tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-171705932009-02-21T05:30:40.471+01:00A finance and technology reporter based in Switzerland posts entries here about the Swiss venture capital and private equity scene... Yes, there is one!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comBlogger231125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1166504521981069432006-12-19T05:34:00.000+01:002006-12-19T06:02:02.150+01:00

Google has acquired Endoxon to "bolster engineering and technical resources for Google" for an undisclosed amount. That means Google is buying it for the people and for the firm's technologies, not the revenues.Endoxon, a company that employed 75 before the Google deal, had six business units. The US firm is only buying three: the internet, mapping and data processing business units. Its geo

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1163139007917783722006-11-10T07:09:00.000+01:002006-11-10T07:15:02.443+01:00

Every month Swiss Equity translates and publishes my column on private equity and venture capital in Switzerland. Here is the October issue's content, covering news in September and early October. Be warned, it's not only about high tech and innovation. The market's much wider than that.Swiss Equity Private Equity Page The private equity market in Switzerland this month saw the merger of two

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1160110236429266512006-10-06T06:33:00.000+02:002006-11-08T19:14:15.833+01:00

Jim Pulcrano of Swiss-baed IMD, a leading international business school, wrote in to aks us to remind readers that the 9th editon of its program for startps is underway. The IMD's startup competition is not really a contest, rather it's a program where selected technology startups (that is the competitive part - not every startup that applies gets in) participate in workshop to get advice and

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1160106445354577322006-10-06T05:36:00.000+02:002006-10-06T05:51:05.866+02:00

Basel-based Santhera Pharmaceuticals, has raised €10M (with an option to call another EUR 5M - giving it SFr 24M altogether)in its latest round of financing. The firm said the round was oversubscribed and led by existing investor NGN Capital, which brouught in new investors NeoMed Management Schroder Investment Management (Luxembourg) and BioMedinvest. Existing investors also followed on.

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1159690589873772942006-10-01T10:08:00.000+02:002006-10-01T16:47:29.603+02:00

Three Swiss software packages have made it into the finals of the IST Prize this year.Lets Focus - an application used to manage and moderate presentations developed at the University of Ticino for a German software firms called Reflact. Bison Systems - won a nomination for its "alternative" ERP solution. The company, which has annual sales of about SFr 86M has been around for years and has

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1159198985490977062006-09-25T17:28:00.000+02:002006-10-01T10:20:04.210+02:00

Swiss early stage venture fund manager, VI Partners (formerly known as Venture Incubator), has made its first IT investment in ages, seeding Lausanne-based Nexthink. The size of the round was not disclosed.Nexthink is a university spinout developing software to monitor the behaviour of end-points in a network, that would be an intrusion detection system, monitoring things like PCs, webcams, iPods

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1158127348760053222006-09-13T07:46:00.000+02:002006-09-13T08:02:28.776+02:00

Tomorrow there are events all over German-speaking Switzerland for entrepreneurs with speakers from quick growing companies and venture capitalists. Entrance is free. It is called Startupday. The organizers looked at the 17,335 companies founded in this country in the first half of this year alone (!) and are wondering if there is a Google, Microsoft, or Cisco in there. On the chance that there

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1157990399358252762006-09-11T17:45:00.000+02:002006-09-12T07:59:38.126+02:00

Evolva, a Swiss biotech firm, has recently won some new development contracts and is now hiring 15 scientists (biologists), technicians, and administrative personnel for its HQ in Allschwil. It also has a further 20 positions open at its sites in Copenhagen and Hyderabad. The company's business model is to develop small molecule drugs in partnerships with pharmaceutical and biotech businesses.

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1157735823322132842006-09-08T19:05:00.000+02:002006-09-08T21:58:38.570+02:00

We came across news of the launch of Exila.ch here, which looks like a Hitflip clone. Both offer a platform for the exchange of used DVDs between members of the respective services.Hitflip itself is a German twist on Peerflix, which is a US platform.Apparently Exsila got coverage on the front page of the Lucerne edition of 20MIN, the free commuter newspaper -- which is the dead-tree equivalent of

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1157695945919726772006-09-08T07:36:00.000+02:002006-09-08T08:12:26.043+02:00

A lot of athletes, cyclists, and regular sportlers use Polar heart-rate monitors to make sure their in the "zone", but now Odlo, the high-end Swiss sports apparel manufacturer, is taking the Finnish innovation to a more comfortable level with some smart T-shirts that integrate several pulse monitor sensors. The innovator team from EMPA(which has been improving its technology transfer activites

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1157095844500744342006-09-01T09:24:00.000+02:002006-09-01T09:30:44.516+02:00

Every month Swiss Equity translates and publishes my column on private equity and venture capital in Switzerland. Here is the August issue's content, covering news in July. Be warned, it's not only about high tech and innovation, it's more general than that.Swiss Equity Private Equity Page by Valerie ThompsonThings have been quiet on the biotechnology early stage financing scene in Switzerland,

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1155547548875899032006-08-14T11:13:00.000+02:002006-08-14T11:25:48.896+02:00

Sami Liechti, co-founder and chief of blacksocks.com, the socks by subscritpion company, is going to be speaking on success factors for e-businesses with a focus on marketing and operations (what you should outsource, do yourself, low-budget marketing, and the like)in October. Now in business for 7 years, Blacksocks weathered the dotcom downturn, did not raise venture capital, and is on a growth

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1155287856129109852006-08-11T11:09:00.000+02:002006-08-14T11:45:16.423+02:00

Most of the cantonal banks here give out awards for entrepreneurship, identifying quick growing companies in their region. Here are a couple of the recent winners.St Gallon Kantonalbank awarded VisionOne a prize for its SFr 9.6M in turnover, creation of 25 jobs, and its ability make more money abroad than in Switzerland with its e-ticketing software.And Zurcher Kantonalbank recognized solar cell

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1154592157141475362006-08-11T06:48:00.000+02:002006-08-11T07:33:32.663+02:00

Recently founded, Heiq Materials, a spinoff of the ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) is getting a bit of attention in the Swiss press. The coverage is mainly the result of winning several annual entrepreurial awards, not because it has announced lots of customers or licensing deals. Heiq is an early stage company that makes surface coatings and finsihes for textiles.Typically its

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1155194128384507192006-08-10T09:10:00.000+02:002006-08-10T09:15:28.396+02:00

Two year old, ReVolt Technology, which says it is developing longer-lasting and quickly rechargeable batteries for mobilephones and consumer electronics, has moved its R&D and operational HQ from Denmark to Staefa near Zurich. The move is probably due in part to its recent recruitment of Ram Malhotra as CEO who hails from Swiss-based Mikron Holdings. A year ago it raised €7M in venture capital

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1154530588720337562006-08-02T16:49:00.000+02:002006-08-03T08:10:54.470+02:00

ESBATech AG, a biotechnology company in Zürich has just raised SFr 50M in a Series B financing round. The investors in this round include SV Life Sciences (SVLS), Clarus Ventures, HBM BioVentures and HBM BioCapital, along with Series A investors Novartis Venture Fund, BioMedinvest and VI Partners.The capital will be used to develop and advance its lead product into clinical trials. It says it has

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1153722405148268932006-07-24T08:25:00.000+02:002006-08-02T10:43:44.373+02:00

Some of you might be interested in a column on private equity that I write for Swiss Equity. It covers more than the technology sector, so be warned. This is from the July 06 issue, covering June news and events.The private equity sector in Switzerland saw Zurmont Finanz successfully exit its investment in portfolio firm Burkhardt Compression with an IPO on the SWX, Argos Soditic has raised a new

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1152088676931438452006-07-05T10:25:00.000+02:002006-10-21T00:04:03.390+02:00

The local press is giving some coverage to a startup based in Lausanne called TouchMind which develops software that enables Real Time Customer Service for Web-based businesses. Its flagship product is a chat support widget that its customers install on their sites but in the background Touchmind hosts and runs the application. The business model for Touchmind is subscription-based, which makes

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1152071919608487602006-07-05T05:52:00.000+02:002006-07-05T05:59:10.396+02:00

Q-Cells, a solar cell manufacturer in Germany which had one of Europe's best venture-backed IPOs last year (current market cap € 2.4B) has invested €7M in Swiss startup which trades under the name Flexcell (actually called VHF Technologies) to finance the younger firm's first production line. It's a minority stake with the potential to go to 51 percent if production quotas are met.This is a smart

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1152071064612868682006-07-05T05:26:00.000+02:002006-07-05T05:51:43.390+02:00

Goldman Sachs has taken a stake in Asset4, a new equities data and ratings provider which built a platform for analyzing the so-called extra-financial information available on a publicly traded companies (that is things like corporate governance, sustainability, environment compliance etc), performs analysis and then applies a high or low ratings, depending on how well the company performs on

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1151211454673998112006-06-25T06:15:00.000+02:002006-06-25T06:57:34.716+02:00

Web 2.0 is giving a new life to many (if not all) of the survivors of the dotcom bubble. The latest we note is Eurospider, a more than ten year old search technology software firm in Zurich.It is hiring, has opened a subsidiary in Bucharest doing R&D but also sales and marketing, providing search to some of the Web 2.0 projects here, and its founder, Peter Schauble, is now blogging. Over the

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1150472124413130862006-06-16T17:32:00.000+02:002006-06-16T17:35:24.433+02:00

The IMD's startup competition seems to have paid off for French startup Crocus Technologies. We've got the story at the alarm:clock euro.Read - French Memory Chipmaker Taps VC

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1149776440620460462006-06-12T14:07:00.000+02:002006-06-12T15:43:00.170+02:00

Swiss Ventures is wondering if buying a Swiss startup is like buying a Swiss watch. If you're rich and powerful, you have to one. Name brands like Microsoft, HP, and IBM have all made acquisitions of budding tech ventures here in the past few months. (Mind you, the prices paid sugget Rolex, and not Parmigiani Fleurier, whose starting price is $150k.)This month HP bought Silverwire, a Zug-based

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1149834806391409142006-06-09T08:08:00.000+02:002006-06-09T08:33:26.483+02:00

A Reuters journalist friend had his notebook pinched at the Zurich main train station not too long ago. He put it down on the platform to concentrate on eating a gipfeli and drinking a coffee. Seconds later his gear was gone. If he'd been using a product from Swiss startup Secu4, his PC would have emitted an 80 decibel alarm as soon as the thief was 5 meters away from him, identifying both the

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17170593.post-1149833253696686142006-06-09T07:58:00.000+02:002006-06-09T08:07:33.710+02:00

Swiss Medical Solution has raised SFr 2.5M from New Value, an early stage, local venture investor. Read -New Value AG investiert in die Swiss Medical Solution AG, Büron LU

Valerie Thompsonnoreply@blogger.com0