EP #497 - Nicolas Autret: How to Make Long-Term Startup Investments

Timestamps:

7:29 - How does the Swiss ecosystem compare to others?

18:09 - Which Swiss scaleups is Nicolas excited about?

23:46 - Does Swiss shyness hold us back?

30:23 - Investing in companies with long development cycles

35:08 - Creating outbound investment opportunities 

This episode was co-produced with the Deep Tech Nation Switzerland Foundation.

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About Nicolas Autret:

Nicolas Autret is a partner at Walden Catalyst Ventures, a venture capital firm helping early stage companies in the US, Europe, and Israel build the next generation of category-defining businesses in deep tech. He holds an MBA from INSEAD and was previously a partner at Sofinnova Partners, 360 Capital and Samsung Catalyst Fund before joining Walden Catalyst in 2021.

During his chat with Merle, Nicolas explained why he thinks the Swiss ecosystem should not try to replicate the Silicon Valley phenomenon. According to Nicolas, Silicon Valley is a unique ecosystem that’s been around for 60 years, which resulted from a unique recipe for collaboration between academia, investors, entrepreneurs and large corporates. It took decades to mature, first through government funding and then later largely through private funding. 

The success of Silicon Valley ought to inspire us, says Nicolas, and of course best practices can be derived from it, but we should not try to replicate the exact same phenomenon in Switzerland — a very different country with its unique set of circumstances. Switzerland benefits from excellent universities and is quite strong in terms of deep tech, but it is still maturing as an ecosystem, as are other European startup hubs. Our culture of high performance and high precision differentiates us from the Americans and their “break things” mentality, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. Each mindset has its own individual perks.

Nowadays, Nicolas is excited about Swiss companies like Scandit, ANYbotics, Ecorobotix and SOPHiA GENETICS. He thinks one major key to accelerating the maturation of the Swiss startup ecosystem (and other European ecosystems) is to allow for more late stage funding.

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