As a Swiss founder, it's great to randomly see this popping up on HN :)
Switzerland has everything to produce successful startups: top universities and talent, stable and sovereign infrastructure and government, capital, and liberal tax and company laws.
However, the reality is different:
As if starting a company isn't hard enough, Swiss (and I guess EU) culture doesn't really recognize entrepreneurship as a valuable career path. You hear a lot of "Are you sure about taking that much risk?" and when you fail you get a "I told you so".
You would think there's plenty of capital here, but unfortunately not in VC. It's getting better, but many Swiss early-stage investors still ask for a detailed 5-year business plan and four due diligence calls for a 5k ticket in your round.
In SF, everyone helps each other out with their network, intros, and so on. In Switzerland, most startups and scaleups still operate in closed gardens and ecosystems are rare or slowly developing, which makes building a network really hard.
Events like these hopefully help to change this :)
That is because the specific model of classifying a worker as a "self-employed contractor" when they work exclusively for a single company is not legal. Aka the gig-economy model used in other countries.
The governments view is that if you have fewer than 3 companies you are dependent on them and they should bare the AHV etc requirements. However if for example you have 2 very large contracts there may be exceptions.
Easiest (not cheapest) is always to create a GmbH or AG which also mitigates a lot of risk you would have as a sole-proprietor.
Exceptions are made depending on the size of contracts. In Zug, the canton regularly approves sole proprietorships that have a large enough contract amount - usually it's a one person consultancy for a biotech company. But again, the only case I know was a guy getting a million CHF contract with a biotech player and he is a well-known biotech persona with multiple books, papers and patents.
this is a joke I may sound salty, but the only innovations I see coming from Europe are plastic bottle recycling and fining American companies for GDPR violations.
You don’t sound salty: you’re speaking from a place of ignorance and offering an opinion based on literally no evidence whatsoever so you merely sound uninformed.
In the UK, for example, we don’t suffer from a dearth of innovation. What actually happens is that successful companies get hoovered up by foreign, and particularly US, investors. It’s extremely frustrating.
For myself, I’m pleased to see events like this happening in other European countries.
I just read today that the UK government had earmarked a plan to fund £300 million in research grants across universities in the UK, but not even 40% of those funds were allocated before the govt shut down the programme. That imo is a effectively a dearth in innovation capital.
Companies don't get hoovered up against their will. The fact of the matter is that moving to the US significantly increases your valuation, even if most of your activity happens elsewhere. If the UK wanted companies to stay, they should make it easier for companies and investors, both domestic and especially foreign, to invest within the country.
Case in point, you can start a factory in less than a year in the US (imo, the fastest in the world, even in these shitty times). That setup would easily take 3-5 years elsewhere.
The cause of the frustration is the entire culture of the UK: don't recognise risk as a valid input that requires reward; blame people who do well; tax them out of the country to pay for people imported recently or leasing the Chagos Islands.
Seems pretty ignorant. If you take a historic perspective, the WWW and things like HTML, HTTP, URLs etc. are technically from a British guy working in Switzerland (CERN) but I suppose crediting it to any country is kind of pointless. These days a lot of it runs on machines that run on a Linux kernel, also technically from Europe. Python/C++/PHP/Erlang/Prolog/Pascal and many others I'm probably forgetting on the programming language front.
If you're talking about current VC-backed hyper accelerators...there's probably also plenty. I think there's also a lot going on in the non-IT sectors (medicine, pharma, genetics, energy etc.)
But the bigger question is...does it really matter which country innovation comes from these days? As an end-user/customer I certainly don't care too much.
> the WWW and things like HTML, HTTP, URLs etc. are technically from a British guy working in Switzerland (CERN) but I suppose crediting it to any country is kind of pointless
A postdoc at CERN coming up with a text format isn't quite the same as what is invented elsewhere, though.
> These days a lot of it runs on machines that run on a Linux kernel, also technically from Europe
True, although much of the development is funded by American companies, who give their work away.
The startup scene in Germany is alive and flourishing. They just don't make headlines and a lot of what they develop may be considered not exciting to the general public.
Ha, so there is an amazing Swiss startup (that took some wrong steps), KA-EX. They make an isotonic drink (btw Isostar is/was also Swiss), and my personal sample and annecdotal news from my friends, well it works (worked). Super easy recovery, hangover cure too. But lately they moved onto drinks with Caffeine added, stopped their original product, and it's not as effective. But well, there are some Swiss startups doing just fine.
I've worked for a few start-ups in Europe. We have real problems around the scale-up stage, venture capital and taxes + regulations are making things harder than it should be but it would be wrong to assume that there's no (successful) startups at all.
Spotify, Ayden, Revolt and N8N are some examples that come to mind.
Also, whenever something is mildly successful, some foreign investor fund will swing a nice back of money in front of the founders and *poof* European company gone.
the global innovation index is such a bad proxy / misinterpretion of "startup scene"
we score high on innovation rankings because of 1) large corporates (e.g. pharma) and 2) strong universities.
while we have deep tech spinoffs profiting from this, it is not a 1:1 correlation and the startup ecosystem (in the SV interpretation) in switzerland is extremely weak (lack of VC appetite, low risk culture, high cost of living, small domestic market with high cultural/language barriers, no startup visas for high potential foreign graduates, etc) compared to its potential
Funding is highly related to those things. It's not related to intellect, but a place that is extremely high risk to invest in just won't be the place where investment ends up.
As a Swiss founder, it's great to randomly see this popping up on HN :)
Switzerland has everything to produce successful startups: top universities and talent, stable and sovereign infrastructure and government, capital, and liberal tax and company laws.
However, the reality is different:
As if starting a company isn't hard enough, Swiss (and I guess EU) culture doesn't really recognize entrepreneurship as a valuable career path. You hear a lot of "Are you sure about taking that much risk?" and when you fail you get a "I told you so".
You would think there's plenty of capital here, but unfortunately not in VC. It's getting better, but many Swiss early-stage investors still ask for a detailed 5-year business plan and four due diligence calls for a 5k ticket in your round.
In SF, everyone helps each other out with their network, intros, and so on. In Switzerland, most startups and scaleups still operate in closed gardens and ecosystems are rare or slowly developing, which makes building a network really hard.
Events like these hopefully help to change this :)
Is it easy? To be a self-employed, aka a "founder" I need to have (provable) 3 paying customers in Switzerland. Not easy.
That is because the specific model of classifying a worker as a "self-employed contractor" when they work exclusively for a single company is not legal. Aka the gig-economy model used in other countries.
The governments view is that if you have fewer than 3 companies you are dependent on them and they should bare the AHV etc requirements. However if for example you have 2 very large contracts there may be exceptions.
Easiest (not cheapest) is always to create a GmbH or AG which also mitigates a lot of risk you would have as a sole-proprietor.
Exceptions are made depending on the size of contracts. In Zug, the canton regularly approves sole proprietorships that have a large enough contract amount - usually it's a one person consultancy for a biotech company. But again, the only case I know was a guy getting a million CHF contract with a biotech player and he is a well-known biotech persona with multiple books, papers and patents.
I've had the same experience. The answer is to bootstrap, its a viable option especially nowadays.
If you are going and looking to join a startup, let me know. email in profile
Any london equivalents?
Coming
[dead]
this is a joke I may sound salty, but the only innovations I see coming from Europe are plastic bottle recycling and fining American companies for GDPR violations.
You don’t sound salty: you’re speaking from a place of ignorance and offering an opinion based on literally no evidence whatsoever so you merely sound uninformed.
In the UK, for example, we don’t suffer from a dearth of innovation. What actually happens is that successful companies get hoovered up by foreign, and particularly US, investors. It’s extremely frustrating.
For myself, I’m pleased to see events like this happening in other European countries.
I just read today that the UK government had earmarked a plan to fund £300 million in research grants across universities in the UK, but not even 40% of those funds were allocated before the govt shut down the programme. That imo is a effectively a dearth in innovation capital.
Companies don't get hoovered up against their will. The fact of the matter is that moving to the US significantly increases your valuation, even if most of your activity happens elsewhere. If the UK wanted companies to stay, they should make it easier for companies and investors, both domestic and especially foreign, to invest within the country.
Case in point, you can start a factory in less than a year in the US (imo, the fastest in the world, even in these shitty times). That setup would easily take 3-5 years elsewhere.
The cause of the frustration is the entire culture of the UK: don't recognise risk as a valid input that requires reward; blame people who do well; tax them out of the country to pay for people imported recently or leasing the Chagos Islands.
Seems pretty ignorant. If you take a historic perspective, the WWW and things like HTML, HTTP, URLs etc. are technically from a British guy working in Switzerland (CERN) but I suppose crediting it to any country is kind of pointless. These days a lot of it runs on machines that run on a Linux kernel, also technically from Europe. Python/C++/PHP/Erlang/Prolog/Pascal and many others I'm probably forgetting on the programming language front.
If you're talking about current VC-backed hyper accelerators...there's probably also plenty. I think there's also a lot going on in the non-IT sectors (medicine, pharma, genetics, energy etc.)
But the bigger question is...does it really matter which country innovation comes from these days? As an end-user/customer I certainly don't care too much.
> the WWW and things like HTML, HTTP, URLs etc. are technically from a British guy working in Switzerland (CERN) but I suppose crediting it to any country is kind of pointless
A postdoc at CERN coming up with a text format isn't quite the same as what is invented elsewhere, though.
> These days a lot of it runs on machines that run on a Linux kernel, also technically from Europe
True, although much of the development is funded by American companies, who give their work away.
The startup scene in Germany is alive and flourishing. They just don't make headlines and a lot of what they develop may be considered not exciting to the general public.
Wirecard was pretty good though. That made the headlines.
Ha, so there is an amazing Swiss startup (that took some wrong steps), KA-EX. They make an isotonic drink (btw Isostar is/was also Swiss), and my personal sample and annecdotal news from my friends, well it works (worked). Super easy recovery, hangover cure too. But lately they moved onto drinks with Caffeine added, stopped their original product, and it's not as effective. But well, there are some Swiss startups doing just fine.
I've worked for a few start-ups in Europe. We have real problems around the scale-up stage, venture capital and taxes + regulations are making things harder than it should be but it would be wrong to assume that there's no (successful) startups at all.
Spotify, Ayden, Revolt and N8N are some examples that come to mind.
Also, whenever something is mildly successful, some foreign investor fund will swing a nice back of money in front of the founders and *poof* European company gone.
Which is very understandable, the US has better regulations, a truly single market and more money available.
Europe has some very real work to do to stay competitive but fortunately things are slowly changing.
The US made fun of European regulations around AI, and what happened? They are correcting hard, and may end up with worse regulations than the EU.
Switzerland has a strong startup scene. The country also ranks first in the global innovation index.
the global innovation index is such a bad proxy / misinterpretion of "startup scene"
we score high on innovation rankings because of 1) large corporates (e.g. pharma) and 2) strong universities.
while we have deep tech spinoffs profiting from this, it is not a 1:1 correlation and the startup ecosystem (in the SV interpretation) in switzerland is extremely weak (lack of VC appetite, low risk culture, high cost of living, small domestic market with high cultural/language barriers, no startup visas for high potential foreign graduates, etc) compared to its potential
This! We lack the big funding pockets like the US. But the innovation capabilities are world class with top university.
Sad that people on HN can’t make the difference between funding and startup mindset/innovation potential.
Funding is highly related to those things. It's not related to intellect, but a place that is extremely high risk to invest in just won't be the place where investment ends up.
Hey we invented LSD