The Swiss National Start-Up Team (I am in the top right corner, second from left

I just come back from a great 10-day trip in Boston with the other winners of the “Venture Leaders” competition which together constitute the “Swiss National Start-Up Team”.

The program, prepared by VentureLab and Swissnex Boston (the consulate of Switzerland lead by Pascal Marmier), was really what every entrepreneur can dream to have for his project. Check this: workshops with high-profile entrepreneurs, coaching sessions by teachers of the Babson College, successful start-ups visits, negotiation trainings, networking sessions with investors, pitch competitions, etc.

Also and perhaps most importantly, I got to meet the other members of the team, the next generation of Swiss entrepreneurs. The range of projects – all in the technology field – was very broad, from MedTech to mobile gaming, but without exception very promising! The full list of projects is here. A few words on some projects: we had Virginie, who may have found a cure to cancer (without markers she can identify and purify cancer stem cells); Gilles who developed a very cool face recognition system which may become the standard for logins of all sorts in the future; Matthias who has a mobile gaming platform – Gbanga – which lets you play interactive games in the real world with your phone; Sven who is about to launch Syndicate, the best customized start-page I have seen to date; Christian from Atizo, an online innovation community which helps you generate ideas for yourself or your company; etc. I don’t have enough room for all – sorry – but I am sure that you shall hear about all of them in the near future (and you can anyways read better descriptions of each project here) !

Update: you can also read about the trip on the Amazee blog and check there pictures taken by Daniel Leutenegger.

Below find a few pictures of the trip (special thanks to Raphael from Hyperweek from whom I took most of the pictures):

Stephan Schambach, the founder of Intershop and Demandware, who kindly advised 10 of us on successful entrepreneurship

Two generations at MIT: Joost Bonsen, Mr. Entrepreneurship @ MIT with whom we had a fantastic guided tour of the campus, and a portrait of William Barton Rogers

Presenting HouseTrip

Mick Mountz, CEO and founder of Kiva systems and Entrepreneur of the year 2008 for the New England area

Kiva systems' funny orange robots: allows the complete automation of distribution centers

Pascal, the consul of Switzerland, welcomes the team

Reception at Pascal's "swiss house" in Arlington. We all wanted to be consul afterwards

Conference call with Swissnex Silicon Valley. They welcome all the venture leaders all the time over there: what Switzerland does for its entrepreneurs is truly amazing!

Feeling welcomed at Microsoft's start-up lab

In class with Les Charm, teacher at the Babson college

Ed Marram, great teacher from Babson

Raphael everything about our trip, including HouseTrip You can see the rest of his drawings on Hyperweek, Venture Leaders group