Venturing Switzerland – Details, episodes & analysis

This session with Louisa Clark of Rootbridge Capital was recorded on Teams on 31 October 2024. I learned about the ⁠securitisation structures⁠ available in Luxemburg.

Her recommendations are as follows:

• ⁠The Diary of a CEO⁠
• ⁠7 Habits of highly effective people⁠
• Talk to ⁠Luis Huber⁠ of Qbit Capital
• Get the ⁠Rootbridge app⁠

This session with Deborah Pittet of Forestay Capital was recorded on Teams on 22 October 2024. I learned that Forestay is on the B-Flexion platform.

Deborah recommends us to read Shoe dog (which has been mentioned here before!) and The Little Book of Deep Learning.

She suggested we talk to Pedro Bados (Nexthink) and Alessandra Agnello (Ace Ventures). Finally, she introduced me to the concept of agentic AI.

In this episode recorded on 15 February 2023, we are talking to Krzysztof Bialkowski of TX Ventures via a Teams call. 

Krzysztof's book recommendations have both been covered here before (Steven Mallaby's Power Law and Hans Rosling's Factfulness) - so they are evidently witness to the Swiss VC scene's inherent optimism. His recommendation for a conversation partner is Andreas Bezner of Stableton, a platform popularising venture capital direct investments (and portfolios, too) for the masses. 

Interestingly for a fintech VC, Krzysztof shares his passion for energy solutions and their geopolitical impact - a red hot topic if ever there was one. He recommends the Undecided (now Still TBD) podcast. We are certainly going to listen in on that. 

This is the first Venturing Switzerland episode in the new year! We have been talking to Alex Stöckl of Wingman Ventures on 23 January 2023 via a Teams call. 

Alex' recommendations were Hans Rosling's Factfulness as a pick-me-up in these sometimes dreary days. He recommends us to talk to two LPs building funds of funds, namely Thomas Christensen of LGT Capital Partners and Thomas Schneider of Isomere Capital. Lastly, he was most impressed by a recent speaker's claim about autogenerativ videos that in perhaps 12 months' time, you could feed all episodes of The Simpsons into a model and ask it to build a 20 minutes episode about an Obama visit to Paris ...

This is the Xmas episode of Venturing Switzerland with Dominique Mégret of Swisscom Ventures, author of Deeptech Nation.  Section plan: 00:45   VC origin story 09:18   Investment approach 37:58   firm governance 60:10   recommendations Dominique's recommendations are: Bad blood Amp it up How to avoid a climate disaster recommended VC contact: Henri B Meier recent advances in nuclear fusion 

Today we are talking to Teddy Amberg of Spicehaus AG, with an occasional sigh from my dog Divo in the background. 

Teddy's recommendations are a bit contrarian, in that he recommends to restrict one's media consumption, which is also an active media recommendation, of course.

In term of people to talk to, he recommends Michael Wüst of portfolio company Amnis, and Armin Koller of Kemaro. 

Finally, when it comes to recent discoveries - he discovered how low you can fly a drone over an active volcano without crashing it. 

In this episode, we are meeting Olivier Laplace, Partner at VI Partners.  Olivier's recommendations are: Media: Power Law by Sebastian Mallaby Conversation Partner: Yoko Spirig Recent discovery: Keto diet's impact on mental health

This session with Andrea Buhofer of Equitypitcher Ventures was recorded via Teams on 9 September 2024.

Andrea's recommendation is for the podcast In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen. She suggests to get in touch with Louisa Clark of Rootbridge Capital. There was a technical issue at her third recommendation for Elvie, which is why that had to be edited out.

This session with Eleonora Angeliniadis and Ben Robinson of Aperture was recorded on Teams on 26 April 2024 - the first session with two guests!

Here's Ben's recommendations:

• Fintech Brainfood
• Matt Brown's Notes
• Net interest
• Invest like the best - I very much concur!
• His Airpods!

Eleonora suggests the following:

• Shoe dog
• Power Law (of course!)
• Her Robo Vacuum!

They want me to talk to Leva, Guillaume Dubray of Polytech Ventures and Godefroy Schrago of FiveT.