Looking back on 2021
Dear EquityPitcher friends, family and partners
Another "Corona year" is over, but certainly more has been said and written about it than most of you can probably handle. Therefore, we leave this topic elegantly aside in our Review of the Year 2021.
As proudly announced in last year's review, we can also announce that 2021 has been the most successful year in our company's history to date.
Portfolio Highlights
We are particularly pleased that all 16 portfolio companies from the previous year have also performed well in 2021! Added to this there are 7 new companiesthat have been added to our portfolio in 2021. Thus, we start 2022 with 23 well-equipped portfolio companies,each with the goal of making the world better, simpler, more digital or simply more innovative!
Besides the 7 new portfolio companies, we also participated in 5 Follow-on financing rounds in 2021. Thus, the past year was our most active year in the company's historyin terms of the number of financing rounds - 12 in total. Overall, our portfolio companies received over CHF 30 million in fresh capital in 2021! Over the entire life cycle, more than CHF 130 million have been invested in our portfolio companies!
In the process, the universe of our Co-Investors has also continued to grow. We are very pleased to have additional professional startup Investors such as Bitstone Capital, Fyrfly, TX Ventures, VR Ventures, 42 Cap or WestTech Ventures as new committed partners at our side, who also support the portfolio companies in their successful growth.
"Over 90% of our portfolio companies significantly increased YoY growth compared to 2020."
In total, 12 of our 23 companies now achieve 7-digit sales, 2 of them even 8-digit sales with positive results and profitable EBIT margins.
With 23 companies now, it would be beyond the scope of any annual review to report on all companies individually. Therefore, here is a selection of the highlights and honor to whom honor is deserved, a short summary of the prizes and Awards won:
- RightNow, in 2021, in addition to a further doubling of its sales, has also won various awards, including the prestigious award from Business Punk and Statista as Germany's best startup employer. Moreover, RightNow won the award as Top Digitizer (Legal) of the Digitalisierungs-Initiative der Deutschen Wirtschaft as well as the second place of Deloitte's Fast-50 Award, which honors the fastest growing companies in Germany!
- Guuru was honored by Forbes DACH as one of the Forbes DACH as one of the TOP AI-based solutions in the DACH region.
- For the third year in a row, Futurae was named to the CyberTech100 as one of the most innovative CyberTech companies in the world.
- Construction Tech Review has selected Smino as one of the 10 best European BIM providers.
- OnlineDoctor, with its Co-CEO Dr. Philipp Wustrow, was the only Swiss company to make it into the Global Top 50 Health-Tech CEOs 2021! OnlineDoctor's second Co-CEO, Dr. Tobias Wolfwas named one of the 100 Swiss "DigitalShapers" by Bilanz.
- This award also goes to Péter Fankhauser, CEO of ANYbotics. Sandra Tobler, CEO of Futurae was even honored to be inducted into the Digital Shaper's Hall of Fame this year!
We are very happy about the many successes of our startups and their founders and congratulate them once again!
EquityPitcher Jobplatform
With almost 500 jobs being created, our portfolio companies are contributing more and more each year to a successfully growing national economy. Currently, about 100 jobs are vacant! To support our startups in the increasingly raging «War of Talents», we have also launched an innovative job platform on our website in 2021, which advertises all vacancies of our portfolio companies and thus actively supports them in the acquisition of talents.
We say Thank You
Once again this year, our startups were able to present themselves to our network. Our annual "Come Together" took place in 2021 for the first time in digital form. Under the motto «Wine & Cheese», the participants did not have to do without a delicious aperitif, despite the online format, and were able to follow the pitches and exciting insides of our portfolio companies, as well as National Councilor Andri Silberschmidt live during his very exciting keynote. We say thank you to all participants!
We could name and describe countless other topics that have accompanied us in 2021, but we would rather use the remaining lines to thank our investors, partners, advisors and startups from the bottom of our hearts for the terrific support and trust they have placed in us! We feel blessed, happy, proud and grateful to be surrounded by such great people and to experience this support!
Thus well equipped, we are very much looking forward to the year 2022 and what may come!
With warm regards
The EquityPitcher Team