[harryf]

Living in Switzerland as a UK expat, I know the tech scene around Zürich fairly well. I haven't heard of these guys before but they're based in Basel so perhaps they haven't done the rounds yet.

There is certainly a need for this. Tech funding can be difficult to find I understand or of the "we'll invest in you once you're a safe bet" kind. Investing in biotech is much more developed, giving Switzerland's pharma industry, and there are signs that biotech investors are starting to show interest in tech startups but it's not there yet.

Would say what makes Switzerland attractive is being able to find highly educated engineers. While the ETH Zurich is highly respected, there are other less high profile schools turning out great hackers.

And there is enough experience around to get your startup off the ground and reaching a healthy turnover. What's lacking for web startups is experience scaling up to international markets; most of the successful startups I've seen tend to succeed only in local markets.

[o1iver]

Hey just saw your post. I couldn't find you email address in your profile, so I had to post here. I also live in Zurich (engineer from ETH actually), want to get together for a beer sometime? Would be happy to meet a fellow HN-reader :-)

[harryf]

Hi o1iver - catching up... Great - feel free to get in touch via twitter - @hfuecks is me.

[cletus]

> Tech funding can be difficult to find

The money YC participants get is typically viewed as the least valuable part of participating in YC.

> Would say what makes Switzerland attractive is being able to find highly educated engineers

Having effective access to the engineering talent in the EU (now) is useful but also excludes Russia, Norway, Eastern Europe, North America, India, Asia and Australia.

> What's lacking for web startups is experience scaling up to international markets;

Part of this is the competitive advantage the US enjoys in the Internet for largely historic reasons: everyone pays to connect to the US. The US doesn't pay anybody. This (along with market size) is why hosting is cheaper in the US than anywhere else such that companies get more for their money in the US, helping companies both large and small.

Local hosting becomes far more important in content-driven businesses (Spotify, Youtube, etc) where you want to be as close to the customer as possible to not only save on long-haul bandwidth but also have lower latency.

That case aside, the economics really don't favour hosting a large-scale Internet startup anywhere other than the US (even if the company isn't in the US).

Actually there is another exception based on regulatory environment. Some companies (rightly) simply won't want to host in the US and be subject to US laws. The clearest example is online gambling, which is illegal in the US, but there are others (eg Swiss bank customer data can't leave Switzerland).