- Sep 16, 2022

Kickstart Weekly Digest #1

Weekly Digests are shared during the 10-week Kickstart program to keep our community updated on exciting news, announcements, and updates from Kickstart, our partners, and our startups and alumni. View in browser here.

Happy Friday, Kickstart Family!

The time of year has come again when we are kicking off our bi-weekly digests for the next 10 weeks, to keep you up to date on what’s happening during the Kickstart program, key successes, exciting news, announcements, and more. Thank you for being part of this adventure!

Last Wednesday we welcomed 52 startups, scaleups & intrapreneurship teams from 16 countries in the fields of Finance & Insurance, New Work & Learning, Health & Wellbeing, Food & Retail, Smart Cities & Intrapreneurship, to launch our 2022 program with the goal of creating innovative and sustainable collaborations with our partners. Here's a peek at what we go up to...

Thank you for being part of this adventure!

Kickstart Week #1 in a nutshell

Wednesday 7 September:

Program Launch, ETH Zürich visit, Advisors & Experts Networking 🚀

We officially welcomed our #Kickstarters22 at Kraftwerk. Following a morning of onboarding & networking, some headed to ETH Industry Day, the largest annual networking event for industry and ETH researchers highlighting current research and entrepreneurial activities.

We then wrapped up the day with a special event for our incredible community of 150+ Advisors & Experts to network & meet the new cohort.

Thursday 8 September:

Kickstart Opening Ceremony & Party 🎊

Over 500 attendees, including partners, investors, advisors, experts and media, joined us at Kraftwerk Zürich & online to kick off our 10-week program with 52 pitches from our scaleups & intrapreneurship teams, fireside chats and discussions, and of course plenty of networking and fun!

Thank you so much to everyone who made the 2022 Kickstart Opening Ceremony & Party a great success! If you missed it, you can watch our live stream here 🍿: https://lnkd.in/eUgSphGq

Friday 9 September

EmpaNest visit & Google Tour 🏗

EmpaNest hosted Kickstart at their Empa and Eawag innovation building, touring the prototypes of fully automated offices and flats built from reusable materials and energy with the goal of becoming more circular than linear. Some Kickies also got an exclusive tour of the Zürich Google office in Europaallee, one of the biggest in Europe!

Monday 12 September

Travel to Basel for a trip to Global Partner, Coop 🚉

Impact Hub Basel hosted Coop and Kickstart for our first Basel event, including speeches from Mehran Yousefi & Katka Letzing on partnerships & PoCs, with insights from alumni Matthias Oppliger from #tide ocean materials and Michael Beitl from Kern Tec on their PoC experiences. We also heard from #Kickstarters22 New Roots as well as Impact Hub Basel's Managing Partner Rahel Gerber. Startups from all Kickstart verticals networked & engaged with Coop employees throughout the event.

Tuesday 13 September

CEO Dinner Zürich 🥂

The CEO Dinner is the highlight for executives during Kickstart, and this year we were honored to be joined by Corine Mauch, the Mayor of Zürich for the welcoming speech and others. Hosted at Kraftwerk Zürich CEOs & executives of Switzerland's leading institutions such as Galenica, Hirslanden, Sanitas Krankenversicherung, Coop, PostFinance, AXA Switzerland, Credit Suisse, Swisscom, ETH Zürich, La Mobilière, Zurich Insurance and more connected with the CEOs of our 52 local and global scaleups and entrepreneurship teams over a delicious 3-course vegan meal.

Kickstarter Alumni Story ⚡️

PostFinance x Cognician

PostFinance and Cognician’s PoC produced exciting results in helping learners reach predefined program learning outcomes. Agile collaboration was key in activating learners’ commitment and planning, to ensure they got maximum value from this blended learning solution.

The health of the future awaits! 💚

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