A look back to the year 2024

We would like to review the year 2024 with you and look ahead to 2025.

Let's start by saying that we won't be writing about the geopolitical and macroeconomic aspects. This has been covered extensively in countless articles, discussions, TV shows & annual reviews and everyone reading this is certainly well informed.

What we would like to talk about is the development of the European startup ecosystem, with a focus on the DACH region.

From our point of view, the first half of 2024 was still very similar to 2023: Great reluctance on the part of interesting companies to go into fundraising, therefore low investment appetite on the part of VC investors, cautious sentiment regarding the macroeconomic situation and Germany in particular. And the general mood was not “all good”.

In our opinion, this changed in the second half of the year. The deal flow grew strongly, many promising start-ups went into fundraising and more financing rounds took place. In terms of figures, this means that 17% more was invested in Germany, for example, than in 2023, although the number of financing rounds decreased (-12%). However, the first half of the year 24 was even weaker in both figures than the first half of the year 23, which clearly shows the upward trend in the second half of 2024. Switzerland is still lagging a little behind and will probably end the year 24 slightly down on 2023. However, an upward trend also began here in the second half of the year, which gives us cause for optimism. As equity pitchers, we can confirm this trend in any case.

In general, 2024 was a very successful year for us, even though we will have to write off our first company in the eighth year since we started investing! However, we always knew that this day would come and we are therefore all the more pleased that we were able to welcome 4 new startups to the EquityPitcher family last year!

With Entyre, Briink, Scrona & To be announced, we believe we have found real treasures and are very much looking forward to the journey together with them! In addition to these 4 new companies, a total of 9 other companies received fresh capital through a new financing round, in all of which we participated. In total, over CHF 120 million of fresh capital flowed into our portfolio companies in 2024, which is 50% more than in 2023 (CHF 80 million)!

Of course, this has also led to further growth in the number of our international co-investors. With HV Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, SuperNova, 13 Books, 3M Ventures, Heal Capital, AM Ventures and others, we can continue to support our portfolio companies in their successful growth together with super-experienced investors!

However, since the operational success of the companies comes before fundraising success for us, we are even more pleased with the following achievement:

⭐ Sales growth in 2024 for the portfolio as a whole was +75%

⭐ The special feature is particularly evident in the fact that 20 of our portfolio companies have reached a 7-digit turnover in 2024 and 10 of these companies now have a turnover of more than CHF 4 million.

⭐ What excites us even more is that the average sales growth of these 10 companies is +100%!

⭐ In addition, we expect 3 more companies to break the CHF 10 million turnover mark in the course of 2025. This will bring the total number of companies generating sales in the 2-digit million range to 5!

Without wanting to praise ourselves too much, we as EquityPitcher were able to make a small contribution to this outstanding growth. In the meantime, our sales support for the start-ups has become so professionalized that we can also track it. In total, we were able to turn over 500 intros into decision-makers for our start-ups in 2024, with an outcome of over CHF 3 million in revenue and a lot more potential in the start-ups' pipelines. We therefore expect to see a significant increase here in 2025! The ideas behind the slogan “The Network Driven Growth VC” are therefore becoming more and more true, which is also confirmed by our portfolio companies. We want to continue along this path in order to provide our start-ups with further sustainable added value and the key to success in addition to capital.

A lot is also happening at the “exit” level, as 2 of our companies were also successfully sold in 2024. However, both companies are in the process of an earn-out or piecemeal sale, which could extend into 2026, which is why we still have to wait for the final result. However, we expect a significant profit for both companies!

However, what we can certainly book for 2024 is a DPI of +4% with a very high potential to increase this significantly through the aforementioned transactions!

In general, we are very optimistic about the future M&A environment for our portfolio companies, although 2024 - especially in Europe - has not really given rise to this yet.

However, our companies have already received constant interest from China, India and the USA in 2024 and with the expectation that the aforementioned sales growth of our startup companies will continue at this level in 2025, we believe that the coming “exit window” will be made for our portfolio companies!

And last year, there were once again various awards for our start-ups, which we would like to congratulate! However, one in particular deserves special mention: Peter Fankhauser, the CEO of Anybotics, was voted “Swiss Entrepreneur of the Year”! He thus joins a very elite circle of successful entrepreneurs and shows the charisma that ANYbotics now has.

With all these tasks and events, we are of course also delighted to welcome two great new colleagues to our ranks, Silvan Gehmann and Metin Zerman, who will help us to successfully achieve this, even as we continue to grow.

We were once again able to invite our network to various events in 2024! Worth mentioning here is certainly an exciting investor event at our portfolio company Scrona as well as our annual Come Together, which now consistently welcomes over 150 guests and was once again a real highlight in 2024!

With all this professional work, there must also be time for something private: Our esteemed colleague Andrea said “I do” in 2024 and married her long-term partner Andri Silberschmidt, which is why she is now commonly known as Andrea Silerschmidt-Buhofer. It was a great celebration and we are looking forward to a new team member in 2025 ;-).

In December 2024, we were already in the final stages of 3 financing rounds for new portfolio companies, all of which we will support as lead investor. We therefore assume that we will be aiming for a new record in 2025 in terms of the number of new investments. Not forgetting that there should also be one or two exits in 2025.

The agenda is already packed with event participations, jury participations, speaking engagements, etc. and our own events are also being planned.

So we certainly won't be bored and we hope that, looking back, 2025 will be a year of peace, a year in which geopolitical and macroeconomic developments have allowed us to successfully implement all these tasks with joy and enthusiasm!

And it goes without saying that this can only be achieved together with our investors, start-ups, advisors and partners. We would therefore like to thank all of you once again for your constant support! We appreciate this so much and look forward to mastering what is to come together with you!