a unique growth program

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for ambitious swiss startups

How do you scale a startup internationally – without unnecessary mistakes, with less capital, and achieving a higher valuation in a shorter time?

That’s exactly what the Burnrate Podcast #58 last week with Peter Stähli, Head of Entrepreneurship at the Swiss Entrepreneurs Foundation, was about.

He shared exciting insights into the Upscaler Program – the only initiative in Switzerland that supports founders hands-on for two years, side by side with experienced entrepreneurs and serial founders.

- Instead of coaching, you get real challenge.

- Business models are questioned until they’re ready for global growth.

- A tailored team of experts opens doors and shares first-hand knowledge.

Sounds interesting? Then Upscaler might be just the right program to take your startup to the next level.

We’re thrilled to welcome FutureKitchens to our community of ambitious and innovative scale-ups!

FutureKitchens is reshaping the way we experience food delivery. As a digital foodhall and delivery-only house of brands, they bring bold, authentic food concepts like SmashClub®, Pizza Project® and Studio Kebab® straight to your door. With their digital-first mindset and commitment to over-delivering, they’re setting new standards in the virtual restaurant space.

We look forward to supporting their growth journey with the Upscaler Program. Welcome aboard, FutureKitchens!

Swiss startup KA‑EX has secured USD 7 million in funding to accelerate its international growth, with a strong focus on the U.S. market. The company offers an innovative recovery supplement that is already widely available in Switzerland.

KA‑EX participated in the Upscaler Program, which supports high-potential startups in scaling globally. The fresh capital will be used to strengthen market presence, particularly through investments in marketing and sales.

We’re proud to congratulate KA-EX, one of our 2023–2024 UpScaler program participants, on this major milestone!

With her athletic excellence and strong public presence, Lara brings not only credibility but also visibility to KA-EX’s mission of redefining recovery and performance nutrition. Her involvement marks a significant step in the brand’s growth journey – one that began with a clear vision and was sharpened further through their time in the UpScaler program.

Read more in KA-EX’s official announcement: lnkd.in/eBFsZwza

We’re excited to see where this partnership leads and proud to have supported KA-EX on part of their scaling journey.

How to avoid typical startup mistakes

Last week, Upscaler.ch was a guest on Max Meister, Guy Giuffredi, and Maximilian Boelck's Burn Rate Venture Insider podcast, where they take a critical look at the most exciting transactions and topics from the Swiss and global startup scene.

In episode #54, Peter Stähli, Head of Entrepreneurship at upscaler.ch, shared some insights from his long career as a serial entrepreneur and investor and from the Upscaler workshops.

Among other things, he talked about the typical mistakes founders make in the growth phase:

- Simply copying the business model to other markets and underestimating the resources and funds required to do so

- An unfavorable personnel composition and a lack of skills in the team

To find out how to avoid these mistakes and listen to the full podcast (in German), visit burnrate.podigee.io/54-neue-episode.

Don’t Grow – SCALE!

What an inspiring session at Founder's Knowhow, hosted by the Swiss Entrepreneurs Foundation at the Startup Days in Bern!

With over 50 participants joining us, the room was full of energy, ideas, and real-world insights into what truly drives a successful startup. The key message? Growth is good – but scaling is what really creates enterprise value.

Our expert panel didn’t hold back on sharing what works, what doesn’t, and how to avoid the common traps founders fall into.

From practical frameworks to personal war stories, each speaker brought a unique lens to the topic. A huge thank you to everyone who contributed – and to those who attended and asked such sharp questions!

Matthias Erb, the founder of Boum AG, one of the 12 start-ups in our unique UpScaler programme, gave an inspiring interview to Blick. Boum AG has been in our growth programme for 6 months and has exclusive access to our PR experts!

Grow twice as fast! This is the opportunity that startups can take advantage of in our UpScaler programme.

We are accepting new start-ups again. The prerequisites for participation are at least half a million sales and 20% growth in the last financial year as well as an existing growth strategy.

The most important facts about our UpScaler program for Startups in a nutshell

Romain, the CEO of Resolve SA speaks about his experiences during the UpScaler program, about the quality of the experts and about the benefits.

Dr. Peter Balsiger speaks about his longterm engagement in the Swiss Startup ecosystem, his motivation and his learnings.

A day of learning from the best! CEO Marc Maurer of On Running and Jeremias Meier, co-founder and long-standing CEO of Bexio, will show how they have scaled their business model on March 12 in Bern. The renowned EPFL Professor of Entrepreneurship and Technology Commercialization Marc Gruber will provide the method and useful tools. The founder of the Swiss Economic Forum and successful entrepreneur Peter Stähli will moderate the one-day BM Booster, where 5 start-ups can benefit exclusively. First come first served! Interested?

Congratulations to Zippsafe! They finished the Upscaler program of the Swiss Entrepreneurs Foundation after a duration of 2 years very successful. The Zippsafe team worked hard on their key growth factors together with our Entrepreneurs in residence and various experts. The result is great and the scaling is impressive!

The Top10 Scale up's give a good overview of fast growing Swiss startups, which are also in focus in our UpScaler program. In almost 200 workshops so far, the SwissEF initiative supports young companies in an effective and targeted way.

Fast growing Swiss startups are also feeling the harder times when it comes to financing growth. Currently top topics in our UPSCALER workshops are "Time to Cash" in operations and "Setting the right Priorities" on the strategic level. The Purchasing Managers Index looks not very promising and 2023 seems definitely going to be a though one.

(Source: S&P Global, Bloomberg, FuW)

With over 1500 participants, Startup Days is the most important startup event of the year. As a Network Partner this year, we hosted a panel titled "How to upgrade your board". The great interest showed that questions around the right composition and strengthening of the board of directors are an important topic for startups.

The ETH spinoff greenteg was a pilot participant in our UpScaler program. The insights gained were extremely valuable for the launch of the very popular and most booked support program for startups in the internationalization phase. We congratulate greenteg on the recently realized financing round of CHF 10 million as well as on its successful scaling and wish it continued success!

The SwissEF UpScaler program continues to attract great interest and is fully booked for the first quarter of 2022. No less than 13 startups are currently in the growth program. The article from Startupticker provides an overview of the participating companies.

Participants are particularly enthusiastic about the high utility value and the quick and positive impact on their business development. All participating startups now receive an exclusive CHF 80,000 funding credit, which can be used for workshops and coaching sessions with our experts and entrepreneurs.

Startup PXL Vision, winner of the Swiss Economic Award 2019 and EY Entrerpreneur of the Year Award 2020, increased its revenue by more than 50% last year and doubled its headcount. PXL Vision has benefited greatly from the Swiss Entrepreneurs Foundation's UpScaler program during this time. CEO Michael Born says: "In eight intensive workshops, we were able to identify our limiting growth factors with experienced entrepreneurs and experts from the SwissEF network and eliminate most of them, which greatly accelerated our growth. I can highly recommend the UpScaler program to all startups that are about to go international."

Recently the UpScaler program was launched with the company Zippsafe. Zippsafe manufactures a novel locker room solution utilizing flexible textile locker bags instead of metal sheet allowing space savings of up to 70% compared to conventional lockers. In order to accelerate the growth of the company, the workshops will focus on sales and distribution. Together with PXL Vision, MyCamper.ch, Dagsmejan and Climeworks, five promising startups are currently completing the SwissEF UpScaler program.

As a result of the Corona-crisis, questions concerning the financing of startups are even more in focus than before. SwissEF has adapted its UpScaler program and now offers a specific financing module. Previous participants included ANYbotics from Zurich.

The internationally leading goods testing group SGS SA, based in Geneva, has joined the SwissEF industrial network. SGS supports the successful internationalisation of growth companies in SwissEF's UpScaler programme. With its entry, the company is adding its international network, with 2,600 locations in over 140 countries and the extensive experience of over 90,000 employees, to help develop the next generation of internationally successful Swiss SMEs and startups.

Following the successful pilot at the end of 2018, the SwissEF UpScaler growth program is now being launched on a broad basis. Growth companies in the internationalisation phase will be supported by a pool of 50 renowned experts and an international industry network. By clicking on the picture you get detailed information, a factsheet and the registration link for interested start-ups.

In order to optimally promote the scale-up of start-ups in Switzerland, EPFL Lausanne, EPFL Innovation Park, Innovaud and SwissEF have joined forces to form the ScaleUp Network Switzerland. The synergies between the individual funding programmes and the respective pools of experts are exploited in a targeted manner, experience is continuously exchanged and start-ups from all over Switzerland are systematically networked in the scale-up phase. The aim of the new cooperation is to accelerate the growth of Swiss start-ups in the internationalisation phase and thereby significantly increase the success rate.

The UpScaler program for growth companies was tested in a pilot project with two Swiss start-ups. Both are in the midst of internationalisation, i.e. exactly in the phase on which the SwissEF UpScaler is focusing. The four-month test phase provided important insights. Thanks to the valuable experience and feedback from the experts and the growth companies, we will intensify the program even further.