New „HSG Spin-off Label“ strongly suggests: SGBA’s startup sector is getting all fired up
13.11.2018

New „HSG Spin-off Label“ strongly suggests: SGBA’s startup sector is getting all fired up

„Metoyoubag“ is a company that lets you rent a high-end handbag, Faitron a producer of an intelligent „HeatsBox“ to automatically warm up your healthy, home-cooked lunches at work, and surp.travel is a surprise trips travel agent – what do the three have in common? The same as Ava Women, a Swiss startup with offices in San Francisco and in Switzerland offering a wrist app to help women who wish to get pregnant with fertility and reproductive planning (Forbes Magazine even counted Ava’s co-founder Lea von Bidder among the most important young women entrepreneurs of 2017). Or the same as quite successful technology companies Abacus or Namics, who give jobs to a combined several hundred employees in the St.GallenBodenseeArea (SGBA) alone. These companies (and 117 others) are all innovative startups that have earned „HSG Spin-off Label“, a seal of approval from the University of St.Gallen.

 

The idea of the label is to recognize and honor young companies that have been founded as a spin-off from a project or class at the University. Its only conditions are the entrepreneurial spirit required to start a company and a direct relation to the university: As alma mater or home for academic research and teaching. No other restrictions apply – which may explain the astonishing bandwidth of innovative business ideas among them: There are insect food pioneers (Essento), an ecological, sustainable and top-of-the-line dress shirt manufacturer (Carpasus), an artificial intelligence based, data-intensive, social advertising application (Advertima) and even an online dermatologist (Online Doctor) – there’s no limit to the creativity among the University of St.Gallen spin-offs.

 

And their inventiveness is easily quantified: According to an internal survey with 64 of all certified spin-offs, they have generated revenues of more than 100 million Swiss Francs in Switzerland and internationally in 2017, and created over 2800 jobs since their inception. 50% can boast sales of over half a million Swiss Francs – not bad for startups. 17% generate revenues above the 5 million mark. Roughly half of the them is operating in software development and IT, the other half distributed over food and consumer goods, as well as services. A majority of spin-offs has successfully raised outside capital.

 

The spin-offs are not just a landmark achievement of the University of St.Gallen, they have also turned the university into a center of gravity for creative ideas and entrepreneurial acumen. Or as the university’s dean Thomas Rieger puts it: „We’re injecting entrepreneurship into the university’s DNA.“ On the other hand, the dynamical spin-off crowd has yielded a positive return for the business environment of the SGBA: More than 25%, i.e. 34 out of 123 spin-offs of the University of St.Gallen have not just launched but kept their business in the SGBA where they palpably increase the innovative potency and entrepreneurial spirit of the regional economy.

 

That is the mission of Iman Nahvi, CEO of Advertima, whose software solutions identify, create and present customized and individually tailored ads to passersby in real-time. Advertima embodies a commitment to the business location SGBA, Nahvi told local newspaper St.Galler Tagblatt. As a business region, SGBA offers great potential for attracting professional talent, sometimes even more than merely urban regions: The market is less saturated with highly competitive large multinationals while offering more quality of living. He’s committed to helping, says Nahvi, to make the city of St.Gallen “sexy”, particularly when it comes to advance highly attractive working and living environments as one can encounter in the „Startfeld“ incubator, for instance. Models like these are prone to attract highly qualified international IT professionals – and to retain them too.

 

The latest example for the fertility of the business environment that the SGBA has on offer for creators and innovative entrepreneurs, is the St.Gallen-based startup Frontify: A developer and provider of integrated solutions in corporate branding, Frontify has just successfully completed an 8.3 million USD series A round of funding in October. With a staff of currently 70 and client accounts at several large corporations such as Lufthansa, IBM or Adobe, the company intends to invest the funding into a US expansion – while also expanding operations in the SGBA.

 

The bottom line is obvious: The SGBA’s spin-off and startup environment is eminently healthy and continues to grow.

 

For an overview of all startups certified with the University of St.Gallen’s „HSG Spin-off Label“ please see: https://www.cfe.unisg.ch/for-start-ups/spin-off/