Benedict Stalder

Benedict is an entrepreneur and a management consultant. Next to turnaround management projects Benedict invests his time in angel management for startup companies. Benedict is a mechanical engineer with a track record as an early serial entrepreneur and as an executive in information technology and manufacturing. Benedict brings senior management, strategy, sales & marketing expertise and a sharp eye on today’s entrepreneuring world.

Caroline Schmitt

Caroline has a solid track record in e-Marketing and e-Commerce, both nationally and internationally. She brings to the course a mastery of integrated marketing strategies, processes and structures. Her executive background in Internet Sales, Marketing & Communications and Customer Service serve as a strong base for her activities on internet guided selling techniques, mastering emailing tools, web analytics, SEO, SEM to boost lead generation, revenue, community size, site utilization and customer retention.

Sylvain Montreuil

Sylvain Montreuil is a Business Design Wizard. A passionate and experienced entrepreneur with a solid background Sylvain has a proven record of business acumen. He has started several companies, his first one at age 20. He occupied the COO position of a large French Group and contributed to a multitude of startup projects. Today he is the founder of Business Design Innovation a company dedicated to developing new methodologies that facilitate the launching of innovative ideas by converging Business & Design practices. His mission is to help entrepreneurs get from ideas to real.

Nelio Barros

Nelio Barros is a design strategist specialized in visual communications and has an international background having worked as visual designer and in design research and development.

After becoming a designer, he decided that moving to Switzerland to paraglide in the Alps was the second best thing to do in life.
He loves typography, motion design, philosophy, entrepreneurship and anything that's new and challenging.
His time is divided organizing the CreativeMornings Geneva, his design studio Kinobrand and a new highly secret start up called Luma7.

Damien Connus

Damien is an experienced business lawyer who provides legal and strategic advice and expertise to entrepreneurs, equity investors, lenders, companies raising equity, shareholders and management teams on a broad range of corporate and finance issues. Damien has a steady practice of structuring and refinancing schemes, of corporate finance transactions, in particular of M&A, PE deals, seed and VC investments (especially applied to startups and SME companies), and of business development strategies.

Maxime Chollet

Maxime is a founding partner of the business law firm CPV Partners, located in Lausanne and Geneva. He focuses on commercial and corporate law. He advises companies - particularly start-ups - on all major steps of their corporate life. Maxime’s work includes the negotiation and drafting of, and commercial litigation regarding, all sorts of commercial contracts in numerous industries and business sectors. Bearer of a double degree in Management and Law, Maxime, as an entrepreneur himself, endeavors to advise companies not only from a legal point of view but also from an operational and strategic perspective.

Karim Piguet

Karim is a founding partner of a law firm specializing in business and commercial law. Karim's practice focuses on M&A and corporate finance transactions (including PE and VC transactions), as well as on drafting and negotiating commercial contracts. Karim further advises on a wide range of intellectual property matters (technology transfer, option, license, distribution, franchise, etc.). He has accumulated years of experience in leading Swiss business law firms and has advised numerous start-ups, notably biotech and software companies.

Valerie Bauwens

Valérie Bauwens is a strong advocate of “human centric” decision processes, and particularly based on ethnographic field research.

With her original academic background in business administration, she first worked for about 10 years in finance and business development. Driven by the urge to truly understand the people behind the figures she used in her business plans, Valérie focused for about ten years on establishing user research as a core competence within the Research and Development department of Swisscom, the leading telecom operator in Switzerland. She first co-created there the Residential User Observatory, and in a second step created the Business User Observatory. Both aimed at understanding the adoption processes and usage of TIME (telecom, information technology, media, entertainment), the first one in the homes, the second at the work place. Since its inception, the User Observatory has delivered significant results and helped Swisscom identify future user behaviour and anticipate on upcoming novel services.

Valerie holds a university degree in business administration and psychology. She is also a certified professional coach (IDC).

André Delafontaine

Investor & Director of Operations in Early Stage Investments with 20 years experience in Technology, Entrepreneurship, Strategy, Product, Sales, People & Project Management in High Tech & Social and Environmental Impact Investing.
Specialties: early stage financing, entrepreneur preparation for funding & market penetration, triple bottom line, corporate strategy, product, project & people management, renewable energy, socially responsible investing, new media, computer security & embedded systems, hardware, Open Source Software

Pierre-Alain Masson

Pierre-Alain graduated from the University of St. Gallen, where he majored in Business Administration. He then spent 3 years in M&A amassing valuable work experience. He is a born entrepreneur, co-founding his first startup at age 20. He advised entrepreneurs, invested in startups and co-founded various startups. He also wrote his own column about Swiss startups in the Market.ch magazine for 3 years before co-founding seedstars SA.

Patrick Raemy

Patrick assists large and smaller companies developing their activities locally and internationally, with a focus on
Myanmar. He is part of the OSEC expert pool. Patrick has spent over 20 years with multinational companies in a number of managerial positions in business development,marketing, sales and supply chain. Through long‐term international assignments, Patrick has developed a solid experience in multicultural environments. His missions allowed him to travel extensively around the world and above all to Asia, where he successfully led business development projects with international customers. His experience in rapidly changing and competitive environments, allow him to develop new business models. He can work in four languages including French, Spanish and German. Patrick holds an MSc in economics, HEC Lausanne, Switzerland.

Mathieu Cynober

Mathieu CYNOBER heads the Health Technologies team at Tech2Market. He is also responsible for the international development of the company and is based in the eastern part of France. The engagements he is a part of range from assisting in technology transfer to public policies and innovation marketing. He has developed a strong understanding of business models, strategy, market access and venturing in various areas and more specifically in the MedTech, Biopharma and Hospital fields.

Francois Gilardoni

Specialties: Venture capital (seed, early stage and growth) in the high-tech industry

Katrina Burrus

Nadine Reichenthal

Proven experience in managing Projects with multi-disciplinary and international teams, driving team to success, could benefit an organization wishing to handle large cross-functional projects.
Major expertise associate harmonization of Business Processes and Information Systems in large, international cross-functional Programs, Implementation and Change Management included.
My listening skills, empathy, leadership and excellent knowledge of cultural diversity help me to build team spirit to achieve a common goal.

Michèle Criblez

Après un diplôme de Commerce, Michèle débute sa vie professionnelle au sein d’un département comptabilité d’une société de gestion de fortunes à Neuchâtel. Elle décide rapidement de changer de voie et reprend des études commerciales à Londres. A son retour, elle a l’opportunité de reprendre une activité familiale et crée sa première société à l’âge de 25 ans, dans le domaine de la distribution de montures optiques. Elle est ensuite recrutée par la société SISS SA, une société d’informatique, pour développer ses activités de "brookerage" de matériel informatique « mainframe » en Europe et aux USA. Cette mission accomplie, elle est transférée dans une société sœur qui doit faire face à une crise importante avec la tâche de réorganiser les processus d’approvisionnement et de distribution. .
Dès 1998, elle reprend la direction de la société de SISS SA (aujourd’hui CFI SA), et complète la gamme des services informatiques proposés avec des activités de délégation de consultants informatiques ainsi que de formation informatique. Depuis plus de 14 ans, Michèle Criblez et son équipe de spécialistes conseillent leurs clients dans l’élaboration de leurs stratégies informatiques, délèguent des spécialistes IT pour des grands comptes en Suisse et les assistent dans le cadre de leurs recrutements de personnel spécialisé. Passionnée par la gestion de ressources humaines, Michèle complète ses connaissances dans ce domaine et obtient en 2009 un Brevet fédéral de spécialiste en RH.

Lorin Voutat

Lorin is a serial entrepreneur, he has founded or cofounded: ilion Security S.A, IRIS S.A., Adeya S.A., Abonobo S.A., Lost Object S.A., Take a Breath Sàrl, Amext Sàrl.

Virginie Carniel

Virginie has a strong background in energy, clean-tech, telecommunication and IT sectors. Often called in during transition periods, she helps companies in their fast growing and restructuring phases. She brings her hands-on expertise in C-level management, finance, marketing & communication, and international business development. She also has experience in setting up new companies and funding start-ups and SMEs. Fascinated by organizations in transition, she took part in two IPOs, led a full privatization process and restructured various SMEs as well as MNCs departments in multicultural environments. She is chairman of the board of a government-owned company and serves on the board of directors of several SMEs and start-up companies.