Consider the first CHF 10,000. In Venture Kick, the startup funding initiative operated by Venturelab, that money arrives with a peculiar restriction: it cannot pay the founders’ salaries. Nor can it become incorporation capital. It is for business development. A scientist who has spent years persuading a molecule, a sensor or a piece of software to behave must now persuade a customer. The cheque buys a change of audience.
That small rule tells you rather more about Venturelab than the vocabulary of startup support usually does. Switzerland produces research; Venturelab works on the awkward journey between a research result and a business. Its tools include entrepreneurial training, funding programs, corporate introductions and international investor roadshows. The recurring subject is what happens outside the laboratory.
- Training and introductions for Swiss startup founders.
- Venture Kick: up to CHF 150,000 across three selective stages.
- Later funding includes convertible loans, with potential dilution.
- Global roadshows take sector-specific teams to investors abroad.
A company built around people who cannot yet pay
Venturelab began in 2004 as a national entrepreneurial training initiative mandated by the Swiss Innovation Agency to IFJ, the Institute for Young Entrepreneurs. Co-founders Beat Schillig and Jordi Montserrat brought different backgrounds: Schillig studied marketing at St. Gallen; Montserrat studied rural engineering and geomatics at EPFL. Today, Venturelab describes itself as a fully private company.
The commercial puzzle was unusually neat. The people who needed business training were often the people least able to afford it. In their 2023 Swisspreneur interview, the founders explained how third parties could finance that training: corporations interested in startups, philanthropic foundations and institutional partners. The beneficiary and the payer did not have to be the same person.
That arrangement gives Venturelab several constituencies. Founders need useful advice and access. Corporations want contact with emerging technologies. Universities want research to travel beyond campus. Investors want companies worth meeting. Venturelab’s expertise lies in designing programs where those interests can meet around a concrete task: a pitch, a customer conversation or a potential partnership.
Three juries, nine months, fewer comfortable assumptions
Venture Kick, launched in 2007, supplies the clearest example. Its three stages offer CHF 10,000, CHF 40,000 and CHF 100,000. After the first selection, founders have three months before the second stage; successful teams then have another six months before the third. Kickers camps provide coaching between the jury appearances. Progress requires a better business case and, eventually, tangible market feedback.
The financial instruments matter. The first tranche is a grant. The next two are convertible loans; published participation conditions specify 5% interest and conversion at the valuation of the next investment round, without a discount. Winning every stage therefore means up to CHF 150,000, with obligations attached. The much larger “1 Million Plus” proposition includes separate opportunities through InnoBooster and Kickfund. It is a route to further financing, rather than a million-franc welcome present.
Venture Kick is an initiative of the charitable Kick Foundation, supported by private donors and operated by Venturelab. Keeping those names straight prevents a tempting accounting error: money allocated to startups is not Venturelab’s revenue, and capital later raised by alumni is not money Venturelab itself invested.
Each award requires selection. Bar lengths compare individual tranches.
The constraint was the cheque book
A revealing adjustment came in 2019. Venture Kick reported that some high-quality applicants could not be supported within its 2018 budget. The bottleneck was funding capacity. Its new model raised the second-stage amount from CHF 20,000 to CHF 40,000 and introduced convertible loans at stages two and three. The announced annual budget rose 36% to CHF 4.35 million.
Schillig explained the change in terms of flexibility for founders raising additional capital. The annual report also described a recycling mechanism: proceeds from loans and equity exits would support future entrepreneurs. Success could replenish the pool. This was an alteration to the program’s economics, prompted by demand and the practicalities of financing young companies.
The pressure has not vanished. Venture Kick’s 2025 results reported 990 applications, 130 new projects supported and CHF 8.3 million in direct investments. Its alumni attracted CHF 1.25 billion in follow-on financing that year. Those figures describe different flows of money. They also show why access to the program should never be confused with an entitlement to funding.
“Convertible loans will give entrepreneurs more flexibility as they raise additional capital from investors.”Beat Schillig / Venture Kick, 2019
A national team with a business itinerary
Venture Leaders adds geography to the education. Launched in 2006, it selects Swiss startups for investor and business development roadshows abroad. Sector-specific teams go where the relevant conversations are: biotechnology and medtech founders to Boston, technology founders to Silicon Valley, fintech founders to London. The sporting name comes with meetings rather than medals.
In May 2026, Venturelab reported that Venture Leaders alumni had raised CHF 9.5 billion in growth capital and created 20,550 jobs. These are alumni outcomes, not an experiment proving that the roadshows caused every franc or job. Selection matters: juries choose promising teams before they travel. Still, the accumulated results explain why a founder might value being introduced under a familiar Swiss banner.
Visibility has its own program. The TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award, introduced in 2011, puts selected companies in front of the ecosystem. Training supplies another entry point. Innosuisse courses focus on business creation and growth, while workshops tackle tasks such as sales. A four-hour Sales for Startups session advertised for August 2026 was free to participants. The price of entry can be preparation and time.
Borrow the sequence, not the stationery
Venturelab sits between university commercialization, accelerators and venture capital. Its distinctive feature is the combination: instruction, repeated funding decisions, corporate access, public visibility and foreign introductions. A university transfer office, an incubator or an investor may meet one immediate need more directly. Venturelab offers several doors as a company’s needs change.
The useful lesson for a reader building elsewhere is to separate technical progress from commercial evidence. Give a team enough resources to test a business assumption. Set a date. Bring in people who have sold something comparable. Ask what customers said before authorizing the next step. The staged design is worth borrowing even when the Swiss institutions cannot be.
Eligibility limits the comparison. Venture Kick targets research-based projects tied to Swiss academic institutions and requires application before incorporation. A conventional local service business, an already incorporated applicant or a team outside the relevant Swiss criteria needs another route. And an introduction abroad helps only if the company is ready for the conversation. Venturelab can arrange the room; the founders still have to give somebody a reason to stay.