Switzerland government raises investment funds to support Swiss startups • Hacker News Board

Re: Switzerland government raises investment funds to support Swiss startups

#41

Post by malthaus » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 12:02 PM UTC

sschueller wrote: post #40

malthaus wrote: post #38

There are a lot of political initiatives, corporate accelerators etc going on at the moment but they don’t fix the inherent problem here in Switzerland: Cost of living is absurdly high, unemployment is low and life is just really convenient. Why risk it all for a startup when you can just cruise through life with a 42h-week and long lunches at a bank and save a ridiculous amount of money doing so. Because of this cul…

I don't see anything wrong with that. We don't need an Uber here. There are still a lot of startups and yes things move more slowly and carefully but for the better of everyone. The culture is what makes Switzerland such a nice place to live.

Spoken in a true Swiss way... slow change :)

An Uber would actually be nice to have as the (eventual) exit would maybe create a scene of true local angel investors.

Re: Switzerland government raises investment funds to support Swiss startups

#42

Post by malthaus » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 12:04 PM UTC

valentinebm wrote: post #2

>87% of investment in Swiss start-ups comes from abroad. Wow. Definitely time to give a cash boost.

It's not for the lack of capital though.

The capital is already here, it's just not used for VC investments due to reasons on both supply and demand side.

Re: Switzerland government raises investment funds to support Swiss startups

#43

Post by eps » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 12:04 PM UTC

xkr wrote: post #21

It's not clear from the text how they define "Swiss startups". For example, being a foreigner, can I start a company there and ask for an investment?

> Can I start a company?

Depends on where you are from exactly.

If you are an EU national, then you can. Otherwise you will first need to get a work permit (against a promise to start a company, reviewed and approved by the canton) and it's generally a slow and expensive hassle requiring an experienced attorney. Whether this will make your company eligible for a startup loan is an open question, but I'm pretty sure that it will.

Re: Switzerland government raises investment funds to support Swiss startups

#44

Post by saiya-jin » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 12:06 PM UTC

mhroth wrote: post #27

tmsldd wrote: post #15

Although it is nice to have more funds available, which increases the competition among VCs, the main point is not lack of funds. I used to say that a good VC brings you two important things: money and market. Money alone doesn't bring you much (don't get me wrong ..). In my eyes that is the main issue in the startup scenario in Switzerland: lack of market. Having a population of about 8 million people means that you…

Market size is always a problem in Switzerland. But you could say the same of startups in Israel, which seem to be doing just fine. As a Swiss startup (or a startup starting in any small market), you know from the beginning that you will have to internationalise. You don't start with your local market, you start with the global market in mind.

not so much - Suisse has 4 official languages, so even app developed only for their own languages already also covers Germany, Austria, Italy, France, part of Belgium and Canada and other few hundreds of millions of french-speaking people worldwide. Add english which is still not used as much as elsewhere but everybody knows it +-OKish, and you can cover most of the world.

Suisse has another advantage - proper data privacy. Well maybe not 100% (honestly not sure), but its far better compared to a joke of US (or UK it seems). Plus top notch technical universities (Lausanne, Zurich). This could be big thing, a nice counterbalance to SV at least for EMEA markets

Re: Switzerland government raises investment funds to support Swiss startups

#45

Post by sschueller » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 12:07 PM UTC

malthaus wrote: post #41

sschueller wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anything wrong with that. We don't need an Uber here. There are still a lot of startups and yes things move more slowly and carefully but for the better of everyone. The culture is what makes Switzerland such a nice place to live.

Spoken in a true Swiss way... slow change :) An Uber would actually be nice to have as the (eventual) exit would maybe create a scene of true local angel investors.

Sorry but a successful Uber would indicate that is ok to ignore any law[1] in your way and effectively ruin many peoples lives to enrich a few VCs. No thanks.

Not that Switzerland doesn't have its corrupt Corporations but we don't need more.

[1] http://www.uberscandals.org/all/

Re: Switzerland government raises investment funds to support Swiss startups

#46

Post by gpresot » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 12:07 PM UTC

xkr wrote: post #21

It's not clear from the text how they define "Swiss startups". For example, being a foreigner, can I start a company there and ask for an investment?

If you have a Resident Permit (type B or C), you can start a company. That means you should already be in switzerland with a regular employment contract (or as a spouse of a swiss citizen or swiss resident). What I do not know is if you can ask for a permit in order to then start your company (i.e. come to Switzerland for the specific purpose of starting a company), although apparently Swiss authorities are very helpful if you choose to move your already existing company to Switzerland.

Re: Switzerland government raises investment funds to support Swiss startups

#47

Post by louisswiss » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 12:12 PM UTC

malthaus wrote: post #38

There are a lot of political initiatives, corporate accelerators etc going on at the moment but they don’t fix the inherent problem here in Switzerland: Cost of living is absurdly high, unemployment is low and life is just really convenient. Why risk it all for a startup when you can just cruise through life with a 42h-week and long lunches at a bank and save a ridiculous amount of money doing so. Because of this cul…

I hear this argument all the time whenever people talk about the lack of a startups scene in Switzerland and I think it's way off the mark.

People who want to found companies will always found companies - and in Switzerland we are really lucky to have a solid (personal) financial base to build on and the knowledge that, if the startup doesn't work out, there will be a great job to go back to. I'd almost go as far as to say that a lot of people start companies in Switzerland who otherwise wouldn't be in a situation to start a startup anywhere else in the world.

The real problem we have in Switzerland is the 'investor-incest' which dictates where the significant amount of available capital is invested. It is a horrible old-boys club of epic proportions, focussed on back-slapping and box-ticking instead of innovation and potential (and I say this as someone who benefits from the fact).

Aside from this problem, investors in Switzerland are generally less sophisticated than SV investors (especially at the angel/institutional levels) and tend to focus on the solution not the problem when making investment decisions. This leads to most of the Swiss capital in Switzerland being invested into technologically advanced university spin-offs with no market or use case, while teams with a real product-market fit have to go abroad to find investors with the right mindset.

Re: Switzerland government raises investment funds to support Swiss startups

#48

Post by raverbashing » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 12:13 PM UTC

kyledrake wrote: post #39

Liberalizing their immigration laws that prevent availability of talent for startups (and everyone else) is a better solution to this problem than just throwing together a giant pile of dumb money. But that's going to require some pretty existential changes to Switzerland that I sincerely doubt they're actually interested in making.

They can have anyone from the EU and getting a visa is not hard (with sponsorship)

Re: Switzerland government raises investment funds to support Swiss startups

#49

Post by kyledrake » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 12:27 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #48

kyledrake wrote: post #39

Liberalizing their immigration laws that prevent availability of talent for startups (and everyone else) is a better solution to this problem than just throwing together a giant pile of dumb money. But that's going to require some pretty existential changes to Switzerland that I sincerely doubt they're actually interested in making.

They can have anyone from the EU and getting a visa is not hard (with sponsorship)

Switzerland has 8 million people that can work without nasty visas and their related problems. California has 321 million.

Re: Switzerland government raises investment funds to support Swiss startups

#50

Post by raverbashing » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 12:33 PM UTC

kyledrake wrote: post #49

raverbashing wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can have anyone from the EU and getting a visa is not hard (with sponsorship)

Switzerland has 8 million people that can work without nasty visas and their related problems. California has 321 million.

Read that again: "They can have anyone from the EU" (with no need for visas)

That's 510 Million people - take 65Mi out when the UK leaves but that's still a bigger number (Google gives a total European population if you google that, but that's a wrong number)