Kickstart Accelerator, an initiative of digitalswitzerland and one of Europe’s largest multi-corporate, zero equity tech accelerators, will host its mid-term demo day at 10:00 – 19:00 CET on Wednesday, 21 September 2016. The demo day will provide the 30 start-ups with an opportunity to present their products to a panel of international investors.

Before the start-ups pitch, they will attend a series of investor presentations at ewz Unterwerk Selnau, an old transformer station, that will consist of a fireside chat, titled ‘International Investment Global Tech Trends,’ and a panel discussion, titled ‘Local Investors: Venture Arms of Corporations’. The participating start-ups, from across the programme’s four verticals; Fintech, Smart & Connected Machines, Future & Emerging Technologies and Food, will learn about the trends that excite investors, the factors they consider when choosing to invest in start-ups and the different opportunities for investment in Zurich. The session will include presentations from Gina Domanig, managing partner at Emerald Technology Ventures and David Brear, founder and CEO of banking and fintech service designers, 11 FS, among others.

The second session, which will be held at the University of Zurich, will provide the start-ups with an opportunity to pitch their products and demonstrate their progress to a panel of international investors, corporates and mentors.

The start-ups will compete for three awards: Best Start-up Pitch (for each of the four verticals – Fintech, Smart & Connect Machines, Future & Emerging Technologies, and Food), Social Media Award and Audience Award. The best start-ups from each category will win a series of experience-based prizes, as well as having the opportunity to pitch to a wider audience of investors and to win additional funding of up to 1000 CHF at the Swiss Start-Up Day in Bern, 24 – 25 October. The participating start-ups will also receive the remainder of their grant funding (5,000 CHF).

“We are excited to see how the start-ups and their products have developed since the beginning of Kickstart Accelerator. The start-ups benefitted from the close relationships with major corporate players and the start-up ecosystem of Switzerland in this short amount of time,” commented Roger Wüthrich-Hasenböhler, Chief Digital Officer of Swisscom.

“Funding of Fintech start-ups has more than doubled in the last few years. Thus, the investors will be keen to see those start-ups building the base for the financial centre of tomorrow,” added Holger Greif, Leader Digital Transformation, PwC Switzerland.

The entire demo day will be live streamed on Kickstart Accelerators’ Facebook page and will be available to re-watch after the event via the following link: https://www.facebook.com/KickstartAccelerator/.

Kickstart Accelerator will also announce its partnership with BaselArea.swiss to offer a life sciences acceleration programme from 2017 onwards. This programme will be based in the Basel region and will act as the life sciences vertical for Kickstart Accelerator. The programme will be specifically tailored to the needs of early stage healthcare start-ups.

Later this month, the Kickstart Accelerator team will also be attending Sibos and holding Office Hours in collaboration with Innotribe at the event. This will provide an opportunity for the Innotribe team and the programme’s cohort of start-ups to receive key insights from Eric Van der Kleij, fintech and special advisor to Kickstart Accelerator, and some of the fintech vertical’s corporate partners, as well as connecting for one-to-one feedback sessions with some of the world’s most experienced executives in the financial services industry and speakers at Sibos.

The programme launched on 22 August when the start-ups moved into ewz Unterwerk Selnau. The 30 start-ups have since been mentored and supported by the 25 corporate partners to develop their products and will have a final opportunity to present them to investors, corporate leaders and the media at the programme’s concluding Demo Day on 4 November.