Swiss startup quotes – enter the game!

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For its 10th anniversary, the well-known (in Swiss startup ecosystem) program venturelab is starting a competition to find the best entrepreneurial quotes of the year coming from Switzerland. If you’re older than 18, living in Switzerland, you can submit up to 3 quotes about entrepreneurship (in English, of course!) and from a Swiss based entrepreneur. There’s even a something to win: a voucher of CHF 250.- valid in one of 7 startups gone through the venturelab program. Really cool! But in the end of the day, do we really care about the prize money? This initiative is simply awesome! You have until Thursday 14th of August, at 12:00 to submit your quotes (you’ll then have 5 days to vote for your favorite quote on the Facebook fan page of venturelab). Here are the 2 quotes (from myself, as a Swiss based entrepreneur …

10 hottest digital creative jobs

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During my trip as a Venture Leader in Boston and New York, I’ve tried to collect as much knowledge as possible about the US market. We’ve been to the Boston tech jam, which is basically a big party where tech companies are trying to recruit talented guys (companies which have a booth there are no more startups). One company was distributing flyers about what earn creative people in the US, depending on their location (infographic displayed above). My friend Adelina once published a really popular post about the salaries of developers and designers across the world. This kind of content is often popular, as everybody want to know how much it could earn! I thought this content could be valuable to people who think that Switzerland is always too expensive to do tech (web, mobile) startups. Sure, this country is expensive, especially …

How to modernize Swiss Army (even without new planes !) – Part II/II

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Now that the debate about the choice of a new airplane is over (Swiss citizens have rejected it), at least for a while, I think that Swiss governement and our politicians have to really think about the future of Swiss Army. It’s one thing to say that Switzerland needs new airplanes. It’s something else to redefine a real mission for this organization. And to improve its efficiency. For people from abroad: Switzerland has a system where young men are obliged to serve their country, either with a militarian or civilian (1.5 times longer !) duty. For the ones who choose the military duty, they engage themselves for 21 weeks (for the ones going to university, they will miss at least 6 weeks in the begininng of the cursus!), followed by 7 yearly « repetition courses » of 3 weeks. Or 10 months in …

How to modernize Swiss Army (even without new planes !) – Part I/II

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If you’re living in Switzerland, you’ve probably heard or read that citizens will have to say yes or no to 32 new planes, named « Gripen ». These flights will cost around CHF 3.2bn and around CHF 200M per year during 30 years (for maintenance, etc.). These engines will be built by a Swedish company, but there is no such plane currently flying (but that’s another story). For more than 6 months, there is a big debate around this choice (not the right one, etc., etc.) and every Swiss citizen over 18 years can have its own expert judgement (that’s the magic of direct democracy we live in (s)Witzerland: everyone can be a military expert!). And it’s funny to see how some recent facts come with the right timing: 3 months ago, a flight was rerouted by a hijacker and landed in …

“Look Up” – A spoken word film for an online generation.

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You may already have watched this amazing video by Gary Turk, a London-based writer and director (it’s buzzing around the web, with more than 20 millions views in less than 2 weeks). Gary Turk made a great job explaining with some irony who we currently live. Hyper connected guys. We live in a social world. But are social networks that social (in the true sense)? We are living in this era. Many of us have already had this kind of reflexion, but Gary expresses it as it really is. Simple, right and powerful words to explain the loneliness of the current hyper-connected world. Take 5 minutes and watch it (and read the poem also below). It will change your behavior, or at least make you thinking about it. Use technology, use it as often as needed, but never forget that nothing …

Let’s conquer China!

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If you’re a Switzerland-based entrepreneur, you’ve probably heard about the “Venture Leaders” program. It’s a program where 20 entrepreneurs (on more than a hundred applicants) get selected for a 10-days business development trip in the USA (Boston and New-York), each year in June. USA seems obvious for Swiss tech entrepreneurs as a key market for their international expansion. But more and more, China is also a place to go, if not THE place to go! This country has experienced such a massive economic development (ask any luxury Swiss watchmaker how important is this country for their brand!) and even if the growth has been slowing down these last years (7.8% in 2012, after having double digits growth rate until 2007), there are a lot of opportunities to seize. China has created its own internet giants, as for instance Alibaba (“the store …

Let’s save the Erasmus exchange program!

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You’ve probably heard about the voting in Switzerland on February 9th (otherwise, read my post here). One of the first negative effect of this decision taken by a tiny majority of Swiss citizen is the freezing by European Union of the Erasmus student exchange program. It’s a really bad news for Swiss students. I was an Erasmus student in 2004-2005, and I can only give evidence of the benefit of such programs that allow Swiss students go abroad for one or two semester to continue or terminate their studies. It gives an affordable access to top universities and courses not available in Switzerland, helps to learn and practice a language as well as offering an international perspective. For most students, it’s a unique way of opening their views to the world and to Switzerland, by experiencing something different. IMHO, it can …