Venturing Switzerland: Recent Episodes
Christian Dreyer
We are interviewing venture capital managers investing in Swiss ventures with a view to whether they'll make it on an institutional investor's long list. Kind of Shark Tank or Lion's Den reversed.
This session with Eleonora Angeliniadis and Ben Robinson of Aperture was recorded on Teams on 26 April 2024 - the first session with two guests!
Here's Ben's recommendations:
- Fintech Brainfood
- Matt Brown's Notes
- Net interest
- Invest like the best - I very much concur!
- His Airpods!
Eleonora suggests the following:
- Shoe dog
- Power Law (of course!)
- Her Robo Vacuum!
They want me to talk to Leva, Guillaume Dubray of Polytech Ventures and Godefroy Schrago of FiveT.
This special episode with Patrick Aebischer was recorded in person on 23 April 2024 in Basel, Switzerland.
Patrick recommends following science journalist Fabrice Delaye on Heidi.news, a French language news website with a special anniversary offer at pixel time.
This episode with Andreas Iten of Tenity has been recorded on Teams on 23 February 2024.
His reading recommendations were The Innovator's Dilemma and Exponential Organisations. While he's giving a pass on contact recommendations, he's discovered Beeline, a beautiful tiny navigating device for cyclists.
This episode with Andreas Bezner CFA of Stableton has been recorded on Teams on 26 July 2023. His enthusiastic recommendation is to study and follow Matt Mochary's The Great CEO Within, which has also been published as a book. There's also a free curriculum available of the Mochary Method. Andreas suggests to talk to Maximilian Derpa of tenity next. Lastly, he uses novel AI driven tools grammarly go and perplexity AI in his daily work.
This episode with Aleksandra Laska of Redalpine was recorded on Teams on 21 July 2023.
She recommends following the MIT Review and the website of Andreessen Horowitz, both recommendations that I fully endorse as I have them in my daily feed.
She suggests we talk to Simon Enderli of SEF and Stefan Mühlemann of Reichmuth.
As a mother of two, she's discovered oioioi, a Switzerland based platform offering a subscription of sustainable baby clothes - very cool!
This episode with Olaf Hannemann of Crypto Valley Venture Capital has been recorded on Teams on 10 July 2023.
Olaf recommends a brief reading indeed, namely Hedging against Disruption from Bertelsmann Investments.
For conversation partners, he recommends the Swiss Private Equity and Corporate Finance Association, which is definitely a valuable source and crucial networking node.
Olaf urges everybody to play with everybody's darling ChatGPT et al in everybody's specific space. He thinks LLMs are amazingly powerful, even though he has not identified a specific tool for the VC space, yet. He expects to see a voice to low code / no code platform for web3 to materialise before long.
In this episode recorded on 14 June 2023, we are talking to Jacqueline Ruedin Ruesch via a Teams call.
Jacqueline is recommending The Magic of Thinking Big, an art that many in our small country should study better.
She very much likes the approach of the Dutch VC team 4impact - their website is definitely a looker!
In this episode recorded on 15 February 2023, we are talking to Krzysztof Bialkowski of TX Ventures via a Teams call.
Krzysztof's book recommendations have both been covered here before (Steven Mallaby's Power Law and Hans Rosling's Factfulness) - so they are evidently witness to the Swiss VC scene's inherent optimism. His recommendation for a conversation partner is Andreas Bezner of Stableton, a platform popularising venture capital direct investments (and portfolios, too) for the masses.
Interestingly for a fintech VC, Krzysztof shares his passion for energy solutions and their geopolitical impact - a red hot topic if ever there was one. He recommends the Undecided (now Still TBD) podcast. We are certainly going to listen in on that.
This is the first Venturing Switzerland episode in the new year! We have been talking to Alex Stöckl of Wingman Ventures on 23 January 2023 via a Teams call.
Alex' recommendations were Hans Rosling's Factfulness as a pick-me-up in these sometimes dreary days. He recommends us to talk to two LPs building funds of funds, namely Thomas Christensen of LGT Capital Partners and Thomas Schneider of Isomere Capital. Lastly, he was most impressed by a recent speaker's claim about autogenerativ videos that in perhaps 12 months' time, you could feed all episodes of The Simpsons into a model and ask it to build a 20 minutes episode about an Obama visit to Paris ...
This is the Xmas episode of Venturing Switzerland with Dominique Mégret of Swisscom Ventures, author of Deeptech Nation. Section plan:00:45 VC origin story09:18 Investment approach37:58 firm governance60:10 recommendationsDominique's recommendations are: Bad blood Amp it up How to avoid a climate disaster recommended VC contact: Henri B Meier recent advances in nuclear fusion
Today we are talking to Teddy Amberg of Spicehaus AG, with an occasional sigh from my dog Divo in the background.
Teddy's recommendations are a bit contrarian, in that he recommends to restrict one's media consumption, which is also an active media recommendation, of course.
In term of people to talk to, he recommends Michael Wüst of portfolio company Amnis, and Armin Koller of Kemaro.
Finally, when it comes to recent discoveries - he discovered how low you can fly a drone over an active volcano without crashing it.
In this episode, we are meeting Olivier Laplace, Partner at VI Partners. Olivier's recommendations are: Media: Power Law by Sebastian Mallaby Conversation Partner: Yoko Spirig Recent discovery: Keto diet's impact on mental health