A Comprehensive Guide to Zurich’s Startup and Venture Capital Tech Ecosystem

Matt Ward
17 min readApr 19, 2021
Source: Founder Collective

San Francisco, New York, Berlin, London, Shanghai… If I asked you to list the top startup tech hubs globally, these established powerhouses would certainly top the charts. They produce the majority of the elite of tech companies and the lion’s share of venture returns. And every city is trying to become the “next Silicon Valley” — without the massive homelessness and extreme inequality, of course :)

But as an American expat (and serial entrepreneur, startup growth and strategy advisor, occasional investor, and aspiring VC) that recently moved back to Zurich, Switzerland, I must say, I was shocked at the rapid growth of the startup scene and the relative lack of notoriety/recognition that, given my opinion and experience with startups and venture, the innovation hub clearly warrants — especially with a population of only 400k.

(Are you a Swiss startup changing the world? Join our swissSTARTUPS community on Slack to network with other like minded founders, investors and innovators doing great things here in Switzerland!)

With an outcrop of both new and established private and public venture funds, a growing number of successful startup studios, and cutting edge R&D constantly spinning out of ETH (one of the top 5 engineering schools worldwide), it is no wonder the…

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Matt Ward
Matt Ward

Written by Matt Ward

Founder @ 4WARD.earth - building the largest local-to-global ecosystem of climate & sustainability DOERs in 45+ cities to collaboratively move our world forward

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