Start-ups are made to fly thanks to Startfeld

New electrodes for long-term measurement of the heart, a chip that makes soccer jerseys, among other things, forgery-proof, and a marking technology thanks to which important components in medicine can be traced: The startup field has already helped many a startup to success.

A team of experts or financial support in the form of start-up capital: Startfeld in St.Gallen is a springboard for start-ups. Three young companies that have also made it thanks to help from Startfeld are Nahtlos, collectID and matriq. We present them in a short portrait.

They have already been looked at skeptically, says José Näf, CEO of Nahtlos AG. The plan of the Empa spin-off founded by him and Michel Schmid was to use an almost abandoned Empa technology to launch an alternative to the gel electrodes that have been in use for years for long-term medical monitoring of the heart. This is because the current variant has a major problem: it causes skin irritation, which often leads to the abortion of measurements and is unsuitable for long-term applications.

Startfeld was convinced by the founders' idea and awarded funding. "Thanks to the early funding, it was possible to build up the company," Näf says. The result is medical electrodes that do not require gel and at the same time significantly improve wearing comfort and signal quality.

Diagnoses are also the focus of the start-up collectID, albeit in a completely different context. Founded by David Geisser and Sergio Muster, the company has developed a chip that makes products such as soccer jerseys or sneakers forgery-proof. Thanks to NFC tags, the object is assigned a unique identity and stored in the immutable blockchain. "Basically, we have created a digital twin," says the CEO of the HSG spin-off. Earlier this year, collectID closed its second round of funding and realized its first partnership in the U.S. with the NFL team Nashville Predators. The first funding package came from Startfeld. "Startfeld supported us tremendously, especially in the beginning. And even now, an expert is always available to answer questions," says Geisser.

Similar to collectID, matriq, a spin-off of the OST - Ostschweizer Fachhochschule (University of Applied Sciences of Eastern Switzerland), has also dedicated itself to the topic of counterfeit protection, among other things. With the help of a specific QR code marking technology directly during production, plastic parts can be traced unambiguously and counterfeit-proof. Thus, all steps from production to end of life can be traced. "The plastic elements are used, for example, in medical and automotive engineering as critical components where quality and traceability are enormously important in the event of problems," says André Bernard, who founded matriq together with Cornelia Nef, Klaus Dietrich and Mathias Mächler. He greatly appreciates the support from Startfeld. It also opened the door for talks with other investors.