Participated · Equity · Apr 2020

Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Lausanne with a subsidiary in Denmark, AVAtronics has developed a patented 'True Wideband Active Noise Cancellation' system that uses electro-acoustic modelling and a predictive filtering algorithm to remove unwanted noise up to 4 kHz. The company targets audio devices including headphones, wireless headphones with microphones, and speakers used in conference calls. AVAtronics completed its first round of financing, raising CHF 1.6 million in an oversubscribed round. The funds will be used to enhance the technology, recruit new employees, and expand across Europe. The startup plans to extend its ANC applications to headphones, hearing aids and the automotive industry. It benefits from Danish acoustic test facilities and audio experts via its Denmark subsidiary and is supported by Swiss and Danish startup organisations.

Participated · Series B · Nov 2018

Flyability develops collision-tolerant indoor inspection drones and companion software, most recently launching the Elios 3 with an integrated LiDAR sensor for indoor 3D mapping. Elios 3 produces real-time 3D models during flight and enables survey-grade 3D models after flights using Flyability’s software and third-party partners. The company reports close to a thousand customers and has offices in the USA, Singapore, China, and Lausanne. Its drones are used to inspect industrial and confined spaces to improve worker safety and to digitize asset inspection processes as part of Industry 4.0 initiatives. Flyability plans to use new funding to further develop sensing and autonomy capabilities for the Elios 3 platform. Customers-turned-investors such as Cargill and Dow have deployed the company’s technology in operational inspections. Flyability develops drone-based B2B solutions that enable indoor exploration and inspection of inaccessible and confined spaces, reducing safety risks, labor costs and environmental hazards for industrial operators. Its core products are market-leading indoor inspection drones and increasingly complete platform solutions for complex inspections. The company serves over 500 customers in more than 50 countries, employs about 100 people, and has offices in Europe and the USA. Flyability also maintains a network of over 50 resellers, including in China and Japan. The startup plans to use new funding to accelerate global expansion and continue developing its commercial indoor drone innovation. Management emphasizes building more complete and complex platform offerings to better serve its worldwide customer base. Flyability produces Elios, a collision-tolerant drone designed to perform indoor inspections in complex and confined environments. The drone prevents human exposure in hazardous spaces and targets applications in power generation, oil & gas, mining and chemical industries. Flyability reports more than 350 customers and 500+ drones in the field, cumulating thousands of flight hours. The company plans to increase production, expand its network of partners and invest heavily in R&D. Its R&D roadmap focuses on 3D mapping, localization and autonomous navigation to push the limits of indoor autonomous flight. Flyability has raised $11 million in a Series B and $16 million in total since its 2014 founding; it is based in Lausanne. Flyability develops collision-tolerant drones that can navigate complex, confined and hazardous environments to perform inspections where human entry is dangerous or costly. Its technology allows drones to tolerate collisions and reach areas conventional drones cannot without high crash risk. The company is active in energy production, maritime and oil & gas markets, inspecting boilers, tanks, vessels and ballast spaces. Customers cited include power plant operators, oil & gas majors and inspection companies, who benefit from reduced downtime, lower inspection costs, and avoided human interventions. Flyability plans to use new funding to ramp up production to meet growing demand and to expand into new markets such as search & rescue and security. The company is also preparing a product targeted toward the mass market. Flyability SA, based in Lausanne, Switzerland, develops collision-tolerant drones for the inspection, exploration, and reconnaissance of complex environments. Its core product is a drone that can fly in contact with structures and is safe to operate near humans. The company has been shipping prototypes to first customers since April 2015, targeting industrial inspection in energy and transport infrastructure as well as first responders (firefighters, police, search & rescue). The team includes over 15 engineers, and Flyability won the $1M UAE Drones for Good Award in 2015; it is supported by Swiss FIT, the W.A. de Vigier Foundations, Venture Kick, and the NCCR Robotics. Since its creation Flyability has attracted over 2.5 million CHF in funding. Management says the new round provides resources to launch its first professional product, planned to be available in 2016.

Participated · Seed · Nov 2015

AppTweak is a data‑science driven app store optimization (ASO) platform that provides actionable insights to increase visibility and downloads in the app stores. Launched in 2014 by CEO Olivier Verdin, the platform serves more than 1,500 mobile leaders, including Amazon, Jam City, Yelp and Adobe. The company is based in Brussels, Belgium and employs 50 people across four continents. AppTweak offers an app marketing platform and managed services to app developers and game publishers. It plans to use new funding to strengthen its international presence (notably in APAC and EMEA), expand its app marketing platform and broaden its managed services. The company reported a $22M Series B funding round in the article. AppTweak specialises in app store optimisation (ASO), offering a multi-lingual keyword tool and app store intelligence to help mobile apps rank higher in the Apple App Store and Google Play. The company has developed AppTweak.io, an API that provides a single point of access to more than 3 million apps across both stores. Its platform is used by around 400 brands from more than 40 countries, including LinkedIn, Samsung, Zalando and Etsy. Founded in 2013 and based in Brussels, AppTweak focuses on serving the European market with multi-language capabilities. The startup received $500,000 in seed capital and plans to use the funds to expand sales and development teams, add more languages and improve its app store intelligence with new features and functionalities.

Participated · Equity · Feb 2015

OtoSense builds a next-generation acoustic recognition engine delivered as a mobile app that infers and describes environmental sounds for deaf and hard-of-hearing users. The app ships pre-programmed with common smoke-alarm sounds for the US and Europe, can record custom sounds (beta users most often recorded doorbells), and is currently available on Android with an iOS version expected by the end of March. It is priced at $7.99 and can be used with Pebble smartwatches; the company estimates a global market of about 100 million users. OtoSense has a small staff footprint—2 full-time employees, 12 contract workers and contributors who are deaf or hard of hearing—and maintains headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts with some staff in Japan and France. The company is also pursuing a research collaboration with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s Battlespace Acoustics Division to adapt its platform into an autonomous mobile system linked to helmet-mounted microphones. Funding will be used to develop new features and to add a signal-processing and programming expert.

Participated · Series A · Nov 2013

BugBuster spun out of the Operating Systems Laboratory at EPFL and offers a cloud-based automated bug detection and testing SaaS for front-end web apps, supporting HTML5 and JavaScript. The service automatically explores an app from a URL, executes its code, finds and reports bugs, and generates screenshots and precise debugging information. The platform provides an API to specify business rules, track goals, and set watchers to monitor application state and direct testing. BugBuster has been in beta since June with around 400 companies testing the service; during beta it detected bugs in 89% of applications tested. Founded in 2011, the company plans to use the new funding to bring the product to market following beta completion and for further development.