The Swiss ICT Investor Club (SICTIC) is a non profit association established in 2014 that connects smart money investors to Swiss early-stage tech startups. SICTIC organizes the dealflow and match making of startups and investors, and facilitates the process until the investment round closes, with an aim to grow the quantity and quality of local seed stage investments. However, SICTIC does not invest itself nor does it hold shares in startups. Please check out the video of the Partners Day 2017 that explains SICTIC in detail.
SICTIC is overseen by several Board Members, all experienced business who are actively involved in developing Swiss Entrepreneurial Ecosystem by participating in industry events, mentoring startups and supporting organisations, and bringing their experience to help build successful companies.
Board
Dr. Thomas Dübendorfer
Thomas Dübendorfer holds a Ph.D. and master in computer science with honors with distinction from ETH Zurich. He worked as software engineer in Silicon Valley and seven years as Tech Lead on security and privacy projects at Google in Zürich, receiving three Google OC awards.
As president he shaped the Information Security Society Switzerland ISSS for five years, during which the number of members more than doubled to over a thousand.
He is a lecturer at ETH Zürich and has co-founded several Internet technology based product centric startups in Switzerland, among them Spontacts (exit to Scout24 Group), Contovista (big data for finance) and Frontify (collaborative web design).
Dr. Bolko Hohaus
Vice President
Bolko Hohaus holds a Ph.D. in economics as well as a master in statistics and computer science from LMU München.
He is founder of HCP, a company focussed on fintech innovation, and is active as business angel, startup coach and serving as a board member in an early stage start-up.
He has more than twenty years of investment experience in the global technology sector. He co-founded an investment vehicle focusing on smaller technology companies which got listed on the Swiss stock exchange, and has worked as head of the technology team at Lombard Odier Investment Managers and Allianz Global Investors.
Ralph Mogicato
Vice President
Ralph Mogicato has over 25 years of experience in the financial industry in Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Singapore.
He is now an active investor, board member or advisor for startup companies in the technology field (e.g. Starmind, unblu, Contovista) and guest lecturer at several universities of applied sciences as well as a lecturer at the University of Zurich.
He is co-founder and used to be CEO at the Swiss consultancy Synpulse (formerly known as Solution Providers) with over 150 employees mainly focusing on banking and insurance. He has expertise in strategy building, defining business plans and cases, make-or-buy decisions, evaluation support of packaged software, quality assurance for large projects and composition of „greenfield units“.
Dr. Alain Dargham
Board Member
Alain Dargham holds a Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in partnership with HEC Paris and ENSAM ParisTech and an Executive MBA from IMD Business School.
He is founder of DAA Capital Partners SA, an independent investment advisory firm focused on Real Estate, Financial Services and Technology investments.
He is serving as a board member in several early stage technology start-ups. He is energized by creating ideas and concepts that address the impact of technological transformations taking place in the evolving landscape of finance.
Alain Dargham has an extensive experience in managing and investing in Financial Services, Real Estate and Technology sectors.
Nicola Fantini
Board Member
Nicola Fantini has founded and build up software companies such as Sciant AG (Software development services, 150 employees, exit to VMWare in 2006, now more than 500 employees in Sofia, BG), Aviaso AG (turned into the globally leading provider of fuel efficiency, exit to Honeywell in 2015), Spectas, CloudBroker and ScaleTools.
He has published papers in magazines such Expertfocus, IEEE and Future Generation Computer Systems and is actively participating in H2020 research projects.
He is leading the SICTIC jury / preselection process and is investing in startup companies.
Dr. Cornelia Gut-Villa
Board Member
Cornelia Gut-Villa holds a Ph.D. and master in business administration from the University of Zurich.
She has over 20 years’ experience in financial services, strategy consulting and startup
coaching.
She is active as an independent entrepreneur and private investor with her
own consulting firm in addition to her activities as part of the incubator Startfeld in St.
Gallen.
Thomas Kern
Board Member
Thomas Kern holds a master in computer science from ETH Zürich and an EMBA from HSG St. Gallen. He worked six years as a software engineer with a technology startup in Zürich.
For four years he built up the consulting domain of a data network integrator later acquired by Swisscom, after which he continued to work in telecoms on several senior business management roles.
He is interested in supporting startups and expanding the emerging FinTech ecosystem in Switzerland.
He founded an independent company to provide advisory, business development and project management services to early-stage and growth companies active in the high-tech sector. His focus is on innovation processes, agile software development and lean startup methodologies. In his current client relationships he mainly works as senior program manager in large complex ICT projects for financial institutions.
Tatjana de Kerros
Board Member
Tatjana de Kerros is Head of Venturing at RicoLab in Switzerland and a highly experienced innovation and entrepreneurship strategist, with proven leadership in open-innovation, R&D and knowledge-based entrepreneurship initiatives across government and corporate sectors in the Gulf region.
She has collaborated with, did market research and advised leading institutions in the establishment of entrepreneurship and SME initiatives with a particular emphasis on knowledge-based industries, specifically renewable energy, manufacturing and ICT. She founded two ventures – one in management consulting, and another in data science.
Rüdiger Petrikowski
Rüdiger Petrikowski is a partner at Leverage Experts for the CFO & M&A Advisory Practice. He started his career as bank professional. Afterward, he studied in Germany, Sweden and China, and holds a Master’s degree in Business Engineering & Management from the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany.
He has more than 20 years experiences in the telecommunication, media, technology, payment and collection industry as CFO, M&A and Business Development professional in senior leadership roles in Germany (Thyssen Telecom) and Switzerland (Swisscom, PubliGroupe/Publicitas).
He is experienced in transforming business in different life cycles (startup, growth and turn around) and advises companies in the digital transformation. In addition, he is a lecturer of Mergers & Acquisitions at the Kalaidos University of applied science in Zurich.
Nina Portier Reinhart
Nina Portier Reinhart is Managing Director at Reinhart Capital, an early stage investment company.
As a Senior Advisor at UBS for nine years, she accelerated UHNW and institutional clients’ acquisition in various European and Emerging Markets. Nina also worked on the first spinoff of the UBS Innovation Lab. During her Silicon Valley years, she was Director of Partnerships for a marketplace created by i2 Technologies and Frogdesign. For five years at Nestlé SA, Nina turned around operating companies in Latin America, Africa and Europe.
She earned an MBA from Babson College and a MSc in Anthropology from Université de Montréal. As a passionate advocate of developing entrepreneurial spirit early in life, she became the European Representative of CampBizSmart, a leading teenpreneurship education organization. Her favourite fintech trends are the blockchain, payment systems and gamification of financial services.
Dr. Oliver Staffelbach
Board Member
Oliver Staffelbach is mainly active in the fields of IT and intellectual property law with a focus on licensing, Internet and software law. He advises, among others, banks, industrial enterprises as well as Internet and entertainment companies.
He has extensive experience in contract negotiations and is regularly consulted in connection with merger & acquisition transactions. He wrote his doctoral thesis on computer law and completed his LL.M. program with an emphasis on intellectual property law and IT law. Oliver is head of mStartups and board member of the Swiss Mobile Association (smama).
Special Thanks
The first ICT Investor’s Day happened on 15.11.2010. It was organized by Jan Fülscher and others as part of their activities in the special interest group (Fachgruppe) “Innovation” of the association SwissICT. In 2014, Alexander Büch, Thomas Dübendorfer (President), Jan Fülscher, Dania Gerhardt, Myke Näf, and Oliver Staffelbach founded the association Swiss ICT Investor Club (SICTIC). After discussions in the board of SwissICT and SICTIC it was agreed to run this event by SICTIC starting 27.10.2014 and to rebranded it from “SwissICT ICT Investor’s Day” to “SICTIC Investor Day”.
Jan Fülscher
Jan Fülscher is an entrepreneur, start-up activist and member of the board in several start-ups. He works with start-ups helping them making the first steps from prototype to commercial product offer. He’s also member of the board, juror or expert in several start-up support organizations. Jan is a lecturer at the Universities of Zürich and Bern and several universities of applied sciences. He’s also speaker for start-up financing topics and has a good network to business angels and venture capitalists in Switzerland. Jan holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of Zurich.
Sebastian Flury
Sébastien Flury was the driving force to expand the investor events of the Swiss ICT Investor Club (SICTIC) to Western Switzerland and to establish SICTIC as strong brand for angel investors that fund early-stage deep tech startups in Switzerland.