However, it is up to female founders to find each supporter independently – which is daunting.
SICTIC and startup days recognised this gap and launched the Collective Initiative, an informal association of committed individuals and organisations fostering diversity in the Swiss startup ecosystem. The initiative has three core objectives:
- To connect various initiatives and projects on the topic of diversity and especially “Female Founders & Female Investors.”
- To improve the general framework conditions to fully unleash women’s potential for a robust Swiss innovation scene and economy.
- To explore possible partnerships and collaborations and jointly launch additional initiatives to strengthen women as founders and investors in the Swiss startup ecosystem.
Currently, 33 organisations have joined the initiative, and more are invited to join. The initiative kicked off during the annual Startup Days conference on 25th May in Bern, with more than 500 visitors attending six sessions held by the Collective steering team.
This month Startupticker reported on several milestones achieved by female-led startups. Regarding investment, the Innobooster program of the Gebert Rüf Foundation is supporting early-stage startups Apheros and ASTRA Therapeutics, each with CHF 150’000, to enable them to accelerate their development. Klepsydra, whose co-founder & COO is Isabel del Castillo, also secured an investment of CHF 1.05M to accelerate its growth and expand its product offerings.
Besides conventional financing vehicles, startups consider alternatives like crowdfunding to raise capital. The latest crowdfunding campaigns on the newly launched OOMNIUM platform, co-founded by Rea Eggli, created waves in May with four campaigns. Among them are two female-led companies: elleXX Universe AG, the finance and investment platform for women which raised more than CHF 1.4 million from 1380 investors, and food startup Ninimale led by CEO Sheila Lucido, which has already achieved more than 170% of its target goal.
With its leadership change, Insiders (formerly Advanced Sports Instruments) welcomed Julie Royer Coutts as its new CEO to help drive the company into a new development phase. Talking of development, Anokion’s CEO Deborah Geraghty and her team celebrated a milestone with the success of their phase 1 clinical trial for KAN-101 in Celiac Disease. Genknowme, co-founded by Semira Gonseth Nusslé (Chief Medical Officer), is also on an expansion course.
Several female-led startups and startups with a female co-founder received awards and honorary prizes in multiple award competitions. These are the winners of the announced awards in May:
- Isabelle Mussy Award: Angela Madurga Alonso and Shanaz Diessler
- The Spot’s Sports for Nature Challenge winner is dimpora, which Anna Beltzung (CTO) co-founded.
- Innosuisse scaleup program includes startups such as Dimpora, Komed Health AG, and Signifikant Solutions AG
- In Vivo Rising Leaders named Cutiss as one of the innovators creating the next wave of creativity in healthcare.
- SBI Investment Award recognised Futurae
- Swiss Ethics Awards awarded La Petite Épicerie
- MassChallenge winners include several female-led startups: Globout, Nuniq, ArcoScreen, Healiva SA, Kresko RNAtech, Allcup, Biosimo and Sallea.
- The Digital Commerce Award winner in the startup category is Secend
>>venture>> Finalists include: NOW Care, Biosimo, metaLead, Ascentys ESG, and Clever Forever Education.
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