The Redalpine Innovation Day drew a large and varied crowd from the Swiss and European startup ecosystem
The Redalpine Innovation Day, last Thursday, March 10th, brought together more than 200 attendees and a number of select speakers, such as Professors from ETH and Uni St. Gallen as well as the US ambassador to Switzerland and a Cantonal Councillor, to share views on the state of the startup ecosystem in Europe and, in particular, Switzerland.
We were delighted to receive such an overwhelming interest in the event and our sincere gratitude goes out to speakers and attendees alike for making this event such a success. In the following, we would like to share with you some of the insights and highlights of the event.
After an introduction by Redalpine founding partners Peter Niederhauser and Dr. Michael Sidler, US ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, Suzi LeVine, took the stage with an engaging take on the Swiss culture of precision and perfection in comparison to the US approach of “failing fast and failing cheaply”.
Mrs. LeVine also shared some of her personal experiences to highlight the importance of gender diversity for the success of both startups and established companies.
Dr. Dietmar Grichnik, professor of entrepreneurship at the University of St. Gallen, reminded us that Switzerland is a world champion in innovation but needs to be one in entrepreneurship, as well. Prof. Grichnik called for action, to reinforce talent attraction across borders, to implement one digital Europe and to grow the Venture Capital industry.
As an example of Swiss innovation power, Prof. Roland Siegwart, head of the Autonomous Systems Lab at ETH Zurich, presented cutting edge research in robotics and exciting footage of some of the most advanced autonomous robots.
As examples of bridging the gap between innovation and entrepreneurship, Jan Andresen (Veeseo) and Dr. Jan Lichtenberg (InSphero) gave their respective accounts from the founder’s perspective of two of Redalpine Capital I’s successful exits.
After a short note by Carmen Walker Späh, Government Councillor and Head of the Department for Economic Affairs of Canton Zurich, some of our portfolio companies, including Knip, Lunaphore, Number26 and Juniqe gave insights into their exciting journeys over the past few years and their most recent developments.
The official program was closed by a quick round-up and an outlook of what’s to come for Redalpine.
With the Innovation Day 2016 such a resounding success we are looking forward to the Redalpine Innovation Day 2017!