Thread

1. hubraumhugo · 1790681855 · focus · HN ↗

   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 :)

   1. alfanick · 1790684266 · focus · HN ↗

      Is it easy? To be a self-employed, aka a "founder" I need to have (provable) 3 paying customers in Switzerland. Not easy.

      1. fakedang · 1790699331 · focus · HN ↗

         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.

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