Since more than a decade, venturelab runs the “Swiss National Startup Team” program called venture leaders with international roadshows to the Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing and South Africa.

The venture leaders jury has selected the first Swiss fintech team in the venture leaders history. This new ‘Swiss National Startup Team Fintech’ joins the Technology, Life Science and China 2017 selections. The 10 high potential Swiss startups went on a business and financing roadshow to New York last week.

The 10 selected entrepreneurs reflect the acceleration of the Swiss fintech scene in the recent years and the impressive quality of its startups. The intense journey took place from September 10 to 16 in New York. The roadshow offered an accelerated learning curve and a solid network through exchanges with their peers in the team, as well as market exposure, pitching to investors and experts, and hands-on business development.

Not only did they attend Finovate, the largest Fintech conference, but also met with several US investors and had an open demo night, to show the New York audience that Switzerland does not need to hide when it comes to the quality of its startups.

This roadshow was supported by PostFinance, digitalSwitzerland, EPF Lausanne, ETH Zurich, Canton of Vaud, Swiss Finance Startups and Immomig.

“The venture leaders roadshow is a great chance for startups to network and pitch to investors in New York. To me it was very interesting to get to know the entrepreneurs behind the startups and have a deeper insight into their startups.”

says Jens Schulte, Head of Corporate Ventures at PostFinance, who accompanied the group.

digitalswitzerland supporter, Barbara Stamm, Head of Group M&A at Ringier, decided to join the week in New York too.

“I find it extremely interesting to see, how the startups have changed and become more professional in just one week. It’s great that they are doing these steps together, as a team, and not as competitors”, says Stamm.

Patrick Barnert, CEO of Qumram, one of the ten startups participants, had a similar impression:

“the venture leaders Fintech week in New York was tremendously valuable to Qumram and myself. We as organizations and single individuals learned and evolved in improving our business and skills.”

Teddy Amberg, Partner at startup CreditGate24 added,

“the roadshow allowed to demonstrate the quality and innovation of our Swiss companies and innovations to a global crowd at the Finovate conference”.

On Friday night the 10 Swiss fintech startups pitched at Barclays Accelerator Rise at the first Swiss Fintech Night in cooperation with swissnex and Swiss Business Hub in New York in front of investors, corporates and fintech influencers. François Briod from Monito who won the pitch competition summarizes the week:

 

“The roadshow in New York organized by venturelab not only helped me to connect with experienced investors and driving Monito’s global expansion to the next level. It also gave me the chance to build relationships with great individuals behind Switzerland’s best fintech startups.”

Seven startups are from the Zurich area: Advanon‘s online platform for pre-financing was represented by Phil Lojacono. Andy Flury traveled for AlgoTrader (algorithmic trading software) from Schindellegi to the US. The climate risk specialist, Carbon Delta, was represented by Oliver Marchand. Teddy Amberg of CreditGate24, with their fully automated lending platform was also on the roadshow. Futurae is providing a secure two-factor authentication (2FA) for web security and Qumram seamlessly records all digital interactions, across all channels. These two Zurich startups sent Samuel Berger and Patrick Barnert to the US. SONECT was represented by Sandipan Chakraborty, the startup enables every shop in the neighborhood to act as a virtual ATM.

The rest of the participants are based in Lausanne. KiWi (eBOP) is providing a digital platform of micro-merchants and sent Christian Sinobas to investors in New York. With Francois Briod of Monito (Global Impact Finance) you can send money abroad as it is the Booking.com for money transfers. OneVisage is the first to offer 3D facial biometry on standard smartphones and was represented by Christophe Remillet.

The week in New York was not only of high importance to the startups and their future development but may as well have served its supporters with insights, contacts to investors and corporates. They are unique ambassadors of the thriving Swiss startup scene, Switzerland’s innovation power and focus on real technology. The next chance to join the venture leaders around the globe will arise in 2018.

Additional Links
Here is a short description of the venture leaders Fintech team 2017
Meet the 300+ venture leaders alumni

Article first appeared on http://www.venturelab.ch/