venture trip

At the swiss start-ups pitch presentation, Ralph Rimet from Secu4 showed his product, a protection system for valuables, based on a small bluetooth card, connected with a cell phone.

At the swiss start-ups pitch presentation, Gilles Florey from Key Lemon presented his product: an easy-to-use face- and speech-recognition software that can be used through a normal webcam

Last year we organized a venture trip to Asia, helping Swiss start-ups (Poken, Arimaz, KeyLemon, Secu4, Lighthouse, Pixelux) develop and promote themselves on the Korean Market.

The venture trip resulted in more than half the start-ups developing strong ties with the country of the morning calm, some finding new clients, others new suppliers (especially if you work in electronics or robotics). All entrepreneurs gathered unique experience on how to do business in Asia, and met key actors of one of the world's most interesting, homogeneous and innovative market on earth. Did you know Korea is beating exportation records right now, and that many think that the crisis is already over there?

As Raphael Arrigoni, CEO of Pixelux puts it: "I really did enjoy the sessions last Year in South Korea and are looking forward for the new coming ones. I was able to meet very interesting people coming from many parts of the world with different approach on making/using technology."

So if you like the opportunity to meet potential clients, suppliers, partners, or investors, have us arrange the meetings and translators for you, and an opportunity to showcase your product and services at Lift Asia, submit your application. The deadline has been extended to accommodate the July vacationers :)

Look at the call for project and send us your application!

Our Venture Trip partner - the western Switzerland cluster Alpict - announced the names of the companies that have been selected to accompany us to Korea. The following projects were chosen:

• Arimaz, a company active in the fields of entertainment robotics and interactive toys.
• KeyLemon, a software company which offers simple, fast and convenient computer access solutions, based on face and speech recognition, for all internet users with a webcam.
• Poken, a service that combines a low-cost designer keychain accessory and an open web-based API to enable any social network to extend their reach into the real world.
• Pixelux, creators of a revolutionary video games technology called Digital Molecular Matter (DMM).
• Secu4, a company developing mobile protection solutions for valuables and persons based on wireless technologies.
• Lighthouse, an Application Service Provider (ASP) that is focused exclusively on delivering leading software and services directly to the mobile devices.

Congratulations to the selected entrepreneurs! The Alpict staff told us they had a hard time choosing only six companies among the twenty something applications they received. Many good projects could not be selected (and can still benefit from our super-cheap startup price to attend the conference), and a special focus was put on projects who had obvious synergies with Korea, a country where robots, mobile, social networks and gaming are really big.

Sorry to play with the nerves of the twenty or so companies who submitted their proposition for the Venture Trip. The results will be announced tomorrow morning and six startups will join LIFT Asia in September!

After the first venture night at LIFT08, Alpict (formerly Geneva ICT Cluster) and LIFT are again partnering to help young companies develop and promote themselves, this time by organizing of an Asian Venture Trip. The concept is simple:

• • You have an entrepreneurial project based in Western Switzerland (Vaud, Valais, Geneve, Fribourg, Bern, Neuchatel, Jura) in the field of information and communication technologies and with a strong focus on interactivity
• • Your project could benefit greatly from meeting key people in Korea, potential clients, suppliers, partners, or investors.
• • You would like to present to the LIFT Asia audience, and attend the conference on a VIP pass

If that is the case then enter the selection process. Six companies will be selected and accompany us to Seoul and Jeju island in September! All details can be found on the Asian Venture Trip page.