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Sandborn

We hatch businesses from our experience and network. Our vision is to help create great solutions fo

06/10/2026

Who funds the first steps of the Swiss AI breakout? 🇨🇭

At the AI+X Summit, Isabelle Siegrist put that question to the Innovator Stage.

The common assumption: Swiss AI startups get their first real money from a foreign fund, and two years too late.

Johann Diep (Co-founder and CTO of Uncovr)told a different story: foreign, but early. Johann is Swiss, but took no grant money. Instead he joined Entrepreneurs First in Paris, and right after demo day Uncovr raised a $7M seed led by Index Ventures.

Cynthia Jurytko added the investor view: the right first backers bring far more than money. They open doors, challenge the plan and signal to the next round.

Our takeaway: Switzerland has the research and the talent. What decides the first step is whether founders know their capital options early enough to choose. 🚀

Stuck at your first round? Send us a DM

Thank you ETH AI Center for the stage!

FemaleFounders Sandborn Zurich

29/09/2026

Switzerland builds world-class AI. So why do so few teams make it to a global market? 🌍
This Thursday, 1 October, I’m on stage twice at the AI+X Summit at StageOne Zurich, and that’s the question I want answered.

📍 13:45, ETH AI Center booth
Insider Talk: From PhD to Founder. Turning AI research into a venture.

📍 15:55, Innovator Stage
From lab to global market: who funds the first steps of the Swiss AI breakout? With Johannd Diepand from uncovr & Cynthia Jurytko from S2S Ventures

The hardest part is not the science. It’s the beginning: first customer, first capital, first big bet. That’s where most teams stall, or sell too early to the first strategic buyer who walks in.

At S2S Ventures, where I chair the board, we’ve backed more than 50 university spin-offs. The pattern repeats: the teams that make it find a paying customer before they find an investor. Not a pilot. A customer with a budget line and a signature. ✍️

So on Thursday I’ll ask the uncomfortable version: who is actually funding those first steps in Switzerland today, and what needs to change so the answer stops being a foreign fund, two years too late?
At the summit? Come say hi 👋

FemaleFounders StartupSwitzerland Spinoff VentureCapital Zurich FromLabToMarket Sandborn

23/09/2026

40 to 50 percent of the people in our university entrepreneurship courses are women.

By the time those projects become companies, that share has collapsed.

So the leak isn’t at the top of the funnel. It sits between a course project and a company: pre-incubation, first funding, incorporation.

Last week the Collective | Unlock female entrepreneurship roundtable brought Swiss universities, innovation offices, non-profits and funds around one table. Instead of another problem statement, we left with five commitments for 2026 and 2027:

1. One shared set of numbers. An annual Swiss Female Entrepreneurship Report, two to three pages. First edition around the Swiss Startup Days in May.

2. A shared bench of role models, so no panel has to reuse the same five names.

3. Redesigned formats. Women-only works early, at school age. Later it doesn’t. So: inclusive programmes with dedicated safe spaces, one-to-one coaching and low-barrier entry points instead of high-pressure pitch events.

4. Bias-aware decisions. Shared bias tools across funding juries and investment committees. At S2S Ventures Ventures, 35% of our 50+ portfolio companies are female co-founded. That’s process, not luck.

5. A wider definition. Innovation built for women as end users, in health, physical products and workplace design, is a market, not a niche.

None of this needs a new organisation or a new funding round. It needs the people already doing the work to publish the same numbers and share the same bench 🚀

A big thank you to everyone who joined and enables female entrepreneurship every day!❤️

ETH Entrepreneurship Girls Code Too LINDEN Live Learning Labs

02/07/2026

A brilliant model is not yet a business.

This week joined the panel on AI-driven innovation at the Workshop on Multimodal Foundation Models: From Research to Innovation in Barcelona.

In deep tech, there’s no clean moment when you „stop researching“ and „start building.“ The strongest ventures do both at once. The bottleneck is rarely the science, it’s the capital, talent and patience to survive the years in between.

The technology is ready. What Europe needs now are the bridges that turn research into companies. 🚀

Thank you to the team and everyone building those bridges. ❤️

Entrepreneurship EuropeanAI Startups Barcelona

25/06/2026

We planned Tacos & Traction. Then a heatwave hit Zurich. So we switched it up and Burgers & Bits was born. Maybe on of our favourite nights yet. 🍔🍸

A room full of female founders and investors at in Zurich. Real conversations, honest questions, no pitch decks.

This is what Sandborn is for. Building the rooms where female and diverse founders meet the people who can back them. No quota, no special treatment.

Thank you to Kirtanya von Matt for the beautiful venue and of course to , and , and to everyone who came. ❤️

Next female founder event this autumn 👀

FemaleFounders ZurichStartups

27/05/2026

Tick. Tick. Boom. ⏱️
We flipped the script at Swiss Startup Days: instead of founders pitching, the investors took the hot seat and their own portfolio startups asked the questions.
No polish, no pre-approved answers. Just real questions, real reactions, and the room deciding who handled it best.

Because a great investor is far mir than capital. They are experienced advisors whose input can be decisive when things get hard. But that only works if the relationship is honest and unfiltered from day one. 🚀

26/05/2026

This is what it looks like when we lift each other up 🚀Collective Gathering 2026 💜 One day to celebrate and champion female entrepreneurship in Switzerland, surrounded by the founders and investors driving it forward.

Friederike von Waldenfels on reinvention, Christa Bösch on building their own way, and founders getting refreshingly real about product-market fit.

Thank you to every single one who made this day so special!

07/05/2026

Mai is loaded 🚀
From Founders Breakfasts to deep-tech showcases these are the Swiss startup events worth blocking your calendar for this month.
Swipe through 👉 Which one are we seeing you at?
startupschweiz venturebuilding

16/04/2026

The best investor conversations don’t happen in pitch meetings. They happen over tacos & drinks 🌮🍸

I’m excited to announce a new format we’ve been building together with and :

Tacos & Traction is a curated evening that brings early-stage founders and investors together - before the formal process begins. No agenda, no pressure. Just the kind of genuine conversations that make everything that comes after easier.🚀

Here’s the thing: We know what a strong pitch looks like. But the founders who really stand out? They’re the ones who’ve already built trust, context, and a real relationship long before they walk into the room.

How it works: Startups apply with a short description of their venture. We then carefully curate the guest list to make sure every conversation in the room is worth having.

📍 , Zurich
📅 Tuesday, 28 April | 17:30–19:30

⚡ Spots are very limited – and going fast. This might be your last chance to grab one. Apply via the link below (or link in bio) and leave the pitch deck at home.
lu.ma/rnpz4wow

15/04/2026

It’s no secret that Switzerland has world-class founders. What’s less talked about? How many of them are still navigating this ecosystem without the right people in their corner.

That’s the gap the Collective Gathering was built to close. And on 20 May in Bern, the community comes together again.

We’re proud to support an event that doesn’t just talk about a more inclusive startup ecosystem - but actively builds it. 🚀

Diverse teams. Honest conversations. The right rooms.
This year’s program brings together founders, investors and enablers for an afternoon of real talk including a session on „Hard Decisions, Hard Pivots“ moderated by our very own ❤️

If you’re part of Switzerland’s startup world this is the afternoon to be at.

📍 Burgerratssaal, Casino Bern | 20 May | 1:30–5:30 pm
🎟️ Link in bio

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