance.
Fund 2 has just been closed successfully and started its first investments recently. It is still in a portfolio construction phase and companies are all very promising at this stage.
Toposens for instance already won the CES award 2019 (Consumer Electronics Show, the biggest new tech event).
What do think about the Swiss ecosystem?
The Swiss ecosystem is excellent in terms of innovations and technology developments. However, the VC market remains pretty small compared to other European countries and specifically versus US and Asian markets. We are glad to see more and more initiatives coming up supporting the whole Swiss ecosystem!
It is in our sense the best gathering of most players in the Swiss tech start up ecosystem. It is a good opportunity for us to meet everyone. Looking forward to the coming 10th edition next year!
Altoida AG:
Join us on our noble mission to better brain health
As a predictive digital biomarker company, Altoida, Inc. has developed technology using smart device sensors to measure cognition, function and motor skills. The innovation is based on three major pil... Read more
Beekeeper AG:
Empowering entire workforces
Beekeeper’s vision is to connect the unconnected: Companies with a large number of non-desktop workers face the challenge to integrate them with the rest of the organization. Beekeeper bridges this ga... Read more
iGroove AG:
Fair-trade music store
Your music business has a home. Find it all in one spot with iGroove: Financing, marketing services and the best tools for your music business.
What started as the idea to make the “business” part ... Read more
INPHER GmbH:
Cryptographic Secret Computing® technology
Inpher is a FinTech startup based in New York and Switzerland. We have recently emerged from stealth mode with investors from San Fransisco, New York, Switzerland and currently seek broader feedback o... Read more
Lunaphore Technologies SA:
Tumor analysis platform
Lunaphore is disrupting tissue diagnostics field by fundamentally changing the time and resource driven nature of diagnostic assays on tumor sections. Just like the fast sequencing technologies have m... Read more
Nezasa AG:
Technology solutions for the travel trade
Nezasa’s technology is the first ever to provide a seamless end-to-end process for the planning and booking of complex individual travel packages. Our platform eliminates all media breaks from the ins... Read more
