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Press Release Over 40 renowned companies and organizations are creating future solutions with local and international startups for Switzerland and beyond The application phase for startups begins today, with reach in over 60 countries Opportunities for deals have a focus on supporting corporates, public institutions, and startups Zurich, 17th April 2024 - Kickstart Innovation, one of Europe's leading open innovation platforms, launches its ninth program today. Every year, Kickstart has attracted some of the world’s best startups providing solutions to the biggest challenges for society. This is accomplished in partnership with major industry players, including AXA, Coop, Swisscom, La Mobilière, PostFinance, Sanitas, The City of Zurich, Canton de Vaud, and MSD. This year this list also includes IKEA Switzerland and Romande Energie. Kickstart has supported over 450 startups and facilitated over 310 deals (see our Collaboration map) in the form of pilots and commercial projects. Alumni come from over 80 countries, have raised more than CHF 2.5 billion in investments so far, and include Planted, KernTec, Neustark, AAAcell, and others. “Start-ups increasingly need support in order to grow successfully”, explains Katka Letzing, Co-Founder and CEO of Kickstart Innovation. “Rising interest rates, increasing regulatory requirements, and the shortage of skilled labor are challenges that need to be overcome. Partnerships and target-oriented expert opinions on strategy and further development can be helpful and create new business opportunities. We also help organizations in the public and private sectors not to work in silos and make innovation that matters.” The goal of Kickstart’s program is to facilitate deals in the form of pilots or commercial collaborations between later-stage startups and established institutions who are looking to scale their products and services, find fresh revenue streams and invest in forward-looking models and practices. The program has taken place annually since 2016, with digitalization and sustainability becoming strong drivers of innovation across industries. "Startups offer a wide spectrum of solutions for companies that are looking for new technologies and other innovative solutions for their further development. At the same time, these partnerships promote the growth of startups through access to experts and investment opportunities. This results in the integration of advanced technologies, innovation, and development of sustainability potential for all companies," explains Katka Letzing. The search for the solutions of tomorrow takes place in six verticals: Health & Wellbeing, Finance & Insurance, Food & Retail, New Work & Learning, Smart Cities and Intrapreneurship. Each vertical has a core focus on specific innovation trends and needs of each Kickstart partner. Next to building partnerships, Kickstart also provides access to a diversified investor network for startups and alumni raising financing rounds. Partners with corporate venture arms are actively involved, including Swisscom Ventures, AXA Strategic Venturing, and others. “We were able to connect with great startups in the past years and gain collaborations as well as investments including companies like Labster and PriceHubble. I am looking forward to more such collaborations this year” said Alexander Schlaepfer, Partner, Swisscom Ventures. Further information and a guide on how to apply can be found here. For more information, please contact: press@kickstart-innovation.com About Kickstart Kickstart is one of Europe's largest zero equity, open innovation platforms. Our mission is to build innovation ecosystems with purpose by fast-forwarding innovation. We bring together public and private organizations, startups, investors, and experts with the shared ambition to deliver next-generation products and services and have a meaningful impact at scale. Each year, Kickstart engages 100 entrepreneurs to collaborate with key players for proofs of concept, pilot and commercial projects, and other innovation partnerships. Additionally, through the intrapreneurship program, Kickstart helps established organizations promote and accelerate internal innovation. Kickstart is a spin-off of Impact Hub Zurich and was launched in 2015 by digitalswitzerland. In 2024, Kickstart runs five verticals: New Work & Learning, Finance & Insurance, Food & Retail, Health & Wellbeing, and Smart Cities together with partner organizations across industries: AXA, Coop, Swisscom, La Mobilière, PostFinance, ETH Zürich, CSEM, City of Zurich, Empa NEST, Sanitas, University Hospital Zurich, Panter, SATW, Impact Hub Switzerland, Canton de Vaud, IKEA Switzerland, Romande Energie, Santenext, Swiss Federal Office of Energy SFOE, Swiss Healthcare Startups, Growpal, Switzerland Global Enterprise, Ringier, Google for Startups, MLL, South Pole, WECOCO, Day8, HealthTech Cluster Switzerland, DealStation, MAVA, SwissLEAP, EPFL, IMD, gfm, START Global and more. Download our Press Releases here:

“Cooperating with Sanitas was a fantastic experience. The team was helpful, easy to collaborate with and solution-oriented, with their customer’s best interest in mind. It was our first insurance collaboration and I am proud of how many men’s health we have been able to transform, together.” This is how Max Kersting, CEO & Co-Founder of Regimen at the time of the collaboration, describes the experience of running a Proof of Concept with Sanitas, one of Switzerland biggest health insurers with over 800'000 customers. A strategic approach to a delicate issue Erectile dysfunction affects 30% of men and is one of the key predictors of cardiovascular disease and mental health issues. Berlin based startup, Regimen developed a Digital Therapeutic application for improving erectile function with targeted exercise programs, nutrition change and mindfulness coaching. Regimen entered a partnership with Sanitas through the 2022 Kickstart Program. Recognizing the importance of this intimate issue and willing to test its solution with their customers, Sanitas included Regimen as a health benefit for their policyholders, as part of a limited offer. A great response and start of a long term collaboration The offer was met with overwhelmingly positive response from their customers. They could benefit anonymously from a reduction on the yearly program. This gave them access to the 15-minutes daily training program, promising a sensible improvement within 12 weeks. Over 600 Sanitas customers signed up for the paid Regimen program and thousands became non-paid members. Afterwards, Sanitas has extended the promotion through an affiliate deal, making Regimen an official partner in their healthcare offering. “Working with Regimen has been an exceptional experience for us. Their flexibility, deep understanding of our needs and unwavering support have made a significant impact on our project. Their expertise and collaborative approach enabled us to rapidly implement the service for our customers. Regimen is a trusted partner and we look forward to continuing this successful collaboration in the future.” shared Ivonne Bauer, Open Innovation Manager at Sanitas. If you are a startup active in health prevention or interested in collaboration with corporates such as Sanitas, you can learn more about our program and pre-register.

At Kickstart, we regularly explore the latest technological developments and learn how to utilize them to continuously build a better and more effective organization. Generative AI is certainly the innovation of our time, so we invited an expert in this space, @Cyrill Glockner, for a hands-on workshop focused on LLM use-case discovery. Our goal was to learn about LLMs so we could apply them in our work. Fortunately for us, Cyrill has years of experience in machine learning and was most recently working as Director Business AI at Microsoft in Seattle. So let’s ask him about us being his students. Kickstart (KS): Hi Cyrill. What did the Kickies learn today? Cyrill Glockner (CG): Together we solved many pre-selected use cases in a hands-on setting using a private ChatGPT-4 Workspace. To get started we worked on an example that almost all enterprises can benefit from. How do you summarize and understand tone and feedback from customers in large quantities of uncategorized text? We picked a local hotel, copied the most recent 100 or so reviews, and pasted them into ChatGPT’s context window. Then we asked for a summary and key recurring themes. We also explored how to retrieve specific details from the reviews e.g., “show me the original review that complained about noise”. This interaction with the reviews enables enterprises to chat with their data and generate valuable insights by asking questions using common language. KS: Seems to have gotten off to a good start. What was next? CG: Now, we looked at a use case that is using company internal data. We uploaded an Excel table that contains a list of startups that applied to the Kickstart program, which includes the Sustainable Development goals they are supporting. We asked ChatGPT for the 5 most often mentioned SDGs and their respective percentage. It took a few seconds and we retrieved the results. They were exactly what the team had calculated in the past but now delivered in no time. KS: Impressive. And what else? CG: The team was curious whether the data provided by the startups during the application process was matching what they had published on their website. So, we asked ChatGPT to browse the web and compare the given data with what they had put online. Most of it matched, with some minor differences, but we thought this was an excellent example where you can verify or update data collected some time ago with currently available online data, without a lengthy browsing session. KS: We are hearing so much about hallucination. Any concerns here? CG: For the use cases we looked at, hallucination is less of a concern because we provide validated data directly into the context window, and ChatGPT doesn't need to rely on its vast neural network to generate answers. Hallucination becomes a problem when the LLM lacks a high-probability answer and embarks on a path of creative thinking that lacks substantial basis. They are programmed to always provide an answer, but they don’t have the capability to verify the accuracy of their responses. KS: And any fun too? CG: This depends on your definition of fun, but we did have some amusing exercises. We tried to classify muffins and Chihuahua dogs, reversed words, and worked through an interesting 'theory of mind' example involving chocolate and popcorn. Thank you Cyrill to your time and looking forward to doing many more GenAI workshops together. If you want to know more, write to academy@kickstart-innovaition.com.

Meet our investors Although Kickstart does not invest in our startups directly, we have built a strong network of VCs, CVCs and family offices who are ready to dive into their next venture. Discover more about our investors below. Business Angels Switzerland Visit Web Creathor Ventures Visit Web Ringier Visit Web SICTIC Visit Web Swiss Startup INVEST Visit Web Swisscom Ventures Visit Web Verve Ventures Visit Web b2venture Visit Web Experts Katka Letzing CEO & Co-Founder Suzanne van der Maarel Food & Retail Lead Get in touch Katka Letzing CEO & Co-Founder Suzanne van der Maarel Food & Retail Lead Learn more about the partnerships Investor Summit Kickstart runs an annual Investor Summit, providing a platform for our raising startups to pitch their companies, as well as hosting expert panels focusing on market trends and predictions, and inspirational keynote speakers, including Guy Kawasaki (Apple evangelist, VC and serial entrepreneur) and Thomas Dübendorfer (President and Founder of SICTIC). 01 / 05 Case studies Huma raises $130 million financing to scale its digital health platform for better care and research Read more Get in touch. learnmore@kickstart-innovation.com

All our verticals Finance & Insurance Based in one of the world’s leading financial cities, Kickstart is at the forefront of cutting-edge innovation in the finance and insurance sector. Food & Retail Disruptive solutions tackling challenges in the Food and Retail sector to create positive impact on the current climate and health crises. Health & Wellbeing Innovative solutions that feed Switzerland's dynamic and rapidly developing startup landscape in the digital health sector. Intrapreneur- ship We encourage, select and coach intrapreneurship teams of our partner companies to grow from prototype to a scaled solution. New Work & Learning Tackling the shifts that are influencing organizational work and the new cultures of learning by enabling innovative solutions and industry leaders for sustainable development. Smart Cities Sustainable urbanization is key to successful development. Kickstart works to advance smart technology of businesses and cities. Health & Wellbeing The digitalization of healthcare is necessary to provide access to personalized and connected care. Kickstart’s Health & Wellbeing Vertical, co-founded by Swiss Healthcare Startups in 2019, is focused on identifying innovative and sustainable digital health startups and scaleups which have a validated business model and the potential to disrupt and digitize the healthcare industry. The goal is to spot the right new products/services and technologies that will help reshape the areas of wellbeing and mental health, lifestyle and prevention, care coordination, chronic pain and health data. See our list of alumni Overview of the program Apply for Kickstart as a startup Collaboration areas Collaboration opportunities Lifestyle Innovation & Prevention Care Coordination & Access To Healthcare Corporate Wellbeing Public Health Health & Wealth Health Systems, Process Optimisation & Automation Vertical partners Vertical board Sascha Wischek Fjuul CEO & Founder Brigitte Bieri Sanitas Krankenversicherung Head Corporate Development Alain Bindels Roche Strategic Innovation Designer & Ecosystem builder Your team Katerina Klezlova Health & Wellbeing Lead Noémie Délèze Program Manager 01 / 04 Case studies Online therapy for customers & employees AXA started a first pilot project with ​Selfapy at the end of 2019 for B2B customers, offering online therapy for employees of SMEs. The aim was to prevent and detect absences from work because of psychological problems early. The successful trial phase convinced AXA of the programs’ positive effects on mental health. The current situation with COVID-19 reinforced their decision to set up a new pilot offering together with Selfapy – this time also addressing B2C customers and AXA employees.

Global Vertical Learn more about the partnerships Meet our partners Corporate and institutional partners join Kickstart to leverage and cultivate open innovation by exploring new products, services and solutions. Discover our partners below, or learn more about the partnerships. Program, investor, legal & outreach Media Vertical & fellow