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Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 12:46:10 EST
X-Mailer: Windows AOL sub 104
Dear Swiss Listers:
Please find below a copy of an interesting article that was published in
today's New York Times. Looking forward to your impressions, opinions and
comments...
Have a great Sunday!
Pascal Marmier
SEND
Swiss Entrepreneurs Network Development
420 Broadway St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Web: www.SendYourStartup.com
Vmail: (617) 739-6893
Cell: (617) 515-3097
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Coming to America to Learn a Secret: Boldness
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/10/business/10SWIS.html
December 10, 2000
By LYNNLEY BROWNING
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Switzerland, the land of Heidi, neutrality,
chocolate and secret bank accounts, is not known for a business
culture that encourages daring new ideas. And that is exactly what
is worrying the Swiss government, which has watched in dismay as
America's brash young executives spawn the hot companies and vast
wealth of the new economy.
So in an uncharacteristic move, Switzerland has opened a mission
in Cambridge, Mass., that is intended to help the country discover
its inner entrepreneur.
Less Old World consulate and more 21st- century conduit to the
Boston area's hotbed of technological and academic innovation, the
outpost aims to encourage a new generation of Swiss businesspeople
to think more like their American counterparts.
"We don't have a culture of, `Let's grow big and fast and be
master of the world,' " said Dr. Xavier L. Comtesse, 52, a Swiss
diplomat who heads the mission, known as the Swiss House for
Advanced Research and Education. "You never hear a Swiss say, `I
want to change the world,' like you do here. We need to take more
risks."
Other countries with similar aspirations have taken notice of
Swiss House, which is a research organization, consulting firm,
incubator and meeting space rolled into one. Near the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and Harvard University, in a region with
the largest concentration of start-ups and venture capitalists
after Silicon Valley in California, the outpost is described in a
government brochure as "a privileged observatory of the efficient
American innovation and technology transfer system."
With open cubicles, a conference table, and a pillow-lined "pit,"
Swiss House offers Swiss entrepreneurs a place to fire up their
laptops, make phone calls, network and absorb the culture of the
new economy.
Swiss House officially opened in October, after a prolonged
renovation, but it has been operating for many months. Last May, it
held a European start-ups conference with M.I.T. In January, Swiss
House and M.I.T. will sponsor a biotechnology conference.
Swiss House has also asked Clarity Capital and Atlas Venture, two
venture capital firms based in Boston, to participate in business
development seminars for young Swiss executives and to screen
business pitches from Swiss start-ups. Saleena Goel, an associate
at Atlas, and Chad M. Jackson, a principal at Clarity, said they
were interested in both proposals.
The outpost was also host recently for a delegation of Swiss
information technology researchers and entrepreneurs, including
some from Fastcom Technology, a digital camera maker and software
distributor in Lausanne. Some members of the delegation visited
M.I.T.'s Media Laboratory to learn how to translate technologies
from the laboratory to the market. Others met with representatives
of Putnam Investments, the Boston mutual fund company, which
invests in emerging foreign companies.
And in tandem with a Swiss foundation, the outpost sponsored a
business-idea contest for Swiss entrepreneurs last January. Nearly
two dozen winners were awarded one-week crash courses in
entrepreneurialism at M.I.T.
The course, called "a brain transplant for potential European
entrepreneurs" by Kenneth P. Morse, managing director of M.I.T.'s
Entrepreneurship Center, covered issues like customer focus,
building management and raising money for start-ups.
"The Swiss know they have a problem," Mr. Morse said. "They're
taught to fear risk and failure. They're conservative and
conventional. Their culture doesn't favor entrepreneurialism. But
they're coming out of the closet."
A case in point is Swiss House's commercial "spin-off," called
Swiss Entrepreneurs Network Development, or SEND. Operating at
Swiss House but registered as a private United States company, it
is a consulting firm for Swiss start-ups. One project is to find an
American acquisition target for a new Swiss company, Bioring, which
makes medical devices. Aceair, a manufacturer of small aircraft, is
using SEND to find legal counsel as it expands into the United
States.
"My idea," said Pascal Marmier, SEND's Swiss director, "is to
radiate U.S. entrepreneurial skills back into Switzerland."
Mr. Marmier, 27, a lawyer by training, is paid through grants and
investments from Venture Partners, one of Switzerland's biggest
venture capital firms, and SpaceVest, an investment firm in Reston,
Va.
An artfully designed space of glass, blond- wood floors and
chrome, surrounded by Webcams, flat panel displays and giant video
conference screens, Swiss House has the feel of a high-technology
start-up albeit one with a big interior-design budget. It even
has a corporate-style advisory board; one member is Paul Sagan,
president of Akamai Technologies, the Internet services company
based in Cambridge.
The operating costs of Swiss House are paid by the Swiss
government. But the $2 million cost of buying and renovating the
red-brick building, a former grocery store, was financed by Lombard
Odier, a 202-year- old private bank in Geneva. The bank hopes to
organize seminars at Swiss House on how American high-tech
start-ups do business.
Dr. Comtesse proposed the mission to the Swiss government in 1997,
when he was the science counselor at the Swiss Embassy in
Washington. Nearly two years later, Bern approved, but the deal was
delayed by local homeowners who sued to block it out of concern
that Swiss House would change their residential neighborhood. A
judge ruled in favor of the Swiss.
The outpost idea appears to be spreading: officials from Britain,
Ireland, Japan and Finland have asked Swiss House how to set up
similar missions. Australia, Singapore and Canada established
outposts this year in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
Despite its small size, Switzerland is prosperous and is home to
much potential start- up capital, and researchers there have
developed promising biotechnologies and computer technologies.
Nevertheless, the country ranks only 10th in Western Europe in
private equity investing, which includes venture capital financing
for new companies far behind Britain, France and Germany,
according to the European Private Equity and Venture Capital
Association, a trade group based in Brussels.
In the United States, venture capitalists have poured hundreds of
billions of dollars into risky start-ups in recent years. But
Switzerland's secretive venture capital funds and financial
institutions, daunted by high taxes, tend to invest in
well-established Swiss companies or abroad. Swiss stock options are
taxed so prohibitively that they are usually a burden, rather than
a springboard to personal wealth or an incentive to build a good
company quickly.
And while the American new economy has been fueled in part by the
willingness of executives to put aside their dot-com failures,
Swiss laws that make it difficult to write off debts can render an
entrepreneur's failed venture his last.
Whether Swiss House can turn the Swiss into new-economy
capitalists is unclear. Ms. Goel at Atlas Venture said that for
Swiss House guests, learning a new entrepreneurial culture "will be
a hurdle."
Dr. Comtesse sees Swiss House as a beachhead for changing a
less-than-innovative mind-set. "Americans think differently," he
said. "We need to have more dreamers."
The New York Times on the Web
http://www.nytimes.com
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Received on Sun Dec 10 2000 - 09:47:01 PST
