Swisscom StartUp Challenge: Does a Swiss startup bring the solution to the climate problem?

Swisscom can call itself the world's most sustainable telco, according to a 2020 report by World Finance: For 12 years, Swisscom has been using renewable energy exclusively, has greatly reduced its consumption, and is offering since March 2022 all subscriptions climate neutral an.

Most sustainable telco in the world

Swisscom wants to save an additional one million tons of CO2 per year by 2025. Based on new innovative ICT solutions for private and business customers, they can massively reduce their CO2 footprint. According to its own projections, this contribution is far more significant than Swisscom's own footprint (the contribution that Swisscom itself can make across its own value chain). What's more, it is so relevant that Switzerland as a country could achieve its own climate targets more quickly because of it, as Swisscom notes. That's why the telecommunications service provider is looking for young companies with the tenth Swisscom Startup Challenge that have developed innovations and technologies to directly or indirectly protect the climate.

Startups and research teams from all over the world can apply for the Swisscom Startup Challenge until May 31, 2022. Ten startups will be selected from the applications received and invited to pitch in September 2022. In collaboration with Venturelab, the expert jury will ultimately name five winners. They will be given the opportunity to further develop their solutions with experts from the Swisscom ecosystem as part of a tailored exploration program. In addition, the winners will have the chance to win an investment or a business partnership with Swisscom.

Tenth Swisscom StartUp Challenge: Failed, won, sold to Apple

"We rehearsed with them late into the night before the winners of the first Startup Challenge pitched their business cases to the big venture capitalists in Silicon Valley the next day," recalls Stefan Kuentz, co-founder of the Swisscom Startup Challenge. That was in 2013, and since then, a visit to Silicon Valley has opened up a new world for the nearly 40 winners of the funding program. "We had been in Palo Alto with our Outpost since 1998 and wanted to bring some of the Californian entrepreneurial spirit to the Swiss startup landscape and, of course, find candidates for investment from Swisscom Ventures," says Roger Wüthrich-Hasenböhler, who launched the initiative in 2013 together with Stefan Kuentz, Urs Stender (now Blue Lion) and Beat Schillig from Venturelab.

Since then, around 2,000 startups have applied for the Challenge in ten years, and 45 have completed the funding program. Nearly 100 young entrepreneurs traveled to the Swisscom Outpost and pitched their business cases to major venture capitalists and Internet giants. Among them were startups such as Ava (2015), Creal (2019), Ecorobotix (2017), Geosatis (2014), Gmelius (2019) and Nanolive (2016). Swisscom Ventures, a division of Swisscom, also invested in all of them. Six of the winning startups have since sold their companies: For example, regtech startup Qumram (2016) to Dynatrade or intelligent image recognition Fashwell (2016) to Apple. Some of the Swisscom Startup Challenge alumni are now ranked among the top 100 young companies in Switzerland. 4 of the 45 have unfortunately already had to abandon their entrepreneurial journey. "Compared to the statistics in the US, the failure rate in the Swisscom Startup Challenge Hall of Fame is much smaller," explains Beat Schillig from Venturelab. "So either the selection was very good or we in Switzerland take fewer risks than startups in Silicon Valley and still have a lot of untapped innovation potential. Because those who dare more can also win more!"

More about the Swisscom Startup Challenge: www.swisscom.ch/startupchallenge