On a regular basis the ETH Entrepreneur Club provides us exciting blogs about the Startup Essentials (#vlabSE). This week‘s startup essential workshop series started with „Building an investable venture“ organised by venturelab. Dr. Karim Maizar, who is a senior associate at the Swiss law firm Kellerhals Carrard, talked about foundation to create a solid company, clearing legal aspects and capturing intellectual capital. They offer a helpdesk in all areas and phases of life of a startup.  venturelab also promotes the AIT program, for which you can apply here.
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Karim: „Be aware of what kind of business angel you are talking to.“

In the first section Karim gave us an overview of the process of a financing round. For tactical reasons, founders should try to bring in their own term sheets at an early stage in the negotiation process to avoid an investor-friendly term sheet. He showed us which financing options exist:1)     Company funds:
• Cash flow2)     Debt:
• Loans
– Ordinary (subordinated) loans
– Convertible (subordinated) loans3)     Equity:
• Shares
– Common
– Preferred
• Participation certificates (Partizipationsscheine)Karim also gave advice for entrepreneurs that they should be aware of what kind of business angel they are talking to. About Crowdfunding he thought that the more people are involved, the more complicated it gets.In the second section we looked at typical structure and content of term sheets – economics, control and other provisions.

At the end there was a Q & A session. A lot of people asked questions and it was really interesting to listen to Karims suggestions so you could learn not only from the workshop itself but also form the questions at the end.

The Startup Essentials are a great format for young and ambitious entrepreneurs. Loads of success have already participants from the last semester course like Clara Beck from TapTools, Tauras Sinkevicius from WedMap or Raphael Gindrat from BestMile. The next edition will start coming autumn. In the meantime, check out the AIT program.

The AIT program aims to support scientists in transforming their high-level applied research into market application and discovering their entrepreneurial potential. By connecting scientists from top institutions in Switzerland and India/Brazil, the program promotes an international network and enables access to one of the most promising markets and intellectual capitals in applied research. One week ago entrepreneurs from Brazil and India visited Switzerland for five days and participated at the AIT Camp. If you want to be part of the next AIT Camp, apply here. The deadline is soon. A recap by Lucas Secchim Ribeiro (participant) and swissnex.