Séverine Chardonnens (IDUN Technologies) What does it take to lead a team, raise capital, and work on groundbreaking technology. With a background in engineering, Séverine has been studying surface architecture of soft conductive polymers for the past couple of years at the ETH Zurich. That’s where she met her future co-founder Simon Bachmann. Together, inspired by their work in bioengineering, they developed soft, stretchable and highly conductive biosensors mimicking the structure of grasshoppers’ feet - a revolutionary approach on biosensors, providing a glue-free adhesion solution for wearable devices. Since then, their innovation has been featured on the SRF Tagesschau and the startup has won many prizes including Venture Kick and the IMD Startup Challenge. Heading the technological development and industrialization of the electrodes, Séverine describes herself as a “CTO with people skills”. Her own entrepreneurial journey let her to be featured in the Forbes 30 under 30 list for Switzerland.

Like every year, May is dedicated to female entrepreneurs! Unlike our usual fireside chat events this time we will be hosting more than one speaker on stage, in a panel made from women with different backgrounds and vision for the future. Our speakers have founded companies in very different fields and will be sharing with us their journey as women in business, the ups and downs, frustrations and wins and what brought them success in a mostly male-oriented field. Speakers info: Michela Puddu @Haelixa Co-inventor of Haelixa technology, Michela earned her PhD in Chemical Engineering at ETH Zurich. She has later received funding from the ETH Foundation and from the Gebert Rüf Foundation in order to convert the technology into marketable products/services. Michela and her co-founder raised about 2 Mio funding equity free before closing the first investment round for Haelixa in summer 2018 with Clariant and ZKB. The technology is nowadays commercial. She is a competitive runner, and whenever she can she goes scuba diving. -- Svetlana Baurens @ Galileo Svetlana Baurens is Co-founder and President of Galileo IIIC and Board member of SIIA. She is an expert in impact investing and is actively raising awareness about this topic in the Swiss financial industry with the main purpose to transform it to the force for good. She has been a speaker at various conferences and gives impact investing masterclasses in Zurich for public and institutions.

Co-inventor of the original Swatch Watch and received the Gaia Award for it’s conception, ELMAR MOCK is a professional inventor and entrepreneur with 40 years of international experience. He graduated as an engineer of micro technical and plastic technology in 1978. Mock suffered from severe dyslexia at school. The inventor makes no secret of the fact that he was a very poor learner. “It took me 11 years to complete nine years of compulsory education,” he admits. These travails shaped his character, laying the foundation for his life as an inventor. He prefers the paths less trodden and never plans ahead – to avoid dulling his curiosity and sharpness of mind. “Invention is a form of discovery,” he says. “We search without knowing whether what we find will be of value in future. Yet, society dictates that we think of tomorrow and plan ahead. We are stuck on a treadmill. Planning kills innovation”.

Nilson is one of the co-founders of Nomoko and has obtained a degree in Liberal Arts & Sciences from the University College Maastricht, where he built his curriculum around courses such as business, artificial intelligence, and media. His educational background and upbeat personality served him as the tools needed to turn his ambitious vision into a successful start up. Nilson is not only a true believer in teamwork and going the extra mile, but, fun fact, he is also a former Swiss figure skating champion. "At Nomoko, We are developing the platform to interact and build applications on top of the digital twin of the world. We define the digital twin as photorealistic 3D models of entire cities with dynamic agents and contextual information." "To achieve our vision, We have built a gigapixel camera and a high performance, distributed 3D pipeline."

Lea is 24, and the co-founder of Carvolution, one of the first start-ups to bring the subscription model for cars to Switzerland. She will share her experiences in building a team, raising venture capital, and launching a disruptive product...."netflix or spotify"of the car industry. Backed by one of the top VC firms of Switzerland (RedAlpine), they've grown from 5 to 200 cars in a year. Provider of mobility services intended to reshaping car ownership. The company's services are a digitally-powered one-stop shop streamlines everything from insurance to maintenance, saving customers time and money through their fully digital monthly subscription service instead of a long-term commitment, enabling consumers to choose their dream car by removing the hassle out of ownership and the inflexibility out of leasing. The transformation of the automotive industry is in full swing, the market is heated up at the moment and the more this movement will develop, since all, manufacturers, ride share providers like Uber or MyTaxi and also start-ups want a piece of the currently developing one Take off the cake. It's clear; the model appeals to consumers.

Co-founder of Batmaid, the "UBER for cleaners", Eric Laudet has always been on the lookout for what's new & promising. Co-founder of Gotham, the largest coworking space in Switzerland, active investor in several promising startups & in the African commodities space. An early crypto investor who got partly burnt in the bubble with a lot of learnings along the way, he now defines himself as "a serial entrepreneur in the making" as founder of 2 on-going startup projects in the "bio-hacking" field (BloodX) and in the crypto space (ShareX).