In order to make our market entry a success, we looked into the Startup Academy, and after a friendly initial conversation with Markus Fischer, the managing director of the Startup Academy Basel, in December 2018, the written admission procedure followed. In February 2019 we were invited by Martin Kodde to an interview at Picassoplatz 4 in Basel. That same month Vanillaplan was officially admitted as a start-up by the Startup Academy Basel.
We immediately received documents on the support programme and a suggestion for a mentor whose professional experience matched our start-up. Markus too was there for us very often and repeatedly in the early days. Whenever difficulties or questions came up we could turn to him directly. He always had a solution or was able to put us in touch with someone from his extensive network.
For example, as already described in our report from April 2020, Markus recommended the expert Janene Liston «the Pricing Lady» to us, who offers members of the Startup Academy a free initial consultation.
In the first year we attended almost all the workshops of the support programme on topics important to company founders, such as: Business Model Canvas, pitching, Mixed Management Pickles or customer experience, to name just a few. On top of that came numerous brown bags - interesting short talks over lunchtime combined with a snack and networking. The range of courses and workshops is enormous and the support from Markus and his team is extremely professional.
In addition there were the informal meetings with our mentor Oscar Elias. With him we were able to discuss topics such as financing and market entry, among others. Whenever important input from outside was needed, our mentor was there for us. That is extremely helpful and still gives us confidence today.
From the end of 2019 into spring 2020, Remigius Stalder attended a course in six modules on leading employees with Markus and Marc Steffen. Another highlight was taking part in Swissbau 2020 in the Innovation Lab for start-ups, arranged through Hans Jörg Luchsinger, a board member of the Startup Academy Liestal.
Right after the start of the lockdown in spring 2020, the Startup Academy, with Markus and Marc, held a brown bag as a webinar on the topic «Using the crisis as an opportunity». Around forty founders were present. Markus and Marc encouraged us to learn to use this crisis as an opportunity for our own start-up.
And this year is a special year: as you may have read elsewhere, the Startup Academy Basel is celebrating its 10th anniversary!
The non-profit association was originally founded in Basel and is supported by a large active network and numerous charitable foundations. In the ten years of its existence the association has written an impressive success story. There is now an umbrella organisation, Startup Academy Switzerland, and its eight associations at the locations Basel, Liestal, Olten, Zurich, Bern, La Côte, Lörrach and Ticino. Thanks in part to support from the Migros Pioneer Fund, a network of new locations is spreading across the whole of Switzerland.
With its mission to promote entrepreneurial thinking and to support innovation, the Startup Academy Basel has helped create several hundred new jobs in the region over the past ten years!
At this point, a very big thank you for the great support.
https://startup-academy.ch/basel/
Our first pilot projects with Vanillaplan were drawing to a close in autumn 2018. So we were ready for the market!
