CHF 10,000 for simple aerial transportation, molecular wearables for maternity care, microsized-mediated healthcare, hyper-scaled depollution, and a platform for women’s health research
10.04.2025
Avientus, MoleSense Health Solutions, Parabolis, Sixteen44, and TrialHer were selected at Venture Kick's first financial and entrepreneurial support stage. Their projects build fully electric VTOL drones and autonomous ground stations; pioneer molecular wearables for real-time, non-invasive continuous monitoring of key maternity inflammatory proteins and hormones in a simple, wear-and-forget manner; provide a novel solution towards improving deep vein thrombosis (DVT) treatments; remove methane from the atmosphere as a service to corporations that want to reduce their carbon footprint; and build the world's first AI-powered platform for women’s health research—think LinkedIn meets clinical trials, where women get matched, informed, and rewarded, and clinicians reach diverse, high-fit participants faster.
 |
 |
 Avientus: CEO Johannes Aicher
|
|
 MoleSense: CEO Dr. Gian Luca Barbruni
|
|
 Parabolis: Co-founders Yimo Yan & Josh Mesfin
|
|
 Sixteen44: CEO Nelson Dumas & CTO Mario Michan
|
|
 TrialHer: Founder & CEO Hyatt Antognini-Amin & Co-Founder & CTO Xiao Jiang
|
|
Avientus: Making Aerial Transportation Simple
Current logistics solutions for urgent deliveries rely on costly, slow, or infrastructure-heavy methods like express couriers or helicopters. These are inefficient for smaller payloads, leading to high costs, CO? emissions, and significant downtime in critical industries.
Four ETH Zurich alumni tackle this problem with Avientus, a same-hour aerial delivery network. They build fully electric VTOL drones and autonomous ground stations. Their system offers an unmatched payload-to-weight ratio and gives their customers the flexibility to drop off/pick up packages without the drone present. The patent-pending design enables flexible, sustainable logistics for industries and remote regions, as well as air bridges in disaster zones. With their solution, Avientus addresses a USD 17.6B market covering industrial, emergency, and offshore logistics.
Avientus will use Venture Kick funding to validate their value proposition and improve the business model.
When a mother’s water breaks too soon, doctors face a critical dilemma: delay birth and risk infection or deliver early and risk lifelong complications. With no tools to quantify these risks, mothers endure invasive tests while doctors make life-or-death calls.
MoleSense, led by Dr. Gian Luca Barbruni, pioneers molecular wearables for real-time, non-invasive continuous monitoring of key maternity inflammatory proteins and hormones in a simple, wear-and-forget manner. By integrating personalized molecular data with biology-aware machine intelligence, they are unlocking insights to improve early diagnostics and tailored treatments—starting with preterm births, potentially impacting over 8 million pregnancies annually in Europe and the US alone.
The team plans to use the Venture Kick financing to boost business development and customer access. www.molesense.ch
Parabolis: Pioneering Microsized-Mediated, Smart Healthcare
Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) affects 10 million individuals worldwide each year, with a global treatment market of up to USD 2.03 billion in 2034. Given that DVT treatments, thrombolytics, are given frequently and in high doses, we have engineered a novel solution to enhance DVT treatment. Starting with DVT, we plan to expand to other cardiovascular diseases to target the global thrombosis market.
Parabolis has 2 co-founders: Yimo Yan and Josh Mesfin. Yimo has microfluidics and microsized materials experience. Josh has biomaterial design and cardiovascular translational research experience. Here, we have made a novel solution towards improving DVT treatments.
The Venture Kick funds will contribute towards preclinical trials and reiterating our business plan formulations.
Sixteen44: Hyper-Scaling Depollution Where it Matters the most
Sixteen44 SA (named after the molecular weight of methane & CO2) removes methane from the atmosphere as a service to corporations that want to reduce their carbon footprint. The reduction of methane from the atmosphere produces the highest quality carbon removal credits and has a high and immediate impact on slowing climate warming. The removal of methane is impactful due to the high warming potential of methane, with one ton of methane being equivalent to 84 tons of CO2. In addition, the removal is permanent and verifiable in real-time. Companies and organizations that produce significant methane emissions, such as food businesses, agriculture, O&G, mining, and landfill management, now have a way to directly reduce their carbon footprint and methane emissions.
The company was incorporated in Lausanne in 2024. The team is composed of seasoned repeat entrepreneurs, including Mario Michan, PhD, the founder of the successful Scale-up Daphne Technology, and Nelson Dumas, a recognized impact investor who supports over 25 companies in reducing inequality and mitigating climate change. Through their experience scaling Daphne, they are world-renowned experts in methane removal.
The support from Venture Kick will be critical in obtaining first market data to identify the sites where deploying Sixteen44’s solution will make the most immediate and important impact.
TrialHer: The Future of Women’s Health Research
Women remain underrepresented in clinical research. Less than 20% of reproducible health datasets focus on women, over 80% of trials are delayed due to lack of volunteers, and 85% of people don’t know how to participate. These interconnected challenges result in incomplete data, delayed research, and treatments that may not meet the needs of 50% of the world’s population.
TrialHer was founded by Hyatt, an experienced healthcare executive, and Xiao, co-founder and former Senior Software engineer at Meta. Together they are building the world's first AI-powered platform for women’s health research—think LinkedIn meets clinical trials, where women get matched, informed, and rewarded, and clinicians reach diverse, high-fit participants faster. The platform addresses a USD 92B market and a broader USD 1T opportunity.
With support from Venture Kick, the TrialHer team will optimize its platform and extend its marketing and outreach efforts.