Swisspreneur Show Swisspreneur

Timestamps:

1:32 - Interning at Namics

14:31 - What GotCourts does

22:34 - The paddle tennis boom

28:25 - Building traction outside Switzerland

36:58 - Getting acquired by a competitor



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About Diego Seitz:

Diego Seitz is the co-founder and former CEO at GotCourts, a social network for racket sports players and marketplace for booking courts and coaches. He holds a MSc in International Management from CEMS as well as a MSc in Strategic Management from the university of St. Gallen and previously worked at companies like Namics and Accenture before joining GotCourts as a late co-founder in 2017. 

Founded in 2013, GotCourts was the first platform to provide everything a player needs in a single marketplace. Finding a partner or a coach, booking a court nearby or competing for a place in their leaderboards and tracking your progress, GotCourts is your "virtual global club"​. For court facilities and clubs they offer a capable club management system and a platform to engage with the community. This means they receive revenue not only from the SaaS subscription but also from the racket sports players themselves.

Coming into the fitness industry with an innovative approach, the GotCourts team often found that they had to educate potential SaaS customers on the benefits of online demos and how to set up a video call, so as to drive down acquisition costs. Their internationalization process began in Germany, where they at first bet on the traditional route of ads, email marketing, cold calling, and simply offering the product in euros, only to later find out that the German federations were the true door into the market, and that a freemium model for the app was much more suitable for their German users. Nowadays GotCourts is the racket sports app in the DACH region.

GotCourts was acquired in 2021 by Spanish competitor Playtomic for an undisclosed amount. Diego remained on board as the regional manager of Central Europe. Currently he is also working on a new venture, alfred.ch, which provides legal and strategic consulting services to early stage ventures, entrepreneurs and investors. 

Timestamps:

1:39 - What changed from 2020 to 2024

4:06 - 8 co-founders from start to finish

7:36 - Finding the right focus

13:33 - Selling to robot manufacturers

19:58 - Getting acquired by ABB 



About Gianluca Cesari:

Gianluca Cesari is a co-founder and the CBDO of Sevensense Robotics, a robotics ETH spin-off which empowers mobile robots to move into public and dynamic spaces, supporting humans in the execution of dirty, dangerous and dull tasks. Gianluca holds a master’s degree in Robotics, Systems and Control from ETH Zurich and afterwards continued as Robotics Engineer at the university’s Autonomous Systems Lab, before officially founding Sevensense in 2018.

 

In Gianluca’s opinion, Sevensense’s biggest challenge was finding the right focus, which is a challenge universal to all tech startups: they develop great tech, but what needs to be sold is a product, not a technology — so what use should their tech be put to? The solution to this conundrum is to start talking to customers. Eventually Sevensense landed upon two verticals: automated material handling, and automated cleaning.

They were acquired by ABB in 2024 for an undisclosed amount.



This episode was produced in collaboration with startup days, taking place this year on May 30th 2024. Click ⁠here⁠ to purchase your ticket.

Timestamps:

12:02 - Breaking down crypto

17:50 - B2Banks and financial institutions

29:23 - Being a solo founder against your will

38:35 - Hiring senior people for a startup

42:00 - A USD 250M exit



About Adrien Treccani:

Adrien Treccani is the founder and CEO of Metaco, an enterprise technology company whose mission is to enable financial and non-financial institutions to securely build their digital asset operations. He holds a PhD in Finance from the SFI (Swiss Finance Institute) and previously worked for companies like Gottex Brokers Alternative and Swissquote before starting Metaco in 2015.

Metaco’s founding date turned out to be much too early: back in 2015, very few people were thinking of tokenizing everything, like Adrien thought would happen — but still the team managed to pull their startup through, perhaps at least in part due to Adrien hiring very senior people early on. The most important of these hires was a CCO, to complement Adrien’s engineering mind. Nowadays Metaco provides software to banks and other financial institutions which enables them to manage their clients digital (crypto) assets at very large scales. 

In 2023 Metaco was acquired by Ripple, a leading enterprise crypto company, for US$250M. Adrien remains at Metaco as founder and CEO. 

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Timestamps:

1:17 - Brought together by wine 

3:21 - Declining fertility rates in Europe

8:12 - How the team came together 

10:38 - Guys working on women’s health? 

17:58 - Fundraising through the Swisspreneur Syndicate 



About Daniel Gutierrez & Francois Smuts:

Francois Smuts is the co-founder and managing director of BioNexus, a healthcare company focused on creating cutting edge wearable diagnostics. He holds a Global Masters of Public Health from Imperial College London and was a Medical Affairs Manager for companies like Merck Pty, Abbott and Mirum Pharmaceuticals before founding BioNexus in 2023.

Daniel Gutierrez is a customer and supporter of BioNexus. He holds a PhD in Cardiac Physiology from the University of Bern and currently works as Head of Site Network Engagement at Clinerion.

BioNexus is committed to developing diagnostics which tackle women’s health issues by monitoring hormones in live time. According to a recent McKinsey study, there is a 1 trillion dollar gap in the women’s health sector, so the time for technologies like theirs is definitely upon us. Francois also derives motivation from his personal experience of witnessing his mother struggle with menopause and be told by doctors that she ought to conform to her loss of quality of life. 

They are developing a wearable patch with microneedles that measures your hormones continuously, which would be helpful not only for menopausal women but also for couples struggling to conceive. 

BioNexus is raising CHF 900K to boost their product development, part of which through the Swisspreneur Syndicate. Check out our deal flow page to learn more.

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Timestamps:

2:57 - What Girls in Tech is

6:35 - Deciding to become a female engineer

11:40 - The importance of role models

24:20 - The benefit of having a female network 

25:44 - The future of Girls in Tech 



About Lisa Stähli & Fabienne Lorenz:

Lisa Stähli is a board member and Head of Press at Girls in Tech Switzerland, a nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating the gender gap in tech. She holds a MSc in Geomatics Engineering from ETH and is currently a Product Engineering Lead at the Esri R&D Center Zurich. Fabienne Lorenz is the co-managing director at Girls in Tech Switzerland, holds a MAS in Marketing Management from ZHAW School of Management and Law, and is currently the Head of Academy at Synpulse.

The Swiss chapter of Girls in Tech was started with the vision of creating a community of like-minded women who could support and encourage one another in Switzerland. It’s part of a larger community of more than 120K people around the world. They provide community, skill workshops and role models to motivate women in their professional journeys.

The conversation in this episode was recorded in April 2023, and was co-produced together with the Female Founders Initiative.

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Timestamps:

2:10 - 25 years of Swiss entrepreneurship

3:01 - The Kick Fund 

10:38 - The problem of segmented startup initiatives 

17:40 - The 4 areas of Deep Tech Switzerland

24:06 - The role of the Swiss government



About Pascale Vonmont & Roger Wüthrich-Hasenböhler:

Pascale Vonmont is the director of the Gebert Rüf Stiftung, and Roger Wüthrich-Hasenböhler is the non-executive vice-president at Swisscom, and a former member of its Group Executive Board. 

Gebert Rüf Stiftung is one of the initial partners of the Kick Fund, whose goal it is to invest in Swiss pre-seed and stage technology startups from the Venture Kick pipeline. Venture Kick is part of the Kick Foundation, which is supporting young entrepreneurial talents at Swiss universities. The close collaboration with the Deep Tech Switzerland Foundation (where Roger is also active) secures the financing and support pipeline from startup to scale-up. Roger and Pascale feel that Swiss startup initiatives ought to break down silos and work together, sharing their resources, so as to facilitate the commercialization of Swiss innovation.

 

This episode was produced in collaboration with startup days, taking place this year on May 30th 2024. Click here to purchase your ticket.