Tech Helping ICU Patients Breathe, Superyachts Anchor and Teachers Teach Win CHF 40,000 Each
27.09.2019
STIMIT, Swiss Ocean Tech and SYLVA are the three latest winners of Venture Kick pre-seed funding and entrepreneurial training, as the founding teams seek to strengthen hospital patients' breathing muscles, ease teachers' grading burden and updated centuries-old maritime-anchoring practices.
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 STIMIT founder Ronja Bruhn
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 SYLVA co-founders Maik Meusel, Jessica Sudo and Anand Sundaram
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 Swiss Ocean Tech co-founder Thomas Frizlen
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Discover the people and projects that persuaded Venture Kick's jury of professional investors.
STIMIT: non-invasive diaphragm stimulation
STIMIT founder Ronja Bruhn is developing medical devices to empower patients in intensive care to breathe. STIMIT's simple, removeable, non-invasive and user-friendly technologies activate the diaphragm from hospital patients' first days of artificial ventilation, when muscle inactivity can quickly cause complications.
"We have an IP and product pipeline for two generations of STIMIT. Currently we need to focus, focus, focus on bring our first product for intensive care use to the market," says founder Ronja Bruhn. "The Venture Kick team is highly supportive, and always thinking in the interest of the startups. The network and the questions we get from the juries and trainers really help us tackle the right questions and grow."
STIMIT's profile
STIMIT's profile
SYLVA: automating teachers' tedious tasks
University teachers spend an average of 400 hours grading students' assignments and exams every year. SYLVA’s co-founders Jessica Sudo, Maik Meusel, Karl Schmedders and Anand Sundaram, are building software to automate all the tedious processes in education, and give educators more time to teach. The startup has partnered with Wolfram Research, which powers the computational engine behind Siri and Alexa's answering-intelligence, and has pilots and clients with universities in the U.S., Spain and Switzerland.
The team spent the past three months marketing SYLVA at industry conferences and developing their software's payment system and UX. And they received an entrepreneurial boost at the Kicker's Camp: "The group with four other teams was great," says co-founder Jessica Sudo, "we could relate to each other’s challenges on many levels, and received very thoughtful, critical feedback." For the next six months the focus will be on "revenue, revenue, revenue," emphasizes co-founder Anand Sundaram, "we want to be able to show stronger traction!"
Swiss Ocean Tech: safe anchoring monitoring
Maritime traffic is growing and more people sail to relax, yet we still anchor like we did a 100 years ago. Swiss Ocean Tech founder Thomas Frizlen wants to give sailors peace of mind and make anchored ships safer. He’s developing the world’s first anchor monitoring to warn sailors when their anchor is dragging, and prevent dangerous and damaging collisions and groundings. The startup’s patented technology may set a new standard for maritime safety for superyachts, merchant vessels, leisure boats and fishing boats. Frizlen is finalizing a seed round of 800,000 francs that includes marine industry investors met during market research. His team will use the funding to fully develop the prototype for superyachts and expand marketing.