You’ve spent many years working at the intersection of technology and entrepreneurship. What originally sparked your fascination with innovation?
I’m an engineer by background. What has always fascinated me is not technology per se, but what technology can allow us to do.
That fascination is very different from many people in the technical sector. They are often obsessed with technology for the sake of technology. If your interest is instead what technology can enable, then you quickly understand that it only creates value if it is financially and economically viable, and if it drives value for people.
Otherwise, technology does not bring value. The useful exploitation of technology requires entrepreneurs. Technology can have a tremendous impact on society, but only if it is scaled. And in order to scale and multiply it, you need business.
That intersection is extremely important. Some businesses can exist without technology. But in general, if you want technology to reach its potential and truly find a role, you need entrepreneurs.
Looking back at your journey from chemical engineering to CTO at Bühler and President of MassChallenge Switzerland, what experiences shaped how you think about innovation and technology today?
When I first started, I was fairly convinced that science and technology alone would be sufficient for an organisation to be successful — at least for a science- and tech-relevant organisation.
Today, I see it differently. Organisations are very good at optimising what they already do. Companies are good at optimisation because that’s what they know. They hire people who are very good at doing exactly that. And that’s important.
What companies are typically not good at — and I am generalising here — is understanding and utilising technology that is disruptive or that threatens their core business. That’s where entrepreneurs come in. That’s where innovation and the magic happen.
I firmly believe that the companies that will be successful in the future are those that can partner well — those that can work with entrepreneurs and innovators who sit outside the company.
If you think of the old ‘invent, protect and colonise’ model in Europe, it was very strong and very successful for a long time. But today, how much of the world’s relevant knowledge actually resides within your company? So much more of it sits outside. A failure to utilise that external knowledge can disadvantage a company enormously.
Large corporations like Bühler have their own R&D teams. What unique value do accelerators/ venture incubators bring that internal R&D often can’t?
Internal R&D typically solves problems the company already has. It doesn’t matter how good the people are — and the teams here are excellent — they tend to focus on existing challenges.
There is also a cultural element. We train engineers and scientists to know the answer. What we should be training people to do is to know where the answer is. There should be no stigma in not knowing something, but instead in being able to find out who knows it and where it resides.
In many organisations, there is a perceived threat to one’s knowledge and importance if you look outside. That is something you have to overcome.
Venture capital or accelerators enable you to look at hundreds or thousands of startups. If we invest in a venture fund, I can know intimately the portfolio — perhaps 100 companies — and I can also know the ones they rejected. That gives me an understanding of how innovation is evolving globally and which problems people consider important.
Take MassChallenge as an example. In 2024, there were 2,500 applications to join the programme. What MassChallenge does very well is filter that down to the 20 or 30 most relevant for a corporate partner.
It’s incredibly cost-effective. Analysing 2,500 startups yourself would be outrageous in terms of cost. At MassChallenge, we have 800 experts judging startups.
Even in a field I know well, if you put 50 startups in front of me, I will be wrong on 15 or 20 of them because I simply cannot hold that breadth of knowledge. The accelerator filters, and then I can go deep with the most relevant ones.
Another important aspect is time. Over four months, you get to know the founders — not just the technology, but the people. Their motivation, their risk appetite, their ambitions. Are they building for a seven-year exit, or are they building a company they want to hand over to their children? You have to understand the people. That takes time.
When you helped launch MassChallenge Switzerland, what gap did you see in Switzerland’s innovation ecosystem that you wanted to address?
At Bühler, we wanted to transform our innovation culture and work more closely with the outside world. To do that, we had to understand startups — how they function and how they thrive.
I visited major accelerators in the US. I went to the Bay Area and ended up in Boston. I walked into a room with 128 startups and over 100 coaches. These weren’t only retirees — they were investors, heads of companies, serial entrepreneurs. There was energy, competition, collaboration.
It was intoxicating.
Boston’s ecosystem culture is more similar to Europe’s. In the Bay Area, the mindset is extraordinary, but difficult to transplant. I called friends and said: imagine we could bottle 20–30% of that US entrepreneurial energy — the oversell, the ambition — and combine it with Europe’s technical rigour and discipline. Imagine how many jobs we could unlock.
Europe risks losing the tech battle. That was true then and it remains a challenge.
We took the licence for MassChallenge in Switzerland. We launched with no money, no team, and no location — but we announced it in the press. Once you announce it, there’s no going back.
Six weeks later, we held a kickoff event with 600 guests. Two months later, 450 startups had applied. We painted an office in a derelict industrial zone in Renens, and 100 startups moved in. We were funded and built from there.
We were the worst startup in the room in the first year. We had to learn how to be effective in helping startups.
One advantage of MassChallenge is that it is an NGO. We take no equity. It costs startups nothing. The worst thing that happens to them is they leave wiser and better connected. The best is they sign deals, raise capital, and can scale.
We bring startups into R&D departments of large companies. We curate investor meetings carefully. We remove obstacles to entry.
If I am a good startup, why would I give you equity to join your programme? That’s not a game I want to play. Because we take no equity, we attract thousands of applicants from over 100 countries.
We look at jobs created — tens of thousands. We did not create the jobs. But we played a small part in those journeys. That’s impact.
We still don’t make a cent individually. But the value is high.
In your experience, what internal weaknesses ultimately cause startups to fail — even those with strong technology or teams?
It can be many things. When I talk to some venture capitalists, they often say: we can pivot the business model, we can change the technology, we can even change the leadership. What we cannot change is the timing. The time has to be right.
I recently saw an example of a company solving a very real problem — but using yesterday’s technology. Even though the problem itself is valid, the sustainability of that business may be less than a year.
And we should also ask ourselves: how many startups should actually succeed? If you look at the Bay Area, you can name the few that became really big. But how many tens of thousands did not? I am not a big fan of the “watering can” approach, where you give a bit of money to everyone. Competition is healthy. If you look at 2,500 startups to find 10 that might truly succeed, that is a reasonable number.
They fail for many different reasons. Some are simply not good ideas. In some cases, the technology does not work. Others are too technology-focused and not business-focused. And some are very business-focused but forget they still need a product.
In the food space in particular, I often see founders trying to do everything. They want to develop the product, build the brand, create proprietary processing technology, control sourcing — all at once. Very few startups can raise enough capital to do all of that.
If you want to build a company, you must understand your point of differentiation — your right to exist compared to incumbents and competitors. Your right to exist is probably not that you do everything better than companies that have decades of infrastructure and scale.
Instead, you need to identify the niche where you truly have a competitive advantage. Then you must verify that you can make money from that niche and build the right partnerships around it. Otherwise, you end up competing with companies that have the combined R&D budgets of established multinationals — and that is extremely difficult for a startup.
What are the biggest challenges you’ve seen founders face when raising seed or growth capital?
One of the biggest challenges is alignment — especially alignment of time horizons.
When you build your cap table, you need to understand the investment horizon of your investors. If you have venture capital involved, typically they operate on a seven- to ten-year exit timeline. That timeline drives the type of activities you can realistically pursue.
In digital startups, scaling can happen relatively quickly because they are often less capital-intensive. But in non-digital technology — for example, if you start with a benchtop technology, then move to a pilot plant, then scale industrially — each of those steps can take three years. It may be slightly faster, but not dramatically so.
So finding patient capital in non-digital technology sectors is extremely difficult. We have seen brilliant companies struggle because there is a misalignment between how long technology development actually takes and how quickly investors expect returns.
Another challenge is expectation management. Entrepreneurs are often rewarded for exaggeration. You might raise a lot of money because you oversold, but then you cannot deliver within the promised timeframe.
In Europe, we often do the opposite. We under-promise, we are conservative, and as a result, we sometimes fail to raise enough money to scale. There must be a balance somewhere in between.
Timing also plays a huge role. A few years ago, if you wrote ‘alternative protein’ and ‘AI’ on a slide, you could raise significant funding. Now alternative protein is seen as capital-intensive and less attractive. There was a window where capital flowed easily. That window has narrowed.
Another challenge is focusing too much on the technology and not enough on what it brings to customers. Many founders fall in love with their technology rather than asking how they delight their consumer. Planted is a superb example of the opposite approach. They focus intensely on consumer experience — clean label, taste, functionality in cooking. Many startups focus on how innovative their technology is, rather than how compelling their value proposition is.
What cultural or organizational changes are most important for a large company to successfully integrate startup-like innovation?
Start with the end in mind. Why are you building your startup? To exit? Then identify potential acquirers early and build relationships. Shape your company accordingly. Startups are trained to oversell. Corporates are trained to assess feasibility and scale reliably. That gap between promise and delivery must be managed through trust, proof of concepts, and early partnerships. Corporates must create protected spaces for acquired startups. If you immediately integrate them into heavy processes, the corporate immune system eradicates the value. Different leadership is needed to manage startup interactions. Transparency and realistic expectations are essential.
Are there mega trends or short-term trends you’re seeing?
At the moment, one of the most visible trends is the enormous concentration of venture capital into generative AI. I recently saw a figure — I believe over 60% of US venture capital is going into generative AI. That suggests a strong tech-for-tech’s-sake dynamic.
AI is a brilliant technology. It is powerful and transformative. But the critical question is: what are we going to use it for?
We face major structural challenges — the energy transition, the food system transition, access to safe food, affordable healthcare, plastic pollution, climate change. These are not minor inconveniences. They will fundamentally reshape which areas of the world are habitable and how we can feed populations.
AI can play an important role in addressing these challenges. It can help solve complex system problems, aggregate data, and accelerate technological development. But it cannot solve everything.
What concerns me is that so much capital is flowing into AI alone. We live in a physical world. That world requires investment in infrastructure, agriculture, biodiversity restoration, and other physical systems. AI can support these developments, but capital must also go into making the physical world ‘AI-ready.’
We are also seeing capital flowing into defense technologies due to geopolitical tensions. Historically, that often drives technological breakthroughs. But sustainability and climate-related investments have lost some attractiveness in capital markets, even though the underlying urgency has increased.
The fact that sustainability may currently be less fashionable does not mean the problems have disappeared. In fact, they are accelerating. So entrepreneurs must stay focused on solving real problems, even if capital markets temporarily shift their attention elsewhere.
What skills or mindsets do you think students today need most to thrive in innovation-driven roles — whether in startups or large companies?
First, humility. No matter how privileged or brilliant your education, you know a little more than nothing. You cannot possibly know everything you need.
It is not really about the education itself — it is about the experience you gain once you start working. Education shows that you can learn and that you can focus. But the real learning begins the moment you enter the workplace. I don’t use my PhD in any direct sense today. What mattered was not the specific knowledge, but the discipline of learning and concentrating deeply on a topic.
The era of the lone genius is over. You must seek complementary skills and build partnerships. Business model thinking is critical, especially in traditional sectors. The combination of strong business education and strong technology capability — that’s where magic happens. But tech must respect business, and vice versa. We also benefit in Europe from diversity — arts, history, humanities combined with science and business. Innovation requires that diversity and we should embrace it.
Looking back on your own career, what is one piece of advice you wish someone had given you as a student entering this world?
I always give the same advice. We have been so fortunate. Where we’re born, who our families are, our access to education.
Make sure you understand how fortunate you are and use that education and that privilege, that good fortune, and make sure you use it to do something that is good and responsible in the world. And if you do that, whether you will be a successful entrepreneur or successful in a corporate, that depends on you. But you will be able to look in the mirror every day and be at ease with what you’re doing and who you are.
