Second edition of Swiss Startup Radar
Large companies and investors are prepared to spend hundreds of millions on fast-growing start-ups. The online news portal startupticker.ch and HEC Lausanne, University of Lausanne have analysed the exits of Swiss start-ups and placed the results in an international context.
Companies sold for more than CHF 100 million just five years after their foundation or which go public with a valuation of this amount are no longer isolated cases in Switzerland. This is good news for the innovation and business location, since the money earned by the founders and investors usually goes back into the ecosystem and enables financing of the next generation of start-ups.
This cycle of foundation, sale and reinvestment is well established; it forms the financial and personnel basis of the successful model of Silicon Valley. With the second edition of Swiss Startup Radar, statistical data on national exits is now available for the first time.
Evaluation of the 450 Swiss exits of the last 25 years shows, inter alia, that about half of former founders are retained in the start-up ecosystem – whether as a serial entrepreneur, investor or consultant.
In terms of sector, recently exits have focused on IT, with nearly 60% of the companies sold in 2018 active in software and IT. As far as the geographical distribution of transactions is concerned, it is noticeable that the small canton of Zug is now in third place behind the heavyweights of Zurich and Vaud.
The second focus of the publication is a comparison of the Swiss start-up ecosystem with other countries, including Israel and Germany. In addition to national sources, the authors have also made use of the international databases Pitchbook and Crunchbase. Overall, the analysis is based on data from about 5,000 domestic and more than 250,000 foreign start-ups.
Swiss Startup Radar, published in three languages, is developed in collaboration with the news portal startupticker.ch and HEC Lausanne, University of Lausanne.
Source: Startupticker