HSG sends startups to Silicon Valley
St.Gallen – The University of St.Gallen (HSG) has launched a new programme. Entrepreneurial Champions has already organized a trip for five company founders to Silicon Valley, where they gathered a range of useful experiences.
The trip organized by HSG lasted five days, according to a statement. The participants visited the universities of Berkeley and Stanford, interacted with Swiss startups active in the USA, and went on guided tours of the Apple and Facebook headquarters. A series of workshops rounded off the programme.
“We want to enable outstanding startups with an HSG background to gain insights, contacts and initial market validation in this unique Silicon Valley ecosystem,” commented Dominic Knape, who is responsible for the new programme for Startup@HSG. The programme is an initiative of the Center for Entrepreneurship at HSG, which organized the trip alongside Swissnex San Francisco.
The five founders, who all have an HSG background, had already participated in the Entrepreneurial Talents programme, in which they were singled out as being “particularly innovative”. As a criterion for selection as Entrepreneurial Champions, they had to “demonstrate that they have promising prospects for their company in the US market”, writes HSG.
The group included Camillo Werdich, who completed his PhD at HSG. His startup Sinpex developed an algorithm that can detect money laundering from documents in the financial sector. On the trip he was joined by Simon Haller of AdBag, which rents the back of rucksacks as advertising space, and Paul Bäumler, whose company Letsact aims to make it easier for young people to find volunteering work.
The group was rounded off by Marvin Speh of RoomPriceGenie, which developed an algorithm to allow smaller hotels to automatically adjust prices on demand, and HSG Masters graduate Max Sieghold. His company Sleepiz “developed a medical device which measures vital signs using electromagnetic waves”, according to HSG.
In the workshops, the participants were trained in pitching and were then able to try out what they had learnt in front of potential investors. One investor offered to co-finance Werdich’s startup. “He was amazed that at our stage of product development we hadn’t been on the market for ages,” said the young company founder.