Seedstars World is a Swiss startup competition that first takes place in emerging markets. All local winners have then the chance to participate the final event – the so called Seedstars Summit – in Switzerland. This summit took place on March 3rd and we had the chance to be there as alumni from swissnex China.

“Technology and entrepreneurship are the best way to impact people’s lives in emerging markets.” As we were at the Seedstars contests, we saw how this event allow to connect stakeholders from different ecosystems around the world. For us, as swissnex alumni, this kind of connection with the dots sounds quite familiar… and we like it a lot!

From our experience…

Back in June 2015 at the New York University in Shanghai, where we had the chance to see startups from emerging tech hubs competing by pitching. This Seedstars event was the local competition and 12 brilliant startups presented their products and vision to a professional public and jury.

Seedstars Summit, the Final

Last Thursday in Lausanne, the event was much bigger. Conferences, workshops as well as panel discussions were organized during the morning. Then, in the afternoon, experts, serial entrepreneurs, corporate leader mentors and a great public were ready to decide who from the 54 Seedstars World finalists will win the $1mn equity investment!

Bitnexo, a startup who offers a digital payment solutions, won the local competition in Shanghai and therefore got to represented China during the Final. The CEO Darren expressed his main objective very clearly : “We are here to win and to reach out to more people”.

The team shared with us their expectations of the day and let us understand better for a few minutes the exciting life of an emerging startup. Listen to it on swissnex China social media (link of our video here).

At the end, the World Global Winner for 2016 were Giraffe from South Africa. If the Chinese team didn’t win the ultimate price, they were happy and proud to be one of the finalists. We were too and…we loved to see Chinese entrepreneurs in our dear Helvetic country!

- Contributed by Laurence and Sabine, former junior project leaders at swissnex China