Assessing Founders' Startup Mindset

Timestamps:

3:30 - Identifying a market gap in legal tech 

10:06 - What is “smart money” after all?

16:22 - How do you go from researcher to CEO?

25:55 - The biggest risk for every scaleup

36:20 - Is Switzerland a hotbed for AI?

This episode was co-produced by SICTIC, the leading angel investor network in Switzerland.

This episode was sponsored by Relai. Get started with Bitcoin by downloading the Relai app today, and profit from 10% less fees by entering code SWISSPRENEUR at checkout.

(Disclaimer: Relai services are exclusively recommended for Swiss and Italian residents.)

Click ⁠here⁠ to order your copy of “Swiss Startups” today.

Episode Description:

Thomas Dübendorfer is the founder and president of SICTIC, the leading angel investor network in Switzerland. He’s also a cybersecurity expert and serial entrepreneur, holding board seats at Frontify and several other startups. 

⁠Paulina Grnarova⁠ is the co-founder and CEO of ⁠DeepJudge⁠, an AI-powered knowledge search for legal professionals. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from ETH, and started her company in 2021, directly after completing her studies.

Founded by ex-Google search engineers and legaltech veterans, DeepJudge reimagines how firms access and use their internal knowledge, unlocking the full breadth of data and depth of documents to improve all areas of a lawyer’s business. It enables you to build entire AI applications, encapsulate multi-step workflows, and implement LLM agents.

SICTIC is one of DeepJudge’s investors. During his chat with Merle and Paulina, SICTIC president Thomas Dübendorfer shared how he assesses startup teams:

• Does the founder really understand what the journey of a startup is?

• Can the startup team evolve to meet changing demands?

• Does the team believe what they’re selling?

• Are they aware that they’ll have to overcome several difficulties in the coming years?

• Are they all moving in the same direction, working to achieve the same mission?

Thomas also takes care to assess companies from an ethical standpoint, especially when the tech has dual use. For instance, drones can be used for rescue missions or to bring food or medicine, but they can also be used to transport weapons. In cases like these, it’s crucial to confront the founders with the most problematic possibilities upfront.

Thomas is confident in Switzerland’s AI future: all the experts are here, across a very broad range of industries, and, when it comes to AI specifically, Switzerland can already count on several research institutions making great strides -  like the ETH AI Center, the Swiss National Institute, and the Swiss National SuperComputing Center.

The cover portrait was edited by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Smartportrait. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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