I’m so curious who will be the winner of this year 6 weeks Kickstart Accelerator program focused on early and late stage startups development. There are 4 main verticals the startups will focus on during the period of the program. They will surely try to make the most out of the resources they have been provided with. A lot of experts, mentors, external specialists and in-house coaches are around making sure the teams are working on the highest speed and have all they need to boost creativity and grow their entrepreneurial mindset.
I have a pleasure to participate in the program as an expert in FinTech&Crypto area and I may possibly witness birth of the new unicorn company entering into the market. During the grand opening I listened to all startups’ 2 minutes pitches, watched their working and networking with potential investors and supporters. To be honest, the teams selection took quite a lot of time and the best out of the best were given a change to step on the stage and present their greatest passion. I have may favourite teams already for which I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed. I’ll list all startups taking part in the competition and then say a little bit more about 2 that especially attracted my attention and I truly believe in their growing presence on the markets. I’m wondering if you have the same bets! I invite you to take a look at my blog in six weeks to get to know who will be the winner! Looks like, it’s gonna be busy and exciting month!
As mentioned, there are 4 verticals startups compete in and work hard on the development of products on the following markets:
- EdTech & Learning – ideas about how to disrupt education market and provide some innovative solutions to teaching and learning activities.
Startups taking part in this vertical:
- Code on
- Differ
- Gnowbe
- Labster
- Potential.ly
- Sharing academy
- Teachy
- Write Reader
- Migros Klubschule
2. Smart Cities & Infrastructure– focuses on building smarter, safer, resilient and more responsive cities by improving civil services and infrastructure in cities.
Startups taking part in this vertical:
- Avuxi
- BlockDox
- Flecopower
- Hive mind
- Kido dynamics
- Pedius
- The energy audit
3. FinTech&Crypto– looking for startups that can provide cutting-edge solutions to Swiss multinational banks, venture capital and industry partners. Topics include: Open banking, distributed ledger and smart contract technologies, wealth management and crypto.
Startups taking part in this vertical:
- Altoo– Simplicity for complex wealth. Altoo Wealth Platform empowers wealthy individuals and their relatives to consolidate and interact with their total wealth in a simple and intuitive way. It’s a place where you have all your assets collected and can monitor its’ total value. The platform makes the complex and decentralised data simple and easy to analyse and manage. I recommend to try out the demo available on the Altoo website.
- RoboVC– RoboVC is an intrapreneurship project from Swisscom Ventures that is run like a startup. They built screening deals tool that is based on AI technology. To my mind, it’s quite promising idea! Let’s consider Venture Capital businesses and number of startups or early stage founders Analysts/Associates are supposed to analyse to just come up with some shortlist of potential startups VCs want to eventually invest in. The numbers are big and demand would be quite significant. The tools would just help with scouting and the very early stage of the research process. RoboVC is having currently one sponsor so the development works are in progress.
- Trakti
- YukkaLab
- Asteria
- Bank pay
- FinTech db
- Gauss Algorythmic
- Reportix
- Resonance X
4. Food and Retail Tech-interested in radical food and retail innovation in markets with a high growth potential.
Startups taking part in this vertical:
- Alver
- Besso
- Lucka Box
- Casa
- Oliq
- Yarok
More details about each single team you can find on the Kickstart Accelerator Program.
UPDATE
As promised, a few additional remarks after the closing ceremony of the Kickstart Accelerator program 2018*.
KICKSTART 2018 LEADS TO MORE THAN 35 COLLABORATIONS
BETWEEN STARTUPS AND ESTABLISHED CORPORATIONS AND
ORGANIZATIONS
It’s a 3rd edition of the program and they are growing rapidly one year after another. This time in addition to the 30 startups, five intrapreneurship teams from Credit Suisse, Migros and Swisscom participated in the
program.
Here is the overview of the 2018 pilot projects and partnerships:
The EdTech & Learning Vertical saw 10 collaborations:
- ETH Zurich and Differ (Norway) collaborate to build digital learning communities for (ETH) students by testing Differ’s software in a pilot project with one ETH bachelor course engaging more than 500
students. - ETH Zurich and Potential.ly (UK) explore a collaboration to support (ETH) students’ professional development paths and career-readiness in the scope of a pilot with selected students doing company internships.
- Mercator Foundation Switzerland is executing a joint pilot project with WriteReader (Denmark), a platform that helps children to learn reading and writing by creating their own books at school, as well
as Jacobs Foundation and Dybuster (CH) with different schools. - Migros Club School will start a PoC with Labster (Denmark) aiming at evaluating a new method for creating digital language learning content in 3D Virtual Reality environments and the impact of such
content on client engagement. - Swisscom and TEACHY (CH) are collaborating in a PoC to explore opportunities in the field of 1on1 personal learning between Swisscom experts and Swisscom employees.
- The University of Zurich will cooperate with Labster (Denmark) to explore laboratory simulations and virtual reality in university science instruction.
- The Career Services of the University of Zurich is developing application opportunities with Potential.ly (UK) to use the platform to increase career readiness of students at UZH.
- The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of the University of Zurich will work with Differ (Norway) to increase collaboration amongst students and teaching assistants by using the platform.
- The Dean’s Office of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of the University of Zurich will collaborate with Potential.ly (UK) in a pilot project to promote digital skills training of its employees.
- ZHAW is planning a PoC with the Bernese educational startup TEACHY (CH) in the field of student
- tutoring to promote the educational careers of its students.
In the Fintech & Crypto Vertical, 10 PoCs and other collaborations with Kickstart partners were agreed on:
- Credit Suisse and the Switzerland-based company Altoo AG, offering solutions for wealthy individuals, stated their intention to work together in the area of future private banking platform solutions.
- Credit Suisse and Asteria (Sweden) intend to test opportunities in cash flow advisory for small & medium-sized corporate clients.
- Credit Suisse and Gauss Algorithmic (Czech Republic) intend to work together in the area of data analytics.
- Credit Suisse and Reportix (Germany) are exploring the potential for digitization and automated processing of documents and forms using non-proprietary Ricardian Contracts (human and machine-readable contracts).
- Credit Suisse and YUKKA Lab AG (Germany) intend to collaborate with regards to Yukka’s value proposition to use augmented language and machine learning to analyze global financial news from
trusted sources. - Swisscom is exploring the opportunities of “Open Banking” for the Swiss financial industry with the Fintech companies Altoo AG (CH) and YUKKA Lab AG (Germany).
- Swisscom is launching a PoC with the Norwegian startup Fintechdb (Norway) to better map the Swiss FinTech ecosystem.
- AXA is collaborating with Reportix to explore opportunities for new insurance products providing trust, transparency and automation created by blockchain-based platforms.
- PwC Switzerland and YUKKA Lab AG (Germany) signed a Letter of Intent to progress the development of joint business cases in the field of Augmented Language Intelligence for the financial industry.
- C4DR and Trakti (Italy) have agreed to test the Trakti Smart Contract platform with C4DR’s Blockchain-powered Supply Chain Finance Business and Security Token Factory.
The Food & Retail Tech Vertical saw 9 collaborative projects resulting from the programme:
- Coop and Alver (CH) are looking into integrating Alver branded products into the Coop assortment as well as into using their innovative vegan protein for product development.
- Coop and LuckaBox (CH) are running two Proofs of Concepts to explore potential benefits of a new ultra-local urban distribution model as well as using LuckaBox’ cloud-based technology for effective
last mile deliveries. - Coop and microPow (CH) are collaborating with the goal to bring enhanced, shelf-stable, natural microPow aromas into a variety of food products.
- Migros will start two PoCs with LuckaBox (CH). The Migros Cooperative Zurich launches a pilot project with the startup and thereby expands its range of services. From November 2019, customers of Migros City will be able to have their purchases delivered directly to their home.
- M-Industry will start a PoC with Besso (Germany) aiming at testing Besso tea pads in the Swiss market.
- Mondelēz International and Alver (CH) are exploring the application of a new sustainable plant-based protein source in different snack forms.
- Mondelēz International and microPow (CH) are looking at opportunities to better preserve high-value ingredients in snacks to make their benefits fully available to consumers.
The Smart Cities & Infrastructure Vertical Vertical resulted in 6 collaborations:
- Empa is collaborating with BlockDox (UK) to implement their IoT and AI-driven sensor analytics solution at the NEST research and innovation building.
- Empa and Fleco Power (CH) collaborate to assess the potential and technical implementation for using the electricity consumption flexibility of Empa NEST demonstrator to help stabilize the local
electricity grid in Dübendorf. - ewz is collaborating with BlockDox (UK) to implement their patented IoT and AI-driven sensor analytics solution at the collaboration space Kraftwerk in Zurich Selnau.
- ewz and Fleco Power (CH) are performing a pilot project to test a control unit in a charging station for electric vehicles operated by ewz.
- ewz is collaborating with Hivemind (CH) to set up different IoT/LoRaWAN use cases and implement and visualize them on the Hivemind-IoT platform.
- The City of Zurich and Pedius are in final discussions to agree on a collaboration to make calls for selected services accessible for the deaf and hard of hearing. During the process of establishing the
project, Impact Hub Zürich will continue to support Pedius.
Furthermore, during the few weeks of Kickstart 2018, the startups have raised 6.5 million CHF funding from international and Swiss investors.
Great success and congratulations for all participants! Looking forward to the next year issue!
*Above data collected based on the report prepared by Kickstart Accelerator. More detailed info you can find in the full report here.
