What the Swiss Evidence Actually Shows

The Venture Kick evidence connects two ideas that are easy to separate in theory but easy to confuse in practice: a competition can make quality more visible, and it can give a startup more cash. The useful judgment is not whether one reward is universally superior. It is what the Swiss estimates say about survival, financing, technology, and time once startup quality and the staged design are taken seriously.

Certification changes two decisions—but not equally across technologies

Winning the first stage is the study's test for a certification-dominated effect. The stage-1 win is usually the startup's first public endorsement and comes with only a relatively small award compared with the final prize. After the analysis accounts for the judges' assessment of quality and for year, competition, industry, and university differences, winning stage 1 is associated with a 22-percentage-point increase in the probability of surviving two years after the competition. It also raises the probability of securing external financing at some point after the competition by 14 percentage points.

Those are substantial estimates in the context of the sample. The funding result is particularly revealing because it is the outcome most directly connected to a quality signal. If the award merely kept a company operating, we would expect survival to move without necessarily seeing investors change their behavior. A higher probability of outside financing suggests that the endorsement helped a group of observers decide that the venture was worth further attention or capital. It does not prove that every investor saw or trusted the badge in the same way, but it fits the mechanism the institution is designed to provide.

The average result is not the main lesson, however. When the researchers separate science-based ventures from ICT ventures, the certification effect becomes much larger for the science group. Winning stage 1 raises science-based startups' two-year survival by about 41 percentage points, increases their probability of obtaining financing by about 22 percentage points, and is associated with roughly 0.4 additional funding rounds within two years. ICT startups show no significant certification benefit in the main estimates.

This reversal is not a contradiction of the basic signal model. It is evidence about signal quality. Venture Kick's judges are more heavily represented by science experts, and the paper argues that the underlying quality of a science-based venture is often easier to assess from technical evidence than the future adoption of a software or consumer product. A credible judgment can travel through the market when it reduces uncertainty. A noisy judgment may travel much less, even when it is delivered with the same logo and ceremony.

The time pattern strengthens that interpretation. The science-based certification effect remains positive over the longer observation window, rather than disappearing as soon as the small stage-1 award would have been spent. The persistence is consistent with a change in beliefs and decisions: an early endorsement can help a promising venture survive long enough to attract financing, and financing can then support later stages of development. It is not proof that the original signal remains perfectly accurate forever. Teams pivot, products change, and new evidence arrives. The claim is narrower: the initial information can have consequences that remain visible years later.

A loss can also carry information. The study finds evidence consistent with losing entrepreneurs shutting down earlier than they otherwise would have.