»venture kick is a great first instrument if you’re serious about a startup«
25.06.2014
RAW and Adaptricity convinced the venture kick jury in the second round with sovereignty and preparing now for the final of venture kick. We spoke to Miguel from RAW who just finished the venture challenge course at EPFL and developed a database system that helps businesses get their facts right.
 Miguel Branco from RAW
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 The founders from Adaptricity: Andreas Ulbig and Stephan Koch
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Miguel, what do you offer with your startup RAW?
»RAW is a platform for data analysis. It’s the place where data scientists come together online to analyze data.«
What distinguishes your database system from others?
»RAW is far more than a classical database system. In fact, as database researchers, we started RAW as a research project precisely due to our frustration with existing systems. Databases do one thing well: they answer queries – questions to the data – very efficiently. But they are poorly suited to handle real world “dirty” data; they don’t allow you to clean and transform data seamlessly or to experiment with your data. Databases also do a poor job at managing the code that users write to analyze data and they do not allow you to collaborate with your colleagues throughout these processes. RAW fixes all this. We start from technology straight out of research – on data virtualization – and build a platform for data analysis that is far more complete than anything out there. RAW is in its own category.«
Why did you apply for venture kick?
»venture kick has a comprehensible, straightforward funding model. It gives us the resources to prototype and pivot – which is crucial early on, plus the deadlines and the feedback that comes with deadlines, reports and presentations. Overall, venture kick really is a great first instrument if you’re serious about a startup.«
Which milestones could you already achive?
»We had technology we thought – and others agreed – was truly impressive, but we were not sure what product to make out of it: where the markets actually were, who the customers were, etc. As a technical person, it’s amazing how often we confuse customers, users, product and technology, as if they were all the same. venture kick gave us the resources to start finding these things out. We could work on alternative products/business models, try them out with customers, iterate and go from there. And the best part is that venture kick is really light on bureaucracy, so it was all just useful work.«
What are your next steps?
»We’ll continue product discovery and customer development. We have some promising early contacts with well-establish industries in Switzerland. We will continue developing (and understanding!) the product along with our customers, until we sort out the whole picture end-to-end, from technology to business model.«
The second winner of venture kick stage 2
Adaptricity is a spin-off company of the Power Systems Laboratory at ETH Zurich who took part at the venture challenge courses 2010.
The team of Adaptricity develops innovative software tools for the simulation, optimization, and control of electric power systems. Their goal is to build great products that facilitate the transition towards high renewable energy shares and smart electricity grids during the years and decades to come.
Have a look at their funny video how they want to make power systems intelligent.
»RAW is a platform for data analysis. It’s the place where data scientists come together online to analyze data.«
What distinguishes your database system from others?
»RAW is far more than a classical database system. In fact, as database researchers, we started RAW as a research project precisely due to our frustration with existing systems. Databases do one thing well: they answer queries – questions to the data – very efficiently. But they are poorly suited to handle real world “dirty” data; they don’t allow you to clean and transform data seamlessly or to experiment with your data. Databases also do a poor job at managing the code that users write to analyze data and they do not allow you to collaborate with your colleagues throughout these processes. RAW fixes all this. We start from technology straight out of research – on data virtualization – and build a platform for data analysis that is far more complete than anything out there. RAW is in its own category.«
Why did you apply for venture kick?
»venture kick has a comprehensible, straightforward funding model. It gives us the resources to prototype and pivot – which is crucial early on, plus the deadlines and the feedback that comes with deadlines, reports and presentations. Overall, venture kick really is a great first instrument if you’re serious about a startup.«
Which milestones could you already achive?
»We had technology we thought – and others agreed – was truly impressive, but we were not sure what product to make out of it: where the markets actually were, who the customers were, etc. As a technical person, it’s amazing how often we confuse customers, users, product and technology, as if they were all the same. venture kick gave us the resources to start finding these things out. We could work on alternative products/business models, try them out with customers, iterate and go from there. And the best part is that venture kick is really light on bureaucracy, so it was all just useful work.«
What are your next steps?
»We’ll continue product discovery and customer development. We have some promising early contacts with well-establish industries in Switzerland. We will continue developing (and understanding!) the product along with our customers, until we sort out the whole picture end-to-end, from technology to business model.«
The second winner of venture kick stage 2
Adaptricity is a spin-off company of the Power Systems Laboratory at ETH Zurich who took part at the venture challenge courses 2010.
The team of Adaptricity develops innovative software tools for the simulation, optimization, and control of electric power systems. Their goal is to build great products that facilitate the transition towards high renewable energy shares and smart electricity grids during the years and decades to come.
Have a look at their funny video how they want to make power systems intelligent.