[Funding alert] Zurich-based Founderful Secures €78 Million in Funding

The group's main goal has always been to assist aspirational Swiss IT firms in taking the lead in global markets. The company was founded with the express purpose of providing hands-on, founder-focused funding to local, pre-seed entrepreneurs during their first fundraising round.

Alex Stöckl, Founding Partner at Founderful, commented: “We’re beyond grateful that we get to continue our work with the most ambitious founder teams of this exciting ecosystem. Switzerland is one of the world’s fastest-growing venture capital markets. With the global shift towards more complex technologies solving some of our society’s most pressing challenges, it will become one of the world’s most important tech hubs. With our founder-operator backgrounds and the deeply rooted access we’ve built over the years into the universities and research institutions with our Founderful Campus program, we’ve become the go-to firm for entrepreneurs and investors alike.”

Founderful has made roughly 50 investments in the last four years alone, and it made eight Swiss investments in 2023, defying the venture trend of keeping "dry powder" on hand.

Founderful has invested $60 million from Fund I in 40 businesses. This reflects 109 founders who scaled to generate 1,093 employment and, in just three years, raised nearly six times as much money totaling over $350 million, some of it from top global venture firms.

Notably, Wingtra (survey drones) has grown to 200 workers and generates over $20 million in sales annually. Globally renowned for its groundbreaking plastics recycling technology, DePoly has raised a $15 million seed round, and Corintis, a sustainable computing company, collaborates with Microsoft, Google, and Nvidia.

The funds raised in Fund II have already been put to use by Founderful, which is supporting the founders of the following companies: Ascento (security robotics), Nala Earth (ESG reporting), Anthropos (workplace skills), Isospec Analytics (biomolecular analysis), Eightinks (lithium-ion batteries), Faive Robotics (humanoid robotics), and Chiral Nano (alternative silicon chips).

Severin Hacker, CTO and co-founder at Duolingo, commented: “Building Duolingo, I’ve seen my own fair share of VC firms, and it is rare to collaborate with an investor who is as meticulous and relentless toward creating value to the founders they backed, as the team at Founderful.”

Jonas Theiler, Head of Asset Management at Artemis Group, added: “We’ve been working with Founderful since day one, and the companies they back have impressive substance and relevance from a technological and business perspective – they are spot-on doubling down on the Swiss venture ecosystem.”

With a laser-like focus on the Swiss IT industry, Founderful has focused on helping founders in the B2B software and industrial technology sectors. This covers advances in computer vision technologies, robotics and industrial automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and material sciences in cleantech, climate tech, and construction tech.

Lukas Weder, Founding Partner at Founderful, added: “Our fresh identity as Founderful reflects our purpose as a venture capital business to have the deepest understanding of founders and give them the highest level of support. We were once founders ourselves and know what it takes to succeed. We are redefining founder-friendliness beyond just the term sheet through sharing advice, granting insights, and investing courageously. We bring lightheartedness and empathy to serious topics and remain calm in the face of adversity. We try to be the honest companion we would have wanted by our side when we built our own companies.”

About Founderful

The top pre-seed fund in Switzerland is called Founderful. We support Switzerland's top tech entrepreneurs in becoming worldwide market leaders by being first, quick, and kind to founders.