"You cannot do it alone" — Interview with Christian Elias Schneider of the Innovation Office at the University of Basel

31.08.2022 10:39, Tracy Woodley

During the summer months, we ask people who stimulate the Swiss startup ecosystem to provide the Venturelab community with food for thought, inspiration, and recommendations. For this year's Summer Series, we’ll be interviewing personnel from the country's leading higher education institutions about the diverse and unique programs available to support rising entrepreneurs across Switzerland. This week, we speak to Christian Elias Schneider of the Innovation Office at the University of Basel.

Name: Christian Elias Schneider
Job title: Head of the Innovation Office at the University of Basel
City: Basel
What I do: I propel innovators to achieve impact.

How would you summarize the mission of the UNIBAS Innovation Office?
The UNIBAS Innovation Office is all about the future! At home at the exciting interface of academia, startups and industry, we are trying to get these players to propel impactful innovations to societal impact, because solutions to the many problems our society faces can only be solved together.

What are the main programs/resources offered by the UNIBAS Innovation Office?
Despite our somewhat lofty mission, we offer very concrete programs, along three verticals:
 

• Start-up programs: We offer educational courses with the aim of activating the entrepreneurial mindset and supporting academics with getting the right skills and networks for their venture. Our propelling grant of CHF 50,000 is a support from the university that takes the startup from project idea to founding. We also have specialized thematic incubators: INCATE, an incubator for antibiotic therapy startups, and the Medtech Program, which provides dedicated support for medtech projects. The Innovation Office also provides every startup with a dedicated case manager for regular check-ins and quick responses to each venture’s needs. Our Entrepreneurs Club hosts regular meetings with the startup community and provides high-quality networking and a platform for our startups.

 

• Innovation collaboration: Our innovation platforms connect projects deep in a specific field or across disciplines and nurture a multi-stakeholder and public-private partnership approach. We foster industry relations by offering tailor-made approaches for the industry to work with academia based on standardized contracts.

 

• International programs: The internationalization of startups is key, which is why we engage with partners in Europe (Belgium, Netherlands, France, Germany), South Korea, South Africa, India, and Tanzania to offer startups a soft landing platform abroad.

Who are the people behind the UNIBAS Innovation Office? What makes you all excited about supporting entrepreneurs?
Since we work at the interface of startups, academia, and industry, our team needs to be able to understand these different worlds! Therefore, the UNIBAS Innovation Office team also has background knowledge and experience in all these three sectors. What unites us, is that we all believe in the potential for positive social impact. Supporting academics and entrepreneurs is the biggest part of this.

We’ve also tried to be courageous and pursue our activities and space under a new brand for future-oriented innovation, the Pupella! The word originates in a mix of “propelling/propeller” to mimic the upward motion of a venture, married with the “pupa”. A sleeping “pupa” turning into a beautiful butterfly reminds us a lot of the metamorphosis happening in innovation and entrepreneurship. 

How can startup founders best benefit from the support of the UNIBAS Innovation Office?
We simply ask the start-ups and future founders to reach out and speak with us, and share what they are working on. Most of the time, life as a science-based start-up is already complicated enough and there are many hurdles on the path from lab to venture. Therefore, we try to make things easier for startup founders and be an advocate on their behalf. Because their success will ultimately benefit our university and also society. 

Could you please share two or three success stories from UNIBAS that you are especially proud of? 
Matterhorn Biosciences: Emerged from the University of Basel’s Department of Biomedicine at the global peak of biomedical research, Matterhorn was founded in 2020 and has already raised 30M CHF from globally leading venture capitalist Versant Venture. Matterhorn’s technology will tackle cancer cells through a unique M-TCR cell therapy platform. 

INCATE: The world’s first incubator solely focused on supporting start-ups targeting new antibiotic treatments, supported by corporate sponsors, foundations, and academic institutions in Basel and Germany. Anti-microbial resistance (AMR) is a globally emerging health challenge killing and INCATE has already supported over 50 ventures from all over Europe since its inception in 2020. 

QNAMI: At the forefront of quantum sensing, QNAMI hails from the Department of Physics at the University of Basel. QNAMI unlocks the ability to measure what has never been measurable before. Futuristic high-tech from Basel! Founded in 2017, the Innovation Office shared its workspace with QNAMI and we grew with each other.  

FEMtrepreneurs: Basel’s first initiative for female entrepreneurs. A purely bottom-up initiative of start-up founders and professionals with the same vision: to increase the number of female leaders and entrepreneurs by reinventing how FEMtrepreneurs interact and thrive! Incubated by the Innovation Office, rooted in Basel and globally.

What are the key strengths of UNIBAS that make it a great place for entrepreneurs? 
Firstly, our professors and scientists are just awesome and very open-minded. This is a fact that amazes me again and again. Whether supporting a postdoc or Ph.D. on their entrepreneurial adventure or even getting involved themselves as CTO or on the Board, they are excited and supportive! Finally, professors are also very open to partnering with startups not from Basel, through an Innosuisse project, or an individual collaboration. 



Which fields of technology are the startups from UNIBAS especially strong in? 
It does not come as a surprise that most of our startups are broadly active in the life sciences, of course including health tech and digital health. However, recently, we see more and more diversification:

UNIBAS is a hub for very innovative technologies at the interface of physics, nanotechnology, quantum science, and IT. 

Our most recent discovery at UNIBAS is that we can boast world-leading excellence in sustainable chemistry – our scientists can replace dirty chemistry with natural ingredients, and we predict many exciting startups will come from this corner soon.

Can you share a surprising moment observed during your work at UNIBAS Innovation Office and what you learned from it?
Everybody tells you to build a diverse team in terms of gender, age, specialization, and experience. It’s surprising, however, how hard it can be to form a real team out of a diverse group of people. 

Translating between large multinational corporates, start-ups and academics is a big part of what we learn and also do! Not only the institutions themselves, but especially people conditioned by these environments will often think and act surprisingly different, and sometimes misunderstand each other. It already starts with the not-so-simple question: What is innovation?

Which book would you recommend as a must-read for any aspiring entrepreneur?
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben. Teaches readers a lot about ecosystems in the natural world, especially among trees, and how collaboration rather than competition, could be the default mode in the natural world. If entrepreneurs can learn from this book how they can create interactive and nourishing ecosystems around their venture, the future is yours, and you will have a tremendous impact.



What is a piece of key advice that you’d like to share with every new founder? 
You cannot do it alone. Everyone will tell you that the team is the most important factor in your venture. But try to think of the team as something bigger – your entire support structure. Build a support structure for growth, challenges, and even emergencies. 

Therefore, my advice is simple: make friends and go for walks with them! 

Finally, what is your vision/prediction for the startup community in Switzerland?
Switzerland is facing many challenges that question its current model of success. I believe that the many efforts in the startup ecosystem can provide some answers to these challenges. Concretely, universities need to do a lot more to support the translation of science into ventures. Support in terms of simplifying rules, regulations, and processes and also in terms of financial support. In the Swiss startup ecosystem, universities also need to take a much stronger role. Science-based innovation holds the key to overcoming challenges and universities are where knowledge is created. I wish that institutions and individual facilitators in the startup community put the start-ups more in the center, rather than themselves.

Anything else you’d like our readers to know?
We have the best coffee in Northwestern Switzerland, brewed by our coffee machine “La Basilea” – made in Basel, inspired by Italy, with beans roasted in Aarau. Come visit us to share a delightful moment!
 
Available support for UNIBAS spin-offs:  
UNIBAS Innovation Office
Pupella
Venture Kick
Innosuisse Start-up Trainings 

Connect with and follow UNIBAS and the Innovation Office:
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YouTube

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Notable startups founded by UNIBAS alumni: