Leap Takers

Dr. Anjali Raja Beharelle (https://www.linkedin.com/in/anjali-raja-beharelle/) is the CSO (Chief Science Officer) and one of the founders of collabree.com (https://www.collabree.com/). Collabree is a Swiss eHealth / digital adherence start-up focusing on improving therapy compliance of chronically ill patients by applying behavioural economics principles. Collabree is helping patients to make lasting behavioral changes and stick to their therapy regimen by combining human engagement with...

Hugo Amsellem [@HugoAmsellem (https://twitter.com/HugoAmsellem)] is a thought leader covering the world of the creator economy and writes the blog “Arm the Creators (https://armthecreators.substack.com/)”. The Creator Economy enables an entire generation to bypass traditional gatekeepers for the 1st time in history. Anyone can learn anything online, build something new and distribute it all over the world—without asking anyone's permission In 2013 he jumped the fence and joined The Family...

Patrick Gobonya is one of the co-founders of Ovation eSports (https://ovation-esports.com/). Ovation was founded in Zurich / Switzerland in February 2020, and is the first sustainable eSports organization. Ovation is "a lit, young & dynamic pioneer which combines professionalism and fun in one team. A network platform of champs and eSports enthusiasts." Ovation accompanies and develops athletes on their journey to become leading eSports players. The company is committed to provide their...

Arman Anatürk [@ArmanAnaturk (https://twitter.com/armananaturk)] is the founder and CEO of FoodHack (https://www.foodhack.global/). FoodHack is a community-driven platform that inspires, highlights and connects food entrepreneurs and innovators. With FoodHack Arman is is building the 21st century media / events company for the foodtech industry. The platform's offering includes a weekly food & food tech newsletter, ambassador run meet-ups, an annual FoodHack Summit, as well as a newly...

Job van der Voort (@Jobvo (https://twitter.com/Jobvo?s=20)) is the CEO and one of the founders of Remote.com (https://remote.com/). Remote makes it possible to employ anyone, anywhere in the world. Their mission is to simplify how companies employ the best talent globally and to help remote organizations do their best work. They offer services such as international payroll, benefits, taxes, and compliance for businesses big and small - so that they can hire anyone in the world - while...

Merry Christmas everyone! 🎄 This episode is going to be a small experiment. In this Christmas special, I'm introducing you to 5 of my personal and my podcast guests favorite business & startup books. Hence, I give you a crowd-sourced reading list from some of Europe's top up-and-coming entrepreneurs and VCs. I'm convinced that these books can help you to bring your business / startup to the next level, or to get motivated to "take the leap" yourself! It's also the perfect activity to read...

Alina Bassi (@alinabassi1 (https://twitter.com/alinabassi1?lang=en)) is the founder and CEO of Kleiderly (https://www.kleiderly.com/). Originally from London, she founded Kleiderly in 2019 in Berlin with the goal of solving the problem of fashion industry waste. She has developed a patent-pending technology to recycle waste clothing into a new and sustainable material, diverting clothing waste away from landfills and incinerators. Her mission is to lower the carbon footprint of fashion and...

Tobias Gunzenhauser (@TobGunzenhauser (https://twitter.com/TobGunzenhauser)) is the CEO and one of the three co-founders of yamo (https://www.yamo.bio/en-ch/). yamo is Europe's first digital native vertical brand that produces fresh organic baby and children food. The company launched in 2017 in Switzerland with their first product of baby purees. In the meantime, yamo is also sold in "Coop (https://www.coop.ch/en/)", one of Switzerland's largest retailers. All of yamo’s products are 100%...

Heidi Lindvall (@HeidiLindvall (https://twitter.com/HeidiLindvall)) is one of the founders and a general partner at Pale Blue Dot (https://www.paleblue.vc/). Pale Blue Dot is a seed stage ClimateTech VC investing in reducing and reversing the effects of climate change and preparing for a new world. They invest tickets of €200k - €2M, in pre-seed and seed-stage companies based in Europe and US. Heidi Lindvall previously co-founded Storygami, an online video company that increases viewers...

Anne-Laure Le Cunff (@anthilemoon (https://twitter.com/anthilemoon)) is the Founder of Ness Labs (https://nesslabs.com/), an award-winning productivity & learning community and venture studio building products that focus on mindful productivity, wellness, creativity, and culture. She is an ex-Googler, MSc of Applied Neuroscience candidate at King's College, member of the Society for Neuroscience, and certified Mental Health First Aider accredited by the Royal Society for Public Health. Her...

Ville Vesterinen (@vesterinen (https://twitter.com/vesterinen)) is a serial entrepreneur from Finland. He is one of the original founders of Slush (https://www.slush.org/) - one of the world’s leading startup & tech conferences, that attracts around 25'000 attendees every year to Helsinki. He also founded Grey Area (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/greyarea#section-overview) - a gaming company that was backed by Index Ventures (https://www.indexventures.com/), LVP...

Gonzalo (@gonsanchezs (https://twitter.com/gonsanchezs?lang=en)) runs and writes Seedtable (https://www.seedtable.com/), one of the leading newsletters focused on European tech. Seedtable is read by tens of thousands every week, and his work has been featured in Wired (https://www.wired.com/) and Sifted (https://sifted.eu/). Gonzalo's writing always provides unique perspectives of developments in technology in Europe and its impact on society. Seedtable is one of my all-time favorite...

Christian (@chrjantzen (https://twitter.com/chrjantzen)) is the founder of Futuristic.vc (http://futuristic.vc/), a micro-fund investing in Nordic pre-seed companies. He made his first investment at age fourteen when he bought shares in his favorite football club. He later started his first company, a real estate company, in 2011, which he grew while studying at university. Following his masters degree in Finance from Aarhus University , he co-founded another startup “Reunited Esports",...

Mathias (@ockenrock (https://twitter.com/ockenrock)) eats and breathes marketplaces. He is a partner at Speedinvest (https://speedinvest.com/), one of Europe’s leading Venture Capital funds. The fund has it’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria and just recently raised its latest fund of €190m. Mathias runs Speedinvest x, a focus fund investing into network effects and marketplaces. Previously he was a General Manager for the German market at Uniplaces (https://www.uniplaces.com/), an...

Vedika Jain (@vedikaja_in (https://twitter.com/vedikaja_in)) is an investor and Chief of staff at Weekend Fund (https://weekend.fund/), an early stage venture capital fund that is backing your next favorite thing. Previously she worked for high profile startups like Stripe (https://stripe.com/) and True Layer (https://truelayer.com/). Weekend Fund was started in 2017 by Ryan Hoover (https://ryanhoover.me/), the founder of Product Hunt (https://www.producthunt.com/) (an amazing site to...

Sebastian Wahl and Carl-Philipp von Polheim are the founders of mybacs (https://mybacs.com/). Mybacs is a direct-to-consumer (D2C), research driven, biotechnology company for gut-health products based in Zug (Switzerland) and Munich (Germany). Their goal is to revolutionize the healthcare market around the human microbiome and thus make a decisive contribution to the health and daily well-being of everyday customers. Mybacs is specialized on the development of innovative and high-dose...

Holger Seim (@hlgrsm (https://twitter.com/hlgrsm?s=20)) is the founder and CEO of Blinkist (https://www.blinkist.com/). Blinkist is a book summary app that lets you get the key insights from 3'000+ bestselling non-fiction books that cover leadership, history, psychology and more in 15 minute summaries in text or audio format. Blinkist has over 11million users globally and the book-summarising startup has won positive reviews from the likes of Forbes (“This may be the greatest app you...

Alisée (@aliseedt (https://twitter.com/aliseedt?lang=en)) is one of the founders of Seedstars, a global group of companies with a mission to impact people's lives in emerging markets through technology and entrepreneurship. The groups' activities cover over 85 cities with emerging startup ecosystems through a variety of activities, such as hosting one of the world’s largest startup competition “Seedstars World”, organizing training and acceleration programs, offering physical hubs called...

Andri Silberschmidt (@andrisilbi (https://twitter.com/andrisilbi_)) is a 25 years old rising star here in Switzerland. He is a food entrepreneur, equity investor, and politician. At the age of fifteen, he began his banking education and is now responsible at Swisscanto Invest for the management of all quantitative equity funds investing in developing countries. In the summer of 2017, Andri and some of his friends founded kaisin. , a Poké Bowl restaurant and catering chain. He has been...

Andreas Schwarzinger (@a_schwarzinger (https://twitter.com/a_schwarzinger)) is the founder and managing partner of uniboard (https://www.uniboard.ch/startseite/) AG, one of Switzerland’s largest student platforms with over 72k users. Andreas is one of the most down-to-earth people I know and with his work at Uniboard helped thousands of students to successfully pass their degrees. His motto is "Studying together is better"! In our conversation we talk about how Andreas and his co-founder...