A few things I realized while talking to startups in Zurich
Despite an irreversible effect which rapid technology development has on our ways of communication, nothing can be as effective as meeting people in person. As a company that cultivates long-term trust-based relationships with its clients, we know how crucial getting beyond Skype calls and virtual meetings is for a single project or even a whole business success — and therefore travel a lot.
Having arrived from the last of those trips some time ago, I felt a little bit more excited than always. We have been working closely with several Zurich-based companies for quite some time, so the trip to Switzerland was always on the list. Not only was it a chance to hold a series of workshops with our clients, but it also gave us an opportunity to meet other companies while getting to know Swiss startup community. And what this trip helped to obtain, besides a good deal of successful talks and a lot of new contacts, were the priceless insights our company is going to use in refining its strategy. Without going into details, I just wanted to highlight a few of them.
It is believed that the cost of living in Switzerland is the highest in Europe, which influences tariffs in IT services market. The rates are actually so high in Switzerland that outsourcing its software development is sometimes the only way for projects to take off. This does not, however, mean that no companies have their in-house development teams. Neither does it mean that trust in 3rd party providers is higher in Switzerland than in other parts of Europe. Keeping a full control over software development is a number one wish, but many startups are simply forced to look for alternative IT resources in order to bring it on budget.
These limitations (along with some other ones, probably) naturally make Swiss companies more open to new opportunities than businesses in other countries may seem to be. Wealthy but highly competitive and exigent, the local market makes startups seek every opportunity to be more effective and gain edge over rivals. I was really surprised while talking to prospects by the way they react to proposals. Instead of treating talks like a sales pitch, my prospects were focused on a dialogue where both parties aimed to detect mutual opportunities. If there was a chance a proposal or solution could give an additional value, they would go for it. Needless to say, it’s the type of atmosphere where one feels most comfortable to do business.
Switzerland, and Zurich in particular, is a home to great technologies. Its enormous potential is apparent at the level of local startups where deeptech knowledge-intensive projects prevail, covering all spheres, from the country’s central financial area to healthcare and education. Non-technical businesses like banks or insurance companies do care a lot about keeping up with the progress and invest massively into in-house research & development projects in domains like blockchain and artificial intelligence. At the same time, I couldn’t help but notice some crucial moments were overlooked by businesses. While using all forces of tech like Artificial Intelligence to boost productivity or provide an extensive customer experience, they often ignore marketing. The punishment for this crime is missed sales opportunities, poor conversion and more expensive marketing campaigns. And what amazed me even more, is that a big number of companies do not even realize how much data they have. Whether you are an online store, a fintech startup or a wedding agency, you probably generate or work directly with large amounts of data, which can be a case for Machine Learning. Knowing your data is of paramount importance for virtually any modern business as it opens the way to streamlined business processes, a better management, an improved customer experience, and a more effective marketing.
Data is invaluable, although identifying and interpreting it is rather a tricky process where a professional team is required. A complete process, from data understanding and preparation to deployment and testing of a Machine Learning model, is complex and time-consuming, which discourage many decision makers from getting into this race. But what I personally witnessed during my visit is that there were no indifferent to the potential it provides. Helping find out these opportunities (not selling services) should be the primary task for solution providers, which I believe is the only right way to do business in 2018.
