Swisspreneur Show

Timestamps: 10:58 - Basecamp was born out of embarrassment 19:16 - Getting an offer from Bezos in 2005 38:50 - No email service is free 41:13 - What’s wrong with the cloud 47:56 - Quiet quitting About David Heinermeier Hansson: David Heinemeier Hansson, originally from Denmark, studied Business Administration at the Copenhagen Business School in the late 1990s. He is the founder of the open-source web framework, Ruby On Rails, and co-founder of 37Signals and HEY along with his business partner, Jason Fried. In 2001, he got his first official commercial job, after programming for only 2 years. At the time he envisioned programming not just as a tool, but as something he saw himself doing for the long term, which encouraged him to excel at programming, and later resulted in the creation of Ruby on Rails. David founded Ruby on Rails in 2003, a software used for creating high-performance web platforms. It has been very successful since its inception, with popular applications such as Airbnb, Square and Spotify being built on the platform. A year later, in 2004, David launched Basecamp, one of the first software-as-a-service applications, with his co-founder, Jason Fried. Basecamp is now a gold standard for easier and superior project management. It has been used by over 75,000 organizations across 166 countries and 5 continents. Some well-known organizations that have used basecamp include Shopify, and Accenture, among others. In 2020, HEY was created by David and his team as an alternative to Gmail and Outlook. It shifts the paradigm of the traditional email structure and allows users to better deal with spam and unread messages, helping customers to better track and filter incoming emails. Since launch, HEY has already attracted tens of thousands of users. During the episode, David explained his views on quiet quitting: he believes that quiet quitting is a lose-lose situation for both the employer and the employee,  and that business owners should be more aware of the emotional and mental state of their employees. He advises that companies should be satisfied with having employees who do good work in a reasonable time, rather than desiring employees who share the same intense devotion to the company that a founder would have. He also urges against "deferred living" and encourages everyone to make the most of the time they have now by diligently doing gratifying work together with people they enjoy. David has employed this  structure to create his own work-life balance, as he juggles many hats: being a founder of several companies, a father, a bestselling author, an investor and a Le Mans & WEC class-winning racing driver. Memorable Quotes: "Ruby really changed my trajectory as a programmer. Programming stopped being just a tool, but something I could really see myself doing in the long term." "I don’t consider myself a computer engineer. I consider myself a software writer. That’s a completely different paradigm, and self-perception." Don’t forget to give us a follow on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin accounts, so you can always stay up to date with our latest   initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows,   weekly give-aways or founders dinners!

Timestamps: 05:00 Wozu werden Führungskräfte gebraucht? 16:10 Die gemeinsame Vision 31:12 Verhältnis Präsident // Trainer 36:02 Die Wichtigkeit von Wertschätzung & Anerkennung 43:40 Werden Führungskräfte gemacht oder geboren? Über Bernhard Heusler: Bernhard Heusler ist Mitgründer und Partner der Heusler Werthmüller Heitz AG, mit Hauptsitz in Basel und spezialisiert auf die Erbringung von Dienstleistungen im Bereich der Wirtschaftsberatung, des Sports und der Kultur. Der in Basel promovierte Jurist war von 2000 bis 2014 Partner der Kanzlei Wenger Plattner, anschliessend bis Oktober 2017 Konsulent bei Walder Wyss AG. Im Sommer 2003 nahm er seine Tätigkeiten für den FC Basel 1893 auf, ab 2006 amtete er als dessen Vizepräsident und ab 2009 übernahm er die operative Leitung, um schliesslich dem Club von 2012 bis 2017 als Präsident vorzustehen. In Erweiterung seiner Verantwortung für den Verein hat Bernhard Heusler in diversen Exekutiv- und Entscheidungsgremien des internationalen (FIFA, UEFA, ECA) und nationalen (SFV und SFL) Fussballs Einsitz genommen. Zudem amtet er seit 2012 als Richter am Internationalen Sportgerichtshof (TAS/CAS) in Lausanne. Seit einigen Jahren tritt Bernhard Heusler zunehmend als Referent an Anlässen und Seminaren, namentlich zu Themen der Unternehmens- und Teamführung, auf. Seit rund zwanzig Jahren bekleidet er diverse Verwaltungsratsmandate. Memorable Quotes: "Eine Führungsaufgabe beginnt immer bei einem selbst. Man muss authentisch und echt sein." “Als ich nicht mehr die gleiche Freude spürte, merkt ich, dass es an der Zeit war meine Führungsaufgabe abzugeben.” “Anerkennung, Wertschätzung und positives Feedback sind wirksame gratis Tools für Führungskräfte.” Folge uns auf Twitter, Instagram, Facebook und Linkedin um auf dem Laufenden zu bleiben. Wir posten regelmässig über Live Shows, Give-Aways und unsere Founders Dinner Events.

Timestamps: 2:42 - 25yo and COO at a big company 11:00 - Building a company with your brother 17:35 - The Swiss real estate market 22:55 - Taking on investors to support crazy growth 27:58 - Avoiding a second hit of burnout About Levent Künzi: Levent Künzi is the co-founder and CEO at Properti, a technology-driven real estate company modernizing residential real estate. He holds a BSc in Business Administration, Marketing and Business Communications from Kalaidos Fachhochschule Schweiz and previously worked at Betterhomes Real GmbH, where he quickly rose through the ranks and became CMO at just 25 years old. His success, however, was not without its drawbacks: after a total of 10 years there, he quit due to severe burnout. Levent then had to take some time to rest, recover and discover who he was outside of work. His journey of self-discovery resulted in him starting a business with his brother, Adrian Künzi, in 2019: Properti, which combines cutting-edge technologies such as robotics, virtual reality and artificial intelligence with years of experience, expert knowledge and digital marketing. They’re simultaneously a real estate company and also a software company, offering a 360º view of all real estate related transactions (buying, renting, moving, cleaning..), in which 80% of all processes are automatized. Properti real estate agents are thus able to handle several more listings than regular agents. Levent and Adrian bootstrapped Properti for the first 2 years, and just recently raised a $6.5M seed round. Memorable Quotes: "When I quit my job, it was very hard for me to find out who I am. Burnout turned into a real crisis." Don’t forget to give us a follow on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin accounts, so you can always stay up to date with our latest   initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows,   weekly give-aways or founders dinners!

Timestamps: 1:43 - PwC and entrepreneurship 9:49 - Investing in an alternative asset class 24:36 - What happens when the asset is sold 32:59 - How Splint Invest makes money 38:15 - Crowdfunding campaign closed after 5 days About Aurelio Perucca: Aurelio Perucca is the co-founder and CEO at Splint Invest, an alternative investment platform. He holds a MS in Business Administration from the University of Bern and previously worked at Stryker and PwC. Aurelio’s entrepreneurial journey all began in 2020, when he and some of his PwC co-workers started investing in rare whiskey. Prior to that, Aurelio had only invested in ETFs and stocks, but he soon realized that the high correlation between traditional assets and economic downturns meant that he had to diversify his investment portfolio. Further research led him to discovering that alternative asset classes such as cars, watches and whiskey had a much lower correlation with economic fluctuation. Specifically assets like whiskey or wine have the added advantage of their price being driven by their intrinsic value, which only increases with time (the older the whiskey, the better, the more expensive) – they’re not dependent on some hype. They are also, so to speak, “recession-resistant”. So in 2021 Aurelio and his co-founders created Splint Invest, an app with the mission to enable all private investors to invest in alternative assets, starting at just CHF 50. You can trade your “splints” with other investors or hold them until the asset is sold and you get to collect your profits. When an asset is sold, you’re charged a flat fee of 2% of the sales price on a pro-rata basis, which covers Splint Invest’s sales process expenses. There are no running costs when you invest in Splints: the variable costs for storage and insurance are already included in the splint price of CHF 50. However, it is true that stocks have a higher yield on average (despite also being a riskier investment) – but Aurelio makes it clear that alternative assets should only make up 5-15% of your investment portfolio (the rest consisting of stocks, real estate, etc…), and that they’re not something for beginners to dabble with. If you’re just starting out on your investment journey, you’re better off with low-effort investments, like ETFs. But if you want to take your investment game to the next level, sign up today at Splint Invest. Memorable Quotes: "At some point, you can’t just add more milestones, more proofs of concept, more validation… You actually need to trust the idea and go for it." Don’t forget to give us a follow on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin accounts, so you can always stay up to date with our latest   initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows,   weekly give-aways or founders dinners!

Timestamps: 1:52 - From fossil fuels to clean energy 7:55 - Idealab and Energy Vault 14:20 - Hardware and software 29:03- Saying no to customers 43:50 - The intense schedule of going public About Robert Piconi: Robert Piconi is the co-founder and CEO at Energy Vault, a global energy storage company based in Ticino and publicly listed at NYSE. He previously worked at companies like BP, Alcatel and Spirent Communications. Despite his past in the oil business, Robert is currently dedicated to taking an active role in the transition to renewals. That’s why he co-founded Energy Vault in 2017, after having validated the idea at Idealab, the longest running technology incubator in the US, with a very impressive track record: almost half of its companies have either gone public or been acquired. Energy Vault aims to tackle the complicated issue of energy storage, i.e. electron storage. This storage is made difficult by the electrons’ limited “shelf-life”, by the costliness of the infrastructure, and by the fact that it is rather hard to find sustainable ways of doing it. Energy Vault combines innovative design, advanced materials science, and proprietary machine-vision software to orchestrate the storage and dispatch of electrical power by lifting and lowering composite bricks, made from eco-friendly materials.  Energy Vault’s commitment to sustainability is reflected in a unique approach to the circular economy which utilizes local industrial and energy waste, including remediated coal ash and recycled wind blades converted to recyclable materials, to build the system’s composite bricks. They run their infrastructure and acquire their raw materials locally, so as to avoid greenhouse gas emissions and reinvest in the communities where they’re located. One major customer segment of theirs are utilities companies that distribute to a grid infrastructure, and which are currently in the process of shutting down their fossil fuel plants and making the switch to renewables. Energy Vault went public on the NYSE in 2022, through a merger with Novus Capital Corporation II (NYSE: NXU). The transaction raised approximately $235 million in gross proceeds, additive to its recently announced Series C of $107M and the $50M license fee from Atlas Renewable, to fund the execution of its growth strategy. Reflecting on the going public process, Robert advises founders to not go public before they’ve reached a scale which allows them to reliably predict the company’s future, or before they’ve hired enough people to maintain operational excellence during the IPO process. Memorable Quotes: "I felt like my potential could reach greater heights if it weren’t held back by corporate constraints." "Countries have no walls: greenhouse gasses go all over the world. It is imperative that we cooperate." "An IPO process takes months. I would caution founders to structure their business in a way that makes sure things run on time even if they’re away." Don’t forget to give us a follow on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin accounts, so you can always stay up to date with our latest   initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows,   weekly give-aways or founders dinners!

Timestamps: 1:48 - Being passionate about music 9:32 - Helga’s origin story 18:25 - Management tasks in the music industry 32:22 - Creating trust 36:56 - Tokenizing shares with Daura About Vincenzo Neidhardt: Vincenzo Neidhardt is the Managing Partner at Helga, a hyper-focused digital manager that specializes in the use of data in the music world. He holds a BSc in Business Administration from HWZ and previously co-founded the booking agency Garasch Musig. Helga tackles an issue very relevant to our current music industry: unlike in the past, when music artists worked with a single label for a long stretch of time, today’s musicians work with several music labels simultaneously, and therefore have multiple pay sources – their main concern is, therefore, keeping track of whether or not they’re actually getting paid, and, if they weren’t adequately compensated, having the analytics software necessary to approach the defaulting party with the data to back it up. It’s estimated that there are $2.5b missing in the music market due to this type of occurrence. Helga has yet to properly launch, and most of their employees are also students on the side. They are currently raising CHF 600K and have chosen to tokenize their shares with daura. Learn more about the advantages of this unconventional financing route by visiting https://daura.ch . Memorable Quotes: "As a musician who studied business administration, I see every artist as a small company." Don’t forget to give us a follow on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin accounts, so you can always stay up to date with our latest   initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows,   weekly give-aways or founders dinners!

Timestamps: 8:00 - Sustainability and branding 23:01 - The yamo ingredients 32:10 - From baby food to snack bars 43:30 - The battle against regulation 1:03:34 - Raising a series B About Luca Michas: Luca Michas is the co-founder and CMO at Yamo, a B2C company revolutionizing the kid's food market with nutritious and organic options for kids of all ages. Luca holds an MA in Media & Communication / Marketing from the UZH and previously worked for companies like SodaStream International and the Campari Group. In 2015, while working at the Campari Group with his future co-founder, Tobias Gunzenhauser, Luca watched a documentary about veganism and decided to go vegan for a month, and Tobias joined him in this adventure. They soon discovered that healthy, plant-based products were very hard to come by in a Swiss supermarket, and – as a joke – decided to check out the baby food aisle, only to find out the baby food available on the market was tasteless and of dubious nutritional value. This was because the traditional process for creating shelf-stable baby food was heat-based sterilization, which, considering many vitamins are heat-sensitive, necessitated later re-adding the vitamins which the process destroyed. But friend and food scientist José Amado-Blanco soon clued them into a better way of making baby food: High-pressure pasteurization, which combines homemade flavor with proper nutrition, and lasts several weeks in a refrigerated environment. This was how Yamo was able to combine nutritional quality with convenience, and win the trust of Swiss parents all around. So as not to have their customers age out of Yamo products, the team has now also begun making kids’ food, like joghurts and snack bars. With their office in Zug, they currently sell in the DACH region, Belgium, Spain and Portugal. A Series B round is also underway. Memorable Quotes: "Branding makes a huge difference in whether your product succeeds or not. It’s not just pricing, it’s not just availability. You need to tell a story." "Nowadays sustainability is no longer something that sets your brand apart, but on the other hand, if you’re not sustainable, your brand is gonna have a problem." "Contrary to popular belief, we were not drunk when we came up with the Yamo product names." Resources Mentioned: Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight Asana Slack If you wanna listen to our conversations with yamo co-founder Tobias Gunzenhauser, check out episodes 159 and 174.  Don’t forget to give us a follow on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin accounts, so you can always stay up to date with our latest   initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows,   weekly give-aways or founders dinners!

Timestamps: 6:38 - Working for Flipboard in 2011 18:16 - Hacking a calendar extension 22:51 - Getting into Y Combinator 39:00 - The “Batman” life of solo founders 56:58 - Getting acquired by Notion About Raphael Schaad: Raphael  Schaad is the founder and CEO at Cron, a next-generation calendar  software. Raphael holds an masters from MIT and a bachelors from the University of Applied Sciences Bern. He previously was a designer and engineer at Flipboard and a researcher at the MIT Media Lab. He started working for Flipboard back in 2011, which meant moving to Palo Alto. Raphael remembers that back then, Apple was still a much smaller player than Microsoft, Steve Jobs lived on the same street as Raphael,  and the Facebook team still operated from next to the Stanford campus.  The tech scene, in general, was a whole lot smaller. Early on in his professional life, Raphael noticed that all the high-achievers around him were very intentional about their calendars, but never fully satisfied with the calendar software they used, and tried to  compensate for this by adding extensions from third party apps. Apple,  Microsoft, Google … They all fell short, and companies like Calendly seemed more like a calendar feature than a calendar itself. So, Raphael  got to hacking together calendar extensions to turn his calendar into  pro-mode, and nowadays Cron includes features like availability sharing,  team overlays, time zones, multiple accounts, a menu bar calendar,  multi-select flows, dark mode, and lots of keyboard shortcuts. Cron was part of the Y Combinator Winter 2020 batch, and though the  experience was cut short by COVID (canceling their demo day), Raphael still benefited from it by laser focusing for 10 weeks straight with like-minded individuals. Cron was then launched in early access mode, both because they wanted to optimize for learning and because they had already gathered a very long waiting list from initial word of mouth success. Cron raised $3.5M in a seed round in April 2020 and was acquired by Notion in June 2022. Head over to to cron.com for early access. Memorable Quotes: "Knowing that Steve Jobs lived on the same block as me definitely infused me with an adventurous energy that was very special, back then." "All the high-achievers were religious about their calendars, but they all complained about their calendar software." "Participating in Y Combinator means, in all likelihood, sitting in the same room as 5 unicorns and the next Mark Zuckerberg." Resources Mentioned: Twitter thread Don’t forget to give us a follow on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin accounts, so you can always stay up to date with our latest   initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows,   weekly give-aways or founders dinners!

Timestamps: 2:48 - Being part of the FREITAG journey 12:27 - Meeting your romantic partner and co-founder 17:42 - Clean and ethical beauty 40:02 - Choosing to be bootstrapped 45:29 - Internationalizing the soap emporium About Hanna and Johan Åkerström: Hanna and Johan Åkerström are the co-founders of Soeder, a natural and ethical personal care product manufacturer based in Zurich, Switzerland. Hanna is a trained architect, and Johan studied International Working Science at the University of Gothenburg. They both originally hail from Sweden. They created Soeder back in 2013, when the clean beauty trend hadn’t really happened yet. The “soap” available on the market was 99% synthetic detergents, and there was a big lack of transparency regarding raw materials. So Hanna and Johan decided to start making “real soap” in a small garage, and sold their first batch of liquid Soeder soap at a Zurich Christmas market. People reacted positively, and so the pair began scaling the business bit by bit. In hindsight, Johan and Hanna think that if they’d had a huge demand right at the beginning, this would've killed them, because with no outside investment they would not have been able to keep up. They don’t regret being bootstrapped, however, as it allowed them to make all the mistakes they needed to make at the beginning. Besides, slow, organic growth has proven just as effective. Nowadays they sell soap bars as well, alongside shampoo, conditioner, sanitizers, etc. They use glass packaging which they encourage customers to refill – this practice might seem standard in 2022, but back when Soeder began, Hanna and Johan had to take the time to educate the market on why both these things were important and safe. This transparency has paid off: Soeder currently has a very large share of recurring customers who trust the brand and do word of mouth marketing for them. Hanna and Johan continue to feel confident that the only way for a bootstrapped company to compete with the big fish is to take the time to do things differently, and focus on quality and the customer relationship. Memorable Quotes: "Building a company with your romantic partner brings you much closer together." "If you make a good product, the person who buys it will sell the next one for you." Don’t forget to give us a follow on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin accounts, so you can always stay up to date with our latest  initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows,  weekly give-aways or founders dinners! ‍

Timestamps: 4:34 - Coming from a family business 10:37 - A hand-over from father to son 21:05 - Financial defenses against COVID 32:13 - Being a sustainability trailblazer 35:08 - The SIX IPO program About Sebastien Tondeur: Sebastien Tondeur is the CEO at MCI group, a global next-gen platform for marketing which was founded as a conference organizer in 1987 by Sebastien’s dad, Roger Tondeur. Sebastien studied Finance and International Business at Northeastern University in Boston and joined the family business immediately after his studies, doing all sorts of tasks. In 2010, Sebastien took over from his dad as CEO of the company, and Roger remained as Chairman. Sebastien soon drafted a new business plan that would allow the group to adapt to the current market and expand their business offers: besides organizing live and virtual events, MCI nowadays also offers strategic and digital communications, and consulting and community solutions. Events organizing have historically been their biggest revenue stream. Sebastien scaled MCI to a global company, with operations in Europe, the US and China (and managed to do so by investing early on in client relations with big multinationals, as well as in hiring great teams), so the team really saw the COVID wave make its path from East to West and reacted very quickly in restructuring the business: they analyzed which areas of the business would be the most resilient and therefore worth investing time, effort and money into. They scaled back their events operations and invested in hiring creative teams to work as consultants with their customers, who were equally shaken by the COVID crisis and in need of new ideas. They have recently participated in the SIX Sparks IPO Academy. MCI is interested in going public because this would mean greater shareholder trust and greater access to large amounts of capital, which may help them weather the next crisis. Memorable Quotes: "COVID made us realize what our key assets were, that we had other businesses not directly linked to events which we could build on. " If would like to listen to the previous episodes of this SIX Swiss Exchange bonus series, check out our conversation with Michele Bomio and Manuel Aschwanden. Don’t forget to give us a follow on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin accounts, so you can always stay up to date with our latest initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows, weekly give-aways or founders dinners!