Angels flock at SWX

Georg H Endress is the founder of Endress + Hauser, which now owns more than 50 companies around the world. Endres + Hauser

Individual investors are still excited about investing in high tech startup companies.

Some 100 business angels flocked to SWX to learn about new investment opportunities and to select a winning business plan, as well as the angel of the year.

This region’s Business Angel of the Year is described by his peers as “a man of action”. Georg H Endress, a sprightly senior citizen, is co-founder and owner of a globally active process-automation and instrumentation firm.

The focus of his own company’s business might be selling sensor technology that supports industrial process technologies in the chemical, oil and gas, and food production industries, but he is a promoter of startups in the fields of life science and biotechnology.

The father of eight children helped found organizations, such as the biovalley network that crosses the Swiss borders and include French and German startup firms, a science park in Basel, and a venture capital organization known as EVA Basel.

Born in 1924, an engineer by training, Endress inherited a business from his father, but he ended up creating Endress + Hauser, which now owns more than 50 companies around the world and employs 6000 people with a turnover of more than a billion francs a year.

Angels buck the trend

This is the second year running that about a hundred business angels, wealthy individuals who are very still active in industry who back the growth of privately owned firms, gathered at the Swiss stock exchange in Zurich.

It is clear that despite the feeling one gets from mainstream media, there is still a strong flow of entrepreneurship, optimism, and passion, to use some of the words of today’s presenters, which included the likes of Daniel Borel, co-founder of Logitech and an active angel himself.

The yearly event, organized by b-to-v, a tiny consulting firm that specializes in helping very early stage companies get access to this unusual group of investors is supported by State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) which is working on a revision to the tax laws for these kinds of investors, according to event organizers.

Other sponsors are SWX, PriceWaterhouseCooopers, and the law firm, Nörr Stiefenhofer Lutz.

Putting together a conference like this in light of the current economic climate is no mean feat. “We are quite proud of our angels who are obviously willing to invest anti-cyclically,” says Florian Schweitzer, a founder of b-to-v.

Valerie Thompson