Venture Kick

Venture Kick operates entirely on philanthropic donations from a consortium of Swiss foundations, corporations, and private donors. Key backers include the Gebert Rüf Stiftung, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Fondation Pro Techno, and numerous family offices that contribute annually. No government funding is used. The model is platform-based: donors pool capital into a common grant vehicle administered by the IFJ Institute for Young Entrepreneurs, with no expectation of financial return.

No. Venture Kick provides non-dilutive grants at each stage of its three-phase program. The organization takes zero carried interest, zero ownership, and zero board seats. Its sole objective is to de-risk early-stage academic projects so they can attract professional venture capital. This distinguishes it from accelerators like Y Combinator that receive equity in exchange for capital.

Selection is conducted by a rotating pool of over 150 external jury members drawn from industry, venture capital, and academia, not by an internal investment committee. Startups present to a new jury at each of the three funding stages — idea, proof of concept, and launch — with no single individual able to carry a project through alone. The final stage jury typically includes leading Swiss VCs and serial entrepreneurs operating under a structured scoring rubric.

Venture Kick exclusively supports projects originating from Swiss universities and federal research institutes, including ETH Zurich, EPFL, the University of Zurich, and universities of applied sciences. The program is structurally embedded within the Swiss academic ecosystem: its parent organization, the IFJ Institute for Young Entrepreneurs, maintains formal partnerships with these institutions and receives project referrals directly from technology transfer offices and faculty.

Venture Kick alumni include Sophia Genetics, a Nasdaq-listed data-driven medicine company; GetYourGuide, a global travel experiences platform; Wingtra, a vertical-takeoff drone manufacturer; Distalmotion, a surgical robotics company; and Bestmile, an autonomous mobility platform acquired by Siemens. The program has seeded 9 of Switzerland's 15 unicorns — more than any other single early-stage vehicle in the country — though it holds no equity in any of them.

Venture Kick is not a fund; it is a philanthropic grant program disguised as an accelerator. It raises no capital from limited partners, charges no management fees, takes no equity, and measures success solely by startup formation rates and follow-on capital raised by its alumni — now exceeding CHF 8 billion. Its three-stage, jury-driven selection process functions as a public certification mechanism rather than an investment pipeline, creating signaling value that reduces due-diligence costs for downstream VCs.

Since 2007, Venture Kick has distributed more than CHF 40 million to over 1,000 startups. Capital is deployed in three tranches: CHF 10,000 for initial concept validation (Stage I), CHF 20,000 for proof of concept (Stage II), and CHF 130,000 for incorporation and go-to-market (Stage III). Each stage requires a jury presentation and approval, and less than 10% of initial applicants receive the full CHF 160,000.