The Fintech Venture Leaders have returned from the Big Apple, where they spent an intense week pitching to multi-billion-dollar investors. The US investors were impressed by Switzerland’s demonstrated ability to serve as a nurturing environment for a large variety of interesting business models, thanks to its outsized influence in world financial markets compared to its population.
These roadshows have a great impact on the Venture Leaders’ business development, with connections forged leading to investment, partnerships or supply contracts. Last year, team member Qumram was even acquired by Dynatrace, having convinced the US firm of the value of their data recording technology.
Eddie Lee of White Star Capital confirmed that this year’s team was as strong as ever.
“I was truly impressed with every entrepreneur in the room today,”
he said.
“I saw so many talented, exciting individuals presenting really phenomenal ideas that could change the world of fintech.”
Vinny Pujji of Insight Venture Partners, which has $20 billion of assets under management and has nurtured 40 startups to IPO, saw the Venture Leaders as a cut above the rest.
“These businesses are huge, huge improvements on the average order of businesses that are typically raising series A. You’ve got founders with 10, 15, 20 years of industry experience, they know the pain points, they know how to sell to these institutions and really they have a much more conservative outlook on company building.”
The roadshow also included meetings with major potential customers, such as Mastercard and Wells Fargo, and a legal workshop at Foley & Lardner. Swiss pitch night at WeWork and networking events gave our Venture Leaders the chance to connect with the local startup scene.
Sandro Schmid, the founder of AAAccell and winner of the pitch competition, confirms the value of the roadshow:
“Venture Leaders brings the best Swiss fintech startups in front of the most competitive and demanding market, the US in New York. Besides the great experiences we had on this trip, it resulted not only in VC negotiations but also in client connections.”
Switzerland is a true deep tech nation
“Switzerland can be very proud of its startup ecosystem,”
said Venturelab Co-Managing Director Stefan Steiner, who accompanied the Venture Leaders on their trip.
“We already know that our universities produce world-class spin-offs. But on this trip I heard from investors how impressed they were to meet entrepreneurs with experience in the finance industry, not just from academia. There is a wealth of talent coming from many directions, and these entrepreneurs are ready to compete on the world stage.”
The Swiss National Fintech Team 2018 is:
– Rodrigo Amandi of 3rd-eyes
– Sandro Schmid of AAAccell
– Nicolas Blanchard of Apiax
– Khaled Ouafi of ARCATrust
– Pranay Jain of Enterprise Bot
– Oliver Werneyer of IMburse
– Alberto Rama of Investment Navigator
– Dario Duran of SHIFT Cryptosecurity
– Florian Kübler of Switzerlend
– Ben James of Tradeplus24
The Venture Leaders Fintech roadshow is organized by Venturelab and supported by digitalswitzerland, PostFinance, Walder Wyss, EPF Lausanne, ETH Zurich and University of Zurich.
Featured image via https://twitter.com/venturelab_ch/
