About
Boldbrain Startup Challenge is an accelerator for innovative ideas organized by Fondazione Agire with the collaboration of USI Startup Centre.
Aims
- Promote Ticino as an ideal hub for innovation and establishment of companies with growth potential and attract new investors
- Attracting promising startups from beyond the Alps and abroad with a view to their establishment in Ticino, with potential positive spillovers to the area in terms of skilled jobs and tax revenues
- Recovering native ideas and minds expatriated out of Canton
- Giving winners national visibility and recognition, with greater chances of finding funding
- Raising awareness of Ticino's Regional Innovation System (RIS) and its players
To become Switzerland’s most recognized accelerator program for early-stage startups.
Vision
Operations team
Barbara Pin
Barbara Pin
Program Manager
Elia Luculli
Elia Luculli
Startup Relations
Umberto Bondi
Umberto Bondi
Startup Relations
Marketing team
Fiorenza Trento
Fiorenza Trento
Marketing Manager
Luca Calderara
Luca Calderara
Marketing Associate
Anastasia Bedova
Anastasia Bedova
Marketing Support
Our roots
Upon the initiative of the then USI Start-Up Promotion Center (now USI Startup Centre), the first competition for the best business idea in Ticino, known as the “BSI Prize,” was born in 2008.
A few years later, in 2014, the competition changed its name to “StartCup Ticino.” Since 2016, the entry of the Department of Finance and Economy (DFE) of the Canton of Ticino has marked the willingness to financially support not only all five finalist projects, but also the StartCup Ticino acceleration program, i.e., a path of accompaniment of the competing projects, during which the startuppers meet with experts from various business sectors who help them define and improve their processes and the development of their business model.
In 2017, in order to better level the degree of preparedness of the finalist projects and foster entrepreneurial culture, a coaching period was offered to 25 StartCup Ticino projects in collaboration with the Agire Foundation, lasting about 3 months.
The result that emerged was so exciting for the participants that it motivated the organizers to take a further leap forward and renew the identity of the project, so that it could be exported beyond the Alps and be able to compete with the major programs that already existed nationwide. Thus, in 2018, Boldbrain Startup Challenge, the accelerator program for startups in Ticino, was born.