A pool of experienced experts

Dr. Regula Altmann-Jöhl is delegated of Rector of the HSR. She is member of executive committee for the SECO start-up fund.

Claude Amiguet is Director of NEODE. Over the last three years, he has been involved in setting up companies, and has in particular coached several Start-up companies in Switzerland and abroad, helping them to successfully manage their businesses.

Dr. Rolf Auf der Maur is Partner at Vischer, one of the major independent Swiss law firms. His Experience lies in Intellectual Property and Competition Law, Media and Entertainment Law, Communications Law including Legal Aspects of the Internet and Advertising Law.

Dr. Luc O. Bauer has served for more than 30 years in various executive positions in several high technology companies, in the US, and Europe, often as a founder, member of the board, president. Since returning to Europe in December 2001, he became board member and mentor to a number of local high technology start-up with focus in microelectronics, display and lately micro- and nano-technologies with and without biotechnology aspects.

Guillaume Beauverd is the Founding Partner and CEO of G2 Ventures, an early stage venture investment company based in Geneva. He has been an activist investor in early stage start ups. Recent investments include Poken, ioVox and Doodski.

Nicolas Berg is Co-founder of Redalpine Venture Partners AG. He has (co)founded 8 companies since 1984 and invested in 16 startups since 2000 as a business angel (IT, Games, Internet, Financial, Nutrition, Biotech).

Marc P. Bernegger, Master of Law (University of Zurich) founded his first company at the age of 16. In 2000 he founded usgang.ch. Today Marc is co-founder of the internet company amiando and active as business angel for seed-investments.

Marie-Laure Berthié is Deputy Vice President for Innovation and Technology transfer at EPFL. She leads the business development with industrial partners, from attracting companies on campus at the Innovation Square, to helping those building projects with EPFL. She previously worked for seven years as a Partner for Banexi Ventures Partners, a Venture Capital funds focused on early stage companies. She also held various positions in the high tech industry, as a consultant in new products development and innovation for PRTM, and as a Project manager for IBM microelectronics. Marie-Laure Berthié holds a MBA from INSEAD and a MSc from INP Grenoble and Imperial College.

Philip Bodmer is Founder of Bodmer & Partners Consutants AG, focusing in strategy consulting for small Swiss manufacturing companies. He also is board member of several small Swiss companies.

Dr. Jan Bomholt is Co-founder of BrainsToVentures AG (b-to-v) and has built up its activities continuously since 2000. In 1996, he co-founded an entrepreneurial organization at the University of St. Gallen, which led to the foundation of BrainsToVentures AG in July 2000.

Jacques Bonvin is a Partner with Tavernier Tschanz. As a business lawyer, he is specialized in corporate and commercial transactions, corporate finance and M&A, private equity and venture capital, in particular in new technologies. Jacques Bonvin has an extensive experience in advising investment banks, private equity, vc funds and firms, as well as start-ups.

Martin Bopp,
Head of Start-up Promotion and Entrepreneurship at BBT

Diego Braguglia is Partner with VI Partners AG. His areas of expertise are life sciences and biotechnology. He has more than 15 years of industry experience in life sciences, medical technology and pharmaceuticals in the US and Europe.

Dr. Eduard M. Brunner is the owner of Edbru AG, a company engaged in the finanacing of Start-up companies. He worked in various Swiss industrial companies in different management positions up to the delegate of the board. He is also the president of ETH alumni association.

Dr. Burckhardt is CEO of EVA – the Basel life sciences start-up agency. EVA is an institution which supports potential entrepreneurs from the very first moment with coaching, bringing in the network, and with seed-money. Dr. Burckhardt has a longtime experience in the pharmaceutical industry and in consulting.

Danièle Castle began her career in the European headquarters of Burson-Marsteller on pan-European industrial accounts (B2B),then joined a multinational biotechnology company, where she was Director of the Corporate Public Relations department. In 1999, she set up the healthcare communications consultancy, Genevensis Healthcare Communications.

Dr. Pierre Comte has an extensive and successful carreer in Life Sciences and Medtech, where he acted as executive director and/or board member for several companies. Today, he is founder and chairman of Sigma Professional, which offers coaching services based on Value Creation, a strategic tool to develop sustainable growth plans.

Alexandre Coquoz is Associate Director of Innobridge SA , which supports the companies in accelerating their innovation process and manages the investment fund JADE Invest SA created by CSEM (Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology in Neuchâtel).

Didier Coquoz is by education a clinical pharmacologist and pharmacist with 18 years of international experience in the pharmaceutical industry. He is president and CEO since 1995 of DRDC Pharma SA, a registered Swiss drug, business and companies development consultancy firm.

Dr. Frank Crittin is co-manager of the Lombard Odier Clean Tech fund, a thematic equity fund investing in companies developing clean technologies in the sectors of renewable energy, energy efficiency, water and waste treatment and clean transportation. Prior to joining the asset management industry, Frank Crittin was Director of IdeArk, a company involved in the identification and development of commercial opportunities for innovative technologies and start-up creation.

Paul de la Rochefoucauld is a serial " dot-comer". After having founded in 2000 and successfully sold SourcingParts.com (B2B marketplace for mechanical parts) he has started itaste.com, a trusted information service for restaurant.

David obtained his PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Laval University in Canada. In 2000, he created and led the Urology Research Unit at CHUV, Lausanne, before founding Med Discovery in 2002. As CEO and President of Med Discovery, David Deperthes already raised CHF10 Million, develop a valuable portfolio and set up strategic partnerships with Pharma companies.

Gregoire Dizac is a Senior Manager in charge of product strategy at Logitech. After spending six years in the Silicon Valley working for Logitech and coaching several startups, he recently moved to Switzerland. Prior to Logitech, Greg worked in IT consulting at Edifixio and in strategic purchasing at PSA Peugeot Citroen.

Benoit Dubuis is adviser at the EPFL and Director of Eclosion, a private start-up incubator and seed venture capital firm, specialized in life sciences.

Pascal Dutheil is founder and owner of Andromède Consulting. As an independent advisor, Pascal provides entrepreneurs (both startup ventures and SME owners) with coaching, financing (seed & early stage, growth capital, succession, mbo) and business expansion services. Since 2003, Pascal has been supporting high tech startups in Romandie as a CTI Startup coach.

Walter Ehrensberger is CEO of Parkerhouse Finans a factoring company concentrating on the SME segment. Previously he owned a company active in the telecoms industry which he sold. He then acted as investment manager for start-ups at UBS and joined Parkerhouse in 2004 to develop the factoring business in Switzerland, Germany and Austria.

Raluca Flükiger joined the Unitec office in January 2003. Her previous experience includes working for two years as an editor on the international scientific journal Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology. In parallel, she was a scientific advisor for Sectoral Asset Management, an investment advisor specialized in the Healthcare/Biotech Industry.

Nicolas Fulpius is Partner at Affentranger Associates a company active as principal investor in the venture capital and private equity area. He is mainly active with start-up and high growth companies and is involved in several investments at the Board level and brings more than 10 years of active management and investment experience in the venture capital with a special interest for the life sciences industry.

Erich Gebhardt founded in January 2000 the Zurich based start-up company media-streams.com to develop & market a new, Voice over IP and acted as its president & CEO. In October 2005, media-streams.com was taken over by Microsoft and Erich Gebhardt now man-ages the newly founded Microsoft Developer Center for Collaboration Technologies in Zurich.

Gabriel Gomez is Principal at DEFI Gestion SA. He started his career at the Nestlé Research Center in the R&D field, and subsequently worked for ACM (managing entity of the America’s Cup in Valencia), a private bank and an investment company as Investment Analyst. Gabriel holds a Master in Biological Sciences as well as a Master of Advanced Studies in BA.

Felix Grisard is CEO of HIAG AG of Riehen, a management company that operates a number of shareholdings and a pension fund. The holdings include a major real estate company and three companies mainly involved in trading (primarily wood products). Other holdings in the IT sector are currently being developed. The companies have shown extremely pleasing growth levels over the last five years, and good strategic and financial positioning forms a secure base for the future as well.

Prof. Dr. Anton Gunzinger is Founder and Chairman of the board of Supercomputing Systems AG, a company specialized in computer engineering.

Daniel Gutenberg is General Partner, at VI Partners AG and started his career as Chairman and CEO of Gutenberg Communication Systems AG, a company founded in 1991 and sold it in 2000 to the Telindus Group. Daniel has been investing in High Tech companies since the early days of Netscape and holds several board seats in private and public companies.

Ruedi Gygax, Ph.D, retired in 2008 from the Novartis Venture Fund where he has been managing director since its inception in 1997. He served on the boards of nine companies. He studied physical chemistry at the University of Basel and Stanford University prior to joining Ciba-Geigy (Novartis) in 1978. He is currently partner at Nextech Venture and board member of several companies active in the field of biotechnology.

Dr. René Hausammann is Managing Director of the Technopark Winterthur and the transfert center of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences.

Hansruedi Heeb is founder and CEO of FonApp, a startup developing a smart client for mobile phones. Hansruedi Heeb holds a MSc in Physics and a PhD in Technical Sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH).

Jos Hehli is an entrepreneur since 2004 with long-term engagements in start up and growth companies. His areas of expertise include strategy development and implementation, business plan development, finance, ERP-System / e-Business, management of large and complex projects.

Wolfgang Henggeler is head of the physical sciences group at Unitectra, the technology transfer office of the Universities of Zurich and Bern. He holds a Ph.D in Physics and a MAS in Management, Technology and Economics. Before joining Unitectra, he worked for a multinational company in engineering and management positions.

Dr. Peter Hogenkamp has been active in starting companies ever since university. Has latest venture, Blogwerk AG, founded in 2006, has become the biggest German-speaking blog pub-lisher, currently running more 10 theme blogs and attracting 500'000 readers every month. Dr. Peter Hogenkamp holds a graduate degree and a Ph.D. in Information Management from the University of St. Gallen.

Dr. Matthias Hölling has been with ETH transfer since 2005. With a focus on patents and licen-sing from 2006 to 2009, he is now mainly responsible for spin-off activities of ETH Zurich. Dr. Matthias Hölling holds a PhD of ETH Zurich and completed a tripartite M.E. program in electrical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe, the University of Southampton and the ESIEE, Paris. He also completed the MTE program at the IMD, Lausanne.

Pierre Ihmle is regularly involved in teaching programs at IMD, and teaches strategy, entrepre-neurship, innovation and finance classes at various universities and programs (VentureLab). He is Chairman of the Board of Cinetis SA.

Mario Jenni is President of the Biotech Center Zurich, Member of the Board of Directors at GHZ and managing Director glaTec - Technology Center at Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research.

Mark-Eric Jones is President and CEO of Innovative Silicon, a semiconductor memory technology company founded in Lausanne that has created and licenses a lower-cost technology to enable continued scaling of Dynamic Random Access Memories (DRAM). Mr. Jones has served as president of the Board of RAPID, the semiconductor IP trade association. He has an M.A. degree in Electrical Sciences from Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK.

Dr. Kilian Kämpfen is Chief Business Development of the media swiss group. This group encompasses Internet brands like Scout24, Anibis, Gate24, Baugate24, Xmedia, and Omnimedia.

Michael Kern is Head of Incubation of Swisscom Switzerland, Strategy & Innovation. He follows new venture opportunities inside the company and externally and directs new venture ideas to the Venture Board of Swisscom.

Charles Keusch is actually CEO of Keusch Venture Management and of Technoparc Lucerne too. Moreover, he is board member of several companies.

Stefan Kyora is co-owner of Journalistenbüro Niedermann GmbH and writes since ten years about start-ups and innovation. He currently is editor of CASHspecial Innovation.

Jean-Pierre Lacombe has been working for 20 years for Eaton, a $15.4 billion global diversified power management company. Since 2000 he has been named vice-president then president for the Europe, Middle East & Africa region. He holds two engineering degrees and a master of business administration.

Hervé Lebret is Manager of the INNOGRANTS inside the Innovation Network, for the evaluation of innovative projects focusing on developing the entrepreneurial mindset of EPFL students and researchers.

Daniel Ledermann Head of Innovation Portfolio at Swisscom Switzerland, Strategy and Innovation. Daniel is responsible to find new business ideas and concepts, develop theme and select the right ones to invest, which bring future growth for Swisscom’s business. He has been in charge on major business developments within Swisscom in the Web, Mobile and Media space.

Lorenz Lehmann is Head of PostLab, a project linking the Swiss Post with academia and entrepreneurs to stimulate innovation in the postal industry.

Felix Mayer is cofounder and CEO of Sensirion AG, a leading sensor manufacturer, providing relative humidity sensors and flow sensor solutions with unique performance.

Roman Mebert was a founding member of CAT Structured Finance, a finance boutique of Caterpillar, providing project finance solutions to junior mining companies in the base and precious metals sectors. He has held the position as Head of Risk & Portfolio Management.

Peter Metzinger is Owner of 4C business campaigning GmbH und holds a degree in Physics. Since 1998, he is involved in consulting activities for companies and NGO’s. He teaches in several professional and executive schools.

Michael Moppert co-founded the company Day Software in 1993 and headed Day for over 15 years as CEO and Chairman. As CEO Moppert was driving the successful growth of the company, converting it from a local swiss consulting agency into a global software vendor. In 1998 Moppert opened the U.S. subsidiary of Day in Los Angeles. In 1999 subsidiaries in Germany, the UK and Asia/Pacific followed. In 2000 Moppert led the company to a successful IPO on the Swiss Stock Exchange.

Aziz Nahas joined Lombard Odier in August 2007 from Dillon Read Capital Management where he was Global head of Equities to set up the Group's dedicated Hedge Fund (1798 Global Partners). He is now head of Equities and Convertibles of Lombard Odier Investment Manager

Peter Niederhauser is Partner at Masterinvest. He also is the Cofounder and Managing Director of Redalpine Venture Partners.

Claus Niedermann is CEO of Journalistenbüro Niedermann GmbH.

Bruno Oesch is chairman and CEO of Neurotune AG, chairman of Prionics AG and co-founder of both companies. He has a background in biochemistry and molecular biology, diagnostics and pharma development.

Dr. Markus Oswald is CEO of the Foundation for innovation of the Bank of Schwyz and Partner by aventic partners AG. He also is coach by CTI Start-up.

Xavier Paternot is investment principal at Vinci Capital, a private equity firm focused on the growing and financing of Swiss technology companies.

Thierry Pelet is co-founder and CEO of Viroblock SA, a Geneva-based pharmaceutical startup company developing antiviral products.

Prof. Andrea Pfeifer co-founded AC Immune SA, based in Lausanne, in 2003 and serves the company as Chief Executive Officer. She is an international expert in Biotech and a Professor of Biotechnology at the University of Lausanne. She has published more than 200 papers and abstracts in leading scientific journals.

Dr. Peter Pfister is a Business Angel since 2001. He serves on the Boards of CTI-Invest and StartAngels Network.

Don Plaisted is Managing Director of Draper Investment Company and based in Zurich, Switzerland. Mr. Plaisted has over 12 years of management experience and is responsible for day to day management of Draper Investment Company and investment advisory to Mr. Draper.

Dr. Sandro C. Principe is Head of Marketing and Business Development at the Swiss Post SKL.

Jim Pulcrano is Executive Director at IMD. In addition to his client responsibilities, Jim teaches entrepreneurship in IMD's Executive MBA program and is responsible for IMD's annual startup competition, which has run since 1999.  He has been intimately involved with 6 startups in the USA and CH, and has evaluated and coached hundreds of others.  Jim's doctoral research is on entrepreneurial networking.

COO and Partner of Venture Valuation AG. Master in business economics from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Conception and development of the Biotechgate Company Database.

Dr. Grégoire Ribordy is Founder and CEO of id Quantique SA, a Geneva based company spe-cialized in applications of quantum photonics. It is the first company to commercialize quantum cryptography appliances for high security data transmission. Prior to founding id Quantique, Dr. Ribordy has obtained a PhD in Physics from the University of Geneva and has worked in Japan.

Balz Roth is a member of the Go Beyond Ltd. management team. Go Beyond Ltd., an interna-tional Business Angel Network matching Business Angels and promising startups. He is an experienced entrepreneur and an active coach of several young companies. Balz Roth has an engineering background and a MBA from the University of St. Gallen HSG.

An entrepreneur and international business manager with a lifetime passion for developing technology companies. Currently is an active partner of a private investment group investing in early stage companies, is active board member of 3 companies/foundations and has a service company specializing in strategic management and is part of the CTI Start-up coaching and management.

Gian-Franco Salvato is founder and CEO of aseantic AG and has more than 13 years of industry experience in e-business and internet.

Luc-Alain Savoy is currently Director of M-Scan SA, a contract analysis laboratory specialising in mass spectrometry. He has obtained his PhD at the University of Geneva in 1989 which involved the qualitative and quantitative application of mass spectrometry to the analysis of proteins. He followed this with a post doc position at Imperial College prior to moving to Switzerland to found the M-Scan SA laboratory in 1991.

Dr. Corina Schütt joined ETH transfer in 2004 and is responsible for patents, licensing and support of spin-offs in the field of life sciences. She holds a Ph.D. in Biology from University of Zurich and an MAS in Intellectual Property of ETH. From 2000 to 2002, she was involved in building up a spin-off company of the University of Zurich.

Dr. Christian Schütz has been responsible for investment structuring and reporting of portfolio companies since 2003. He studied Business Administration at the European Business School (ebs) in Oestrich-Winkel, at the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce (La Rochelle) and the San Francisco State University.

Florian Schweitzer is Cofounder of BrainsToVentures AG (b-to-v) and has built up its network of private investors continuously since 2000. He studied Business Adminstration at the University of St. Gallen and in the same years established an entrepreneurial organization. This activity led to the creation of BrainsToVentures AG together with Jan Bomholt.

Dr. Dorian Selz is co-founder and CEO of Nektoon. Nektoon's goal is fluid information. Previously Dorian was co-founder and CEO of local.ch. local.ch is Switzerland's leading local search platform. Beforehand he was a partner at namics. namics is a large Web consultancy present in Switzerland and Germany.

Paul E. Sevinç received an MSc in electrical engineering and an ScD in computer science, both from ETH Zürich. Paul co-founded Inturico Engineering GmbH, now Doodle AG, who's CTO he is.

Michael Sidler is Partner at Intro International, a corporate development and technology commercialization boutique and partner at Redalpine Capital, a seed and early stage venture capital fund. Before 2006, he was responsible for business development at Prionics, a Swiss biotech start-up focusing on animal diagnostics (BSE).

Pierre Strübin is the Technical Director of FONGIT and is responsible for the Administration and the Logistic of the incubator. Pierre Strübin is an Electrical Engineer and holds an MA in Finance and a MBA in Management. His expertises lie in the fields of Finance, Project Management and General Management.

Paul-André Vogel is in charge of all innovation support services at Cimark. Since more than ten years, he coaches high-tech start-ups and works with companies on their business innovation projects. The activities range from new venture creation to development of new products, processes, markets and business models for existing companies.

Jean-Pierre Vuilleumier is Managing Director of CTI Invest. He holds a Master Degree in Business Administration at the University of Fribourg (CH).

Jean-Marc Wismer has 18 years experience in MEMS, Medical devices and IT companies with various senior managerial positions in int'l hi-tech management and financing. Companies include Medtronic, Lysis (COO), Neocast (CEO). Jean-Marc is currently CEO of Sensimed AG. His education includes an MS in Electrical engineering from EPFL (1989) and an MBA from IMD (1996).

Dr. Ralph Wyss is a partner at Wyss Wiesli Attorneys at Law in Zurich, a small law firm specializing in finance and technology law. He is inter alia member of the Board of Directors of Goldman Sachs Bank AG in Zurich and of namics AG in St. Gallen.

Stéphane Zrehen hold a master in physics and a Phd in Computer Science both from EPFL. He then continued academic research in the field of neuro-cybernetics at USC, Sony and Caltech. Upon his return in Switzerland, he worked for a Venture Capital company. Then he held various positions in multinational companies, in IT and medical devices. He currently serves as investments manager for Polytech Ventures, an EPFL-based seed fund investing in technology.