EP #216 - Martin Eng & Patrick Forte: A Backstage View Of The ON Story

Timestamps:

1:31 - Meeting the ON co-founders for the first time

7:30 - Loans are preferable to equity rounds

26:05 - An investor's sleepless nights

34:18 - Swiss IPOs in the future

39:49 - Get help with industry leaders

About Martin Eng & Patrick Forte

Martin Eng is a senior client advisor at UBS, and Patrick Forte works there as the head of corporate finance. Martin has been a part of the UBS team for a total of 15 years, Patrick for 18.

The ON team won the SEF (Swiss Economic Forum) award for Innovation in Production of Sporting Goods, which earned them the SEF.growth (at the time called SEF for KMU) label. SEF growth companies get easy access to loans from UBS, and this was how Martin and Patrick met the ON founders.

They were very impressed from the very beginning with the ON team's commitment and with their expertise: despite being a young company, they had systems and automation in place which allowed them to know their global sales with a 30 min delay — and this in the early 2010s.

ON needed the loan money in order to pre pay all their orders, since their choice to invest all revenue into growth meant that it took them a long time to start generating cash. The loan amount was adjusted periodically based on the influx of ON orders. UBS also provided expertise for the decision making process.

Memorable Quotes:

"If you can get get funds through loans instead of equity rounds, then that's always preferable as a startup, because it means you get to keep your baby."

If you would like to listen to our other episodes from this UBS co-production, check out our conversations with Jürg Tauss, Fabian Humbel, and Thomas Hofer and Vito Gigante.

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