20 Years of Venture Leaders: Celebrating two decades of the Swiss National Startup Team

Venture Leaders celebrates its 20th anniversary, looking back on two decades of connecting Swiss startup founders with leading innovation hubs worldwide. Since 2006, the program has supported more than 600+ founders in their first steps toward expansion abroad and helped build a community that has contributed to the Swiss startup scene and produced companies active across markets around the world. To celebrate the anniversary, Venture Leaders reunited alumni from all generations, investors, and partners for a special event in Zurich on June 24, highlighting 20 years of founder ambition, exposure to new markets, and startup growth.

Over the past two decades, Venture Leaders has established itself as one of Switzerland’s most recognized startup internationalization programs. By providing founders with direct access to investors, entrepreneurs, industry experts, and innovation ecosystems abroad, the initiative has enabled 600+ Swiss startups to gain international visibility from an early stage. Venture Leaders alumni have collectively created more than 20,500 jobs and raised over CHF 9.5 billion in investment capital, demonstrating the long-term impact of Swiss entrepreneurship on the global stage.


Numbers achieved by Venture Leaders alumni over the past 20 years
 

A Milestone Celebration: Two Decades of Growing Global Deeptech Champions from Switzerland
The anniversary event brought together Venture Leaders alumni from every cohort since the program’s inception, highlighting the strength of a community that spans generations, industries, company stages, investors, and partners. Keynote speaker Martina Hirayama, State Secretary for Education, Research and Innovation, pointed to the importance of entrepreneurship, innovation, and international competitiveness for Switzerland’s future prosperity. She noted that Switzerland’s success shows that when entrepreneurs and researchers are trusted, investment in knowledge is sustained, and openness to the world is maintained, innovation thrives, and that it is now time to be just as bold in scaling it.


Stefan Steiner highlighting Venture Leaders partners on stage


Celebrating 20 Years of the Swiss National Startup Team would not be possible without all our partners and supporters. A special moment of recognition honored Pascale Vonmont (Gebert Rüf Foundation) and Pascal Marmier for their initial support of the Venture Leaders program in Boston.


Celebrating the long-standing support for the program since its inception


Jordi Montserrat discussed with scaleup founders Olga Dubey, co-founder of Agrosustain (Venture Leaders Technology 2019 and Venture Leaders China 2020), and Samuel Müller, co-founder of Scandit (Venture Leaders Technology 2010), investor Stefan Kuentz (Swisscom Ventures), and Marjan Kraak (Health Innovation Hub Aargau) how to build a global company from Switzerland.


A panel discussion on building global companies from Switzerland


Venture Leaders has supported Switzerland’s most successful technology companies in the last 20 years. Looking ahead, the Swiss Champions Fund will strengthen the country's innovation ecosystem and support the growth of high-potential companies.
 

Download the 20 Years of Venture Leaders Magazine
Discover the story behind the Swiss National Startup Team and how Venture Leaders helped Swiss startups compete on the global stage.