Switzerland + Global FoodTech Startup Q&A, with Ingeborg Gasser-Kriss (LIVE)

Welcome to this startup ecosystem livestream report. My name is Dustin Betts. I'm a community manager at the Founder Institute, and I'm joined today by a program director who helps to lead multiple FI Accelerators, our global food tech programs, as well as the Regional Switzerland Pre-Seed Accelerator. Ingeborg Gasser-Kress. Ingeborg, thank you so much for joining us today.

Well, I'm happy to be here, Dustin. Thanks for inviting me.

So we're going to talk all about the Regional Swiss as well as the global food tech startup ecosystem, but to sort of kick off our conversation first, I'd like to ask you briefly a little bit about yourself. You've been helping to lead FI Accelerators since 2019 in Switzerland, I believe, so over 3 years now. You're currently a board member of multiple exciting food tech startups as well as at SB Group, which is a leading Swiss food services company. And you're also the founder of Agent 21, your own innovation agency, and previously led and managed marketing and innovation groups across Mondelez International, which is another very large food and beverage manufacturing company for those who aren't familiar with the name. So yeah, given that very abbreviated bio by way of introduction and all the wealth of experience that you are bringing, to work with FI pre-seed stage founders. What has your personal experience been like at the Foundry Institute over the last 3 years leading the program? Maybe what has surprised you most about accelerating companies at the early and pre-seed stages?

Well, you know, I started as a mentor really for Foundry Institute Switzerland. And then when the team asked me whether I would be willing to become a co-director, I said yes. What thrilled me so about, honestly, about working with the very early-stage founders is that everything is so fast. Like, when you've worked in corporate and then in— is really in that, anything that slows stuff down just breaks your heart. And it's And it's just never fast enough, is it? And those young entrepreneurs, those aspiring founders, they have so much energy and they, they are, they really have solutions for the big problems of the world. And I think they are the only ones that are working fast enough passion is just fascinating and that energy. Now, I mean, everybody knows all the legends about how hard it is to be a startup, but when you, you know, we accompany our founders, of course, way beyond graduation. So I have now visibility of the cohorts, like of our graduates from 2019 and 2020. In fact, I met some of them just 2 days ago. And it's like, I so admire them for being so persistent and never giving up. We've got those that go straight to success and to funding, and we got those that almost go away and then bounce back. And it's just, I think they have my whole admiration, and I'm really, I really feel privileged. I know it sounds cheesy, but it's it's actually true. I, I feel it's a privilege to be able to help them with what I've learned in life.

Yeah, yeah, I'll definitely take your word for it as somebody who's been in corporate innovation that, you know, founders are the ones who can move fast and really like solve some of these problems more nimbly because you are— have been in the corporate innovation world and experienced kind of both sides of it firsthand versus the fast and nimble kind of startup innovation. I guess the follow-up question that I want to ask you, or maybe sort of two, besides like experiences maybe that stand out, um, having worked with these founders, you kind of spoke to to that, just the differences in progress, but maybe that, you know, where do you see founders typically making the most progress? Obviously, you know, different for every individual case, but so over the core 3.5-month Pre-Seed program itself, and then maybe, yeah, what surprises you when you do see them months or years later after the fact?

Yeah, I think where they make amazing progress in the program itself is product development and validation, customer validation, all of that. Of course, also in the more technical aspects like incorporation and, you know, trademarking and branding and so on. They don't usually make that much progress in the, in the program itself on the team building aspect. Simply because, you know, that takes time. You can't just say, okay, this week I'm going to build my team and then it's going to be built, right? So they make a lot of progress with the company, the logic, business model, the revenue model, the product, the customer problem-solution fit, all of that great progress. And what usually happens afterwards, depending on where they are when they join, right, when they start, What usually happens afterwards is they have to work on the team. One of my favorite observations, by the way, is, I don't know, it doesn't really answer your question, I think, but it's just one of my favorite observations. So many graduates say, you know, I spent 14 weeks cursing about Founder Institute because they were driving me so hard and, you know, never giving me a break and so on. And as soon as I graduated, I was pushing myself back into it, you know, into the discipline, into structure.

Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. The structure. And yeah. And when that falls away, founders have very different ways of dealing with it. The one that I like best is when they team up and, you know, they form these subgroups of people who meet regularly and hold each other accountable for progress. Progress on the company, and that works really well.

Yeah, that's really cool to hear. Yeah, that, um, you've had alumni, definitely the cohorts, the banding together, and yeah, providing that accountability. Because yeah, creating the structure outside of the Founder Institute, that's really difficult to do by yourself. But at least having that accountability and being able to take that beyond the core program, it sounds like, uh, well, definitely a really important thing for founders to have that kind of sounding board. Um, I want to pivot kind of a little bit now to talking about the Swiss as well as the global food foodtech startup ecosystems. So feel free to speak to, you know, whichever or a blend of the two. I know you're food, like, in Switzerland as well, but what's the latest kind of that you're seeing from very early stage founders, I guess, in foodtech especially? What are kind of trends or developments that you're watching or that you are finding particularly exciting in the space right now?

Yeah, what we, what we see in Switzerland is that more and more players are entering the scene in terms of especially small specialized VC, small specialized incubators, and new angel networks with a very narrow focus. So I would say that the, the playing field is getting very fragmented here. The ecosystem is getting very fragmented, but of course that's also a lot of chances. And the new trends you see there is for example, a focus on climate tech, focus on, on femtech. So those, those specializations in food, I have to say food is food tech and all of the stuff that actually isn't, isn't physical because it scales so much easier. But food being something that you have to put into is going down the easy route and, and, you know, avoiding food because because food is just so hard to do. And what we see now is, especially with, you know, climate awareness and the impact that the food system has on climate and global warming, we see a real and also people, loads of founders coming up in food tech You can also tell that— you can tell the really good ones from those that are just kind of trying to run with the herd or whatever the English expression is.

Yeah, that's very encouraging to hear. And yeah, I definitely feel like I've seen that. We're going to talk about kind of some of the partners. I know there's a number of different VC partners who are working with our food tech programs. And yeah, that's great to hear that. I 100% agree that the old VC model is like way too focused on software, but yeah, it's the scalability in food is like really important for solving these food climate-related and agriculture-related issues. So yeah, that's very encouraging to see. I want to give a chance to like give some Founder Institute grads a shout-out. So for, you know, any prospective Swiss or food tech founders who might be watching, who are some of the— I have some of my own favorite like FI Food Tech alumni, but who who are some of the FI alumni or portfolio companies that you would recommend a founder go maybe check out? I have names, but if you wanna like give a few portfolio companies that you are watching or hearing about still.

Well, I totally want to hear which ones you have on your—

Sure. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, from, especially from the Swiss, founders, which go we are so, so proud of. You know, we have people who got really significant funding, like Alejandro Garcia of AI Retailer Systems, or, or Christoph Tramp with Rebels 0.0%, who does alcohol-free spirits, and they get quite a lot of media attention too. Which of course we like.

Rebels was one of them that was on my shortlist, so I know that was a Swiss company. It's like alcohol-free double distilled for making aperitifs, but without the booze. Cool brand, definitely Rebels 0.0 for people to check out.

I'm a heavy user, so I can speak to the actual user experience is very good. So, you know, those are— I mean, there are many that we're really proud of, but look at it from a very, very recent cohort. I was really impressed to see the progress made by people like Alexander Pinto and Aurasec, but also Michael Streligas with Vertliner, both very, very deep tech companies, and they've had They haven't had it easy because we had to run everything remote and, you know, it was, I would say it was harder during COVID sometimes when you were not located in Switzerland. But they have made so much progress ever since graduation. And when you think that graduation is so recent, you really have to give them a shout out. And then, you know, like the bouncebacks, like just Just 2 days ago, right, I mentioned we had this live event where aspiring founders had a chance to meet alumni from all kinds of cohorts. And who would have thought that we would meet there Ila Haney from the 2019 cohort, who we haven't heard from for 2 years or 3 years, and now she's got an investor and she's, you know, growing and scaling up and we're just really proud of their grit and their persistence.

I'm glad to hear that people are coming out for the in-person events and like, you know, that we're getting a little bit past COVID, at least for this season, you know, fingers always crossed. But yeah, the founders are coming out and meeting new prospective founders in the program. Like, that's the kind of community building that happens definitely much more organically in person. And so it's very cool to hear that your Switzerland events are doing that. 3 companies, these are all companies based in Europe, though not necessarily, I guess, grads of Switzerland, but they're all food tech companies. So 3 others really quick just to give shoutouts. Oddbox is a London-based company. They rescue fruit that's sort of ugly fruit, so to speak, that doesn't meet the very strict grocery criteria for retail stocking. Total Control is a food waste company that they actually develop software primarily for like grocery and larger retailer, but they even have like consumer apps as well to help people cut down on food waste. And then a fourth one, Chef Passport, which is based in Luxembourg, is like a virtual chef sort of platform. And I know they've got things going on with new partnerships in, in the metaverse, bringing chefs to the metaverse. And so it's, yeah, virtual food courses and learning that you can do. So I don't know, 3 different kind of food tech companies that founders might also be able to check out if they're interested in just seeing. To the end, but I kind of mentioned this a little bit earlier, I think we would be remiss to not give like a quick shout out to just a few. There's so many because of these Founder Institute program partners for upcoming 2022 cohorts. There's basically 3 cohorts that are all recruiting right now that you're a part of. The final deadline to apply to each of them is September 18th, I believe, but there's sort of two food tech options based on your time zone. There's one that's more based in Europe. The Food Ecosystems Program is what that one's branded, and then there's one that's more like Asia time zone, so it would be more of like a PM if you were Pacific, if you're where I am in the world. Anyway, that one's called Food APAC, and then there's Switzerland. So there's partners for all of these different programs, a little bit of overlap. I don't know if there's any who you want to give a shout out to or who have come to recent events or anything like that. I know Thought for Food is one that I've met, I've been familiar with them for a long time.

Yes, yes, and Thought for Food definitely is a food-specialized VCs join us for our events, when we can run events together with them like we just did in the Asia-Pacific food cohort with Big Idea Ventures, I believe. And we're right now preparing one for the global food ecosystems also with Arpijo as a partner and some other like Thought for Food. And I'll have to say that food has such a community, right? A global community. So we found partners who are really, really engaged with the topic, with improving the food system globally. And yeah, I think we have got a fantastic set of partners there.

Yeah, definitely. So shout out to Arpeggio, yeah, the folks at Thought for Food, at Big Idea Ventures, and yeah, you can And see many more partners if you go and check out each of these programs that we're talking about here. So any kind of parting thoughts, Ingeborg, or final advice, I guess, for founders who might be watching that you just wanna leave on that note?

Well, you know, I like to quote one of our graduates who is also actually doing really well. I asked, you know, I do these little interviews with, with people sometimes, with our graduates, and I also asked him this question, like, do you have any advice? And I'll never forget when, when he said to me, my biggest advice for them is don't overthink it. Just take the leap, become an entrepreneur, go incorporate, build your product, and don't overthink it.

Yeah, good. I think that, yeah, that's kind of just the building sort of mindset, like, just build the thing. Like, uh, yeah. And I think we're definitely advocates for that in Founder Institute and sort of the way that we operate to try to facilitate people just not overthinking it and yet getting out and doing it. So yeah, I think that's great advice for any early stage or particularly for prospective founders who just haven't quite made the leap yet. So yeah, last, I guess, but not least, we're just reminding, you know, if you are a pre-seed stage food tech and/or a Swiss founder, you can see the individual program schedules or learn more about each of these programs. You can apply at fi.co/join. Or go over to fi.co/enrolling to see the different programs. You can see the program schedules at fi.co/program. Yeah, we're very much looking forward to helping food tech and other Swiss founders in launching and building exciting new businesses. So come out and join the FI community, stop by one of our online events, or if you do another in-person event, yeah, come out and meet the folks who stop by there. But Ingeborg Gasser-Chris, co-director of the FI Food Tech and Switzerland Accelerator programs. Thank you so much for joining today.

Well, thank you, Dustin, and I hope we'll see loads of aspiring founders at our upcoming events. There are some really, really cool events on 6th of July, on the 30th of June. Check it out on one of those chapters.

Yeah, and fi.co/events, they can also find them all there as well.

Yeah, great, awesome.

Thank you.