One of the organizers of StartUpCamp Switzerland is Dania Gerhardt from Amazee.com: „It is our goal to transfer knowledge and to connect the people. We really believe that it is important for Switzerland to connect more and to get more out of the network they have.“ Dania is one of the three co-founders and the CFO and COO of Amazee.com (please also watch Viktoria’s interview with Amazee’s CEO Gregory Gerhardt @ www.tiburon-tv.com). „Amazee is a platform for movements“ says Dania, „it empowers individuals to start global initiatives, collaborate in international projects and is boosting their activism. There is for example an IT development center built up in a schoolhouse in Sri Lanka with over 1000 people collaborating virtually from Singapore to Sri Lanka. In South Africa, one of our users already raised $6.000 in order to provide fresh running water for all the households in his village of Dixie – if you want to help go on Water for Dixie.“ According to Dania, the platform „is still at the very beginning and they are still developing quite a lot, but at the same time it is spreading in an international way.“ She finds it „an ongoing challenging process to build up the community and keep it active, to pick out the right projects and to promote these.“ There are also two other challenges coming up for Amazee: Finding the right partners to promote the ideas and another financing round. As a female entrepreneur, Dania points out that is is crucial to „use one’s communication skills to get in contact with the right people and to approach them in a different way by using one’s female side.“ Dania concludes: „It’s nice to be a female, also in the web industry.“ All of Viktoria’s video interviews from StartUpCamp Switzerland can be found @ www.tiburon-tv.com

Poken.com, founded in 2007 by Canadian Stéphane Doutriaux, is a social business card that allows you to instantly connect with new friends across social networks when and where you meet them: „Based on the idea that people are on several social networks, we were coming to the conclusion that there is really a need for a tool that would enable us to be connected at all the networks at once“, says Stéphane, who’s also Poken’s CEO, and adds „the real strength behind this excessive poken is the fact that we developed it as a fashion accessory“. According to Stéphane, Poken has been really taking off in several countries across Europe and is spreading towards the US and Asia: „There are geographical pockets with lots of people having a Poken. Switzerland and the Netherlands are ‚hot beds’ – the main new TV news in Holland even declared Poken the word of 2009.“ There are currently seven Poken models available, but Stéphane says new ones are coming out almost on a weekly basis: „We have a lot of fun when we see people selecting their poken – it reflects a little bit of their personality.“ Pokens are sold both through retail and a viral distribution network. They are also sold in packs of 12 with a 40% discount on Poken’s website so they can be spread amongst friends: „You make points every time you sell a poken and also every time you poken your friends“ explains Stéphane, „the more points you have, the bigger discounts you get.“ Stéphane points out „that we are never done with the challenges and create challenges for ourselves: We are working on new products and pushing into new markets – there’s a new product line coming out in a few months.“ Poken aims to break even „far sooner than most web startups. If we find the right environment it becomes really easy to sell. At SCS09 almost 90% of the participants bought a Poken. We didn’t see lots of business card exchanges, but a lot of people were pokening“, says Stéphane. He finds that „innovation is a must and typical of any company that wants to survive. Also, it’s about getting the right balance between the business model and the product. In our case, what has been really key is finding the right distribution structure and developing a viral marketing scheme.“ More interviews from StartUpCamp Switzerland can be found @ www.tiburon-tv.com

Swiss „success story“ Wuala.com - founded by Dominik Grolimund and completely self-funded - is a „social online storage“: Files can be stored securely online, can be accessed from any computer and shared with friends or groups. The 28-year-old CEO of Wuala points out: „I don’t think it’s the Swiss success story, it’s just that currently it’s going really well for us. Since we launched a public beta in August, we have a very nice growth. There are 53 million files that have been stored and shared in the Wuala network.“ But he also admits: „There’s a lot of room for improvement – although we try to communicate it in very simple terms, our technology is very complex.“ The Swiss startup faces dozens of competitors like Box.net and even Microsoft and Google are trying to compete in that space...According to Dominik, Wuala tries to communicate mainly three areas: Technology (data aren’t stored on servers but in a pier-to-pier network), privacy (all files are incripted on your computer in such a way that not even the provider has access) and service as a desktop app which can still be started from the web. Users of Wuala get one gigabyte for free and have two choices to increase storage: „You can either trade local disk space“, says Dominik or „you can buy additional storage. That is where we generate our revenue and why we dropped the ads - we are really surprised by how many users buy additional storage.“ He adds: „Our goal is to become the leading online storage and I think wer’re on a good track. When it comes to online storage, we believe that only our technology can provide the two critical aspects privacy and low costs.“ Dominik thinks that „as a technology company we waited too long to go to the customer“. He finds it of utmost importance „to focus on the product and don’t do marketing. So far our marketing budget is zero and we still got tens of thousands of users. Have a simple and working product that people love and share.“ More interviews from StartUpCamp Switzerland will follow in the days to come and can be found @ www.tiburon-tv.com

Danielle Grossi, Managing Director at smeepe.net, thought „we need to have a solution to make the planning of events much better and to automate it.“ Danielle, who put her event- and IT-background together, has a seperate, event-planning company: „Based on that experience, we decided we need to put a little bit of programming behind it, spin it off in two different platforms and allow other people also to profit from this kind of technology.“ „Smeepe is an online portal that connects its searchers with the services they are looking for at the first try at various locations and enables searchers to rate their services“, explains Danielle. „We are making sure the technology is easy, transparent and efficient so that you get the information you need in a very short and clear format.“ Smeepe is both self-funded and also uses investor funding: „We will be releasing very soon a beta version and will be branching out into other business fields, not only events“, mentions Danielle. Thinking about the future of smeepe, Danielle says: „I always think of Amazon – I like the approach...that they focus on one thing and then opened it up to everything. With regard to end services for customers, I hope we can get with smeepe also to that point.“ Danielle, who describes herself as somebody who always wanted to do something big, finds she has „what it takes to be an entrepreneur and stick it out. Persistence is the key!“ She thinks „if a woman wants to do that she needs to follow her dream – whatever it is, if it’s starting a company or starting a family. She should do what she feels is the best for her...“ Viktoria also interviewed Peter Vogel, Suhas Gopinath, Rico Wyder, Farley Duvall and Vittorio Mischi at the StartUpCamp Switzerland. More interviews will follow in the days to come @ www.tiburon-tv.com.

Vittorio Mischi is Professor at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFT) - the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - where he teaches Entrepreneurial Finance for the fifth academic year. According to Vittorio the real name of his course is „how to achieve your dreams with other people's money“: „I am helping scientists to translate a technological idea into a spin-off, to become an entrepreneur, and to start their own company.“ Students work with Vittorio for 14 weeks to make their dreams come true, and build REAL companies. Vittorio points out that „people in my program have already decided they want to become entrepreneurs“. „Most of them already have a patent or a patent pending. They probably have worked on their ‚idea’ for 2, 3 or 5 years.“ Vittorio works with his students in order to consolidate an offering that is good for a potential investor: „At that point they already have a company that requires only water (=money) and they can go out and start their company based on their technology. The last step from inside the university to outside is the one that I help them do.“ There are 6000 undergraduate students, 1400 Ph.D. candidates and 250 laboratories at the EPFL: „It’s an enormous playground with a potential of around 50 new ideas every year that could become startups“, says Vittorio. Out of the 9 projects he had last year, four won McKinsey’s Virtual Venture Competition. Vittorio adds: „It’s not my merit, but it’s a correlation.“ Vittorio finds he is in „a blessed situation“: „The area where I am is a lot like Silicon Valley in the 70s with Stanford UC as a very strong concentration point of technology. There’s a lot of capital available in Canton de Genève and in Canton de Vaux. There’s probably the highest concentration of high net worth individuals and billionaires in the world and a high concentration of corporations headquarters.“ It’s Vittorio’s aim „to be one of the enablers of a virtual circle of entrepreneurship which could create quite an interesting economic incentive and economic dynamic for that part of Switzerland and Europe in general.“ Please note that Viktoria also interviewed Peter Vogel, Suhas Gopinath, Rico Wyder and Farley Duvall at the StartUpCamp Switzerland. More interviews will follow in the days to come @ www.tiburon-tv.com.

Farley Duvall is the Managing Director EMEA of online media company Red Herring, headquartered in San Mateo, California: „We are looking for innovative firms in the area of IT, Cleantech and Life Sciences that may be able to change the industry“ explains Farley who is himself based in Zurich. „The number of entrepreneurs has continued to grow even with the current downturn “ says Farley, „Switzerland is a little bit shielded from some of the cold realities of the world economy.“ He adds that „finally some of the young people think it’s okay to tell their parents that they want to be an entrepreneur and not go work for UBS. Young people are starting to be a little less afraid of failure. Whereas in Silicon Valley, to fail is actually a badge of honor, in Europe and Switzerland it is still seen almost as a career ender.“ Farley finds that „we have to accept that failure doesn’t necessarily mean that you haven’t tried hard or that you didn’t do things right, but that it is just something that happens. We can then focus more on success than preventing failure.“ With regard to Swiss startups, Farley points out: „Some of the firms at SCS09 like Amazee or Cassiber and Wuala are getting some traction in the market. Doodle, which is right next to my office, is expanding. Young entrepreneurs are branching into a lot of different directions and that’s actually great! In Switzerland maybe they haven’t found their niche yet, but they are doing a lot of things quite well. I like what I see!“ (Please also watch Viktoria's interviews with Rico Wyder from Cassiber and Tilman Eberle from Doodle) For launching a company Farley advises „not to be afraid and to focus on what you do well and execute. Put together a good management team and then just go!“ Coming up soon: „Red Herring 100 Europe 2009“, March 31 – April 2, 2009 in Berlin, Germany Please note that Viktoria also interviewed Peter Vogel from JobZippers and Suhas Gopinath from Globals at the StartUpCamp Switzerland. More interviews will follow in the days to come @ www.tiburon-tv.com.

Rico Wyder is the CEO and co-founder of Cassiber.com, a Swiss company for business software in the area of idea and innovation management: „Cassiber is about capturing an idea, exposing it to the employees or a group which is then working on the idea before it reaches a certain level of quality“, explains Rico and points out that „there’s a lot of competitors in the market of idea management and correlating ideas, like Hype or Salesforce.“ Cassiber is in the market for large companies since September and uses Switzerland as a multilingual test market: „In Switzerland, 1000 is already a large employee base. As of 1000 employees one usually gets a problem with too many ideas – that’s where Cassiber adds benefit“, says Rico. There’s also a free version of Cassiber available that can be used for up to 15 people. Cassiber offers its software as a service based on a licensing model. According to Rico „that’s a win-win situation for both the developer and the customer. We charge 50 Swiss francs (€30/$43) per user per year and continually improve our product to make sure that we always deliver the best version. So we add additional value at the same price.“ The biggest challenge for Cassiber is „to get to the large companies and to understand how the process works until they invest in such a system“, says Rico. „We talk to everybody from the CIO to the Business Development and R&D guys, and add those features they absolutely need in order to find the best solution for them.“ Rico’s piece of advice for other startup founders is „to go for a solution you can sell to one person that adds value to him. It shouldn’t be too expensive so that he can decide if he wants to buy it. Create something you can sell as soon as possible.“ Please note that Viktoria also interviewed Peter Vogel and Suhas Gopinath at the StartUpCamp Switzerland. Just visit our website www.tiburon-tv.com.

Suhas Gopinath - born November 4, 1986 - has been announced as (the youngest) Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum: „I started my company when I was 14 and I’m 22 now, so it’s been almost eight years that I’m in the business“ says Suhas and adds „I have been inspired by the story of Bill Gates and wanted to offer employment to the eligible unemployed youth all over the world. That was my ultimate motive when I started my company.“ Suhas - founder, „the world’s youngest“ CEO and President of IT company Globals Inc - finds that both his cultural background as an Indian and his family values helped him to have such a vision. Amongst others, he is now starting his second IT company focussed on the educational sector and will be launching a social web-based operating system „very soon“. „Initially it was hard, since I come from a non-business family and had no experience in running a business. But I learned from the failures and mistakes of other entrepreneurs by reading their autobiographies“, adds Suhas. „In the beginning, people thought I was too young and didn’t accept me as CEO. At the same time, it has been quite hard to assure myself that I’m the CEO.“ He finds being an entrepreneur is „like an adventure“: „You really should explore new paths and strategies. Make sure your company has a long vision and a strong business model where you are able to monetize your ideas.“ Suhas, who „never accepted a ‚no’ in his life“, recently was approached by his university professor with regard to his shortage of attendance: „I was quite shocked to hear that he only wanted to apply for my company...“ Supported by the World Economic Forum, Suhas will now be studying leadership at Harvard University. Will he himself write an autobiography about his amazing success story? „Maybe when I’m in my fifties and the company is a lot larger. I still have a very long way to go...“ More interviews from the StartUpCamp Switzerland will follow in the days to come and can be found @ www.tiburon-tv.com.

Still a student, but already very active as an entrepreneur: Peter Vogel - student at ETH Zurich and co-founder of JobZippers.com - has been interviewed by Tiburon-TV at the StartUpCamp Switzerland. JobZippers is a career service center for Swiss, Austrian and German universities. As Peter explains, „JopZippers provide a complete university career service - not only a link to companies out in the industry to jobs but also inside the universities. We offer the career service exclusively to universities that do not have a career service center. Those who have one can become partners with a revenue sharing model.“ JobZippers has been founded in December 2007 and is based on a model that has already been proven in the US and in France. It will go online in mid-February. According to Peter, there are already more than 40 companies that have signed up until now. Peter’s goal is to have 100-200 companies and 10.000-20.000 students by the end of 2009: „For companies it’s a hassle to enter each university individually“ says Peter, „with JobZippers they have access to a network of universities and career centers so that they can post a job once and it’s online everywhere. Or they can look through the database, elect which university they want to recruit from and directly attract the students.“ Peter and his co-founder recruited three „IT guys“ and a designer to JobZippers’ team – „all based on motivation mainly“. They have no funding at all: „We will see how personnel-intense it is and if we need additional investment or not.“ Here’s Peter’s advice for other startup founders: „Look around if your service already exists. If so, try to find something that is a small variation. Above all, get a unique selling preposition.“ More interviews with Viktoria from the StartUpCamp Switzerland will follow in the days to come and can be found @ www.tiburon-tv.com.

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