#052 - Student (hardware) entrepreneurship in Switzerland and worldwide, with Gregory Inauen of ETH Entrepreneur Club, Switzerland

The Hardware Entrepreneur

My guest this time was Gregory Inauen of the ETH Entrepreneur Club in Zurich, the youngest individual on this podcast so far.

Well, why having a student on the show? I think we should talk not only about people who have acquired a lot of success, but also about the upcoming generation. I’ve known Gregory for about a year now and by bringing him onto the show I wanted to show how a student-run organization that cared about entrepreneurship is run. Moreover, he’s from the Zurich where I also live which is another reason to feature him on the podcast, so this way we could describe the local ecosystem here.

Some hardware topics do come up in this episode, but we wanted to focus more on entrepreneurship from students’ perspective. Gregory talked about the 3 pillars of how they want to reach their mission, highlights of his time with Entrepreneur Club that includes speed-dating and how someone managed to land a CEO position this way. He also talked about the startup ecosystem in Switzerland and some specialties of Switzerland, e.g. craftmanship which has been attracting worldwide attention recently because of its uniqueness and effectivity.

Enjoy this episode!

Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

Show highlights can be seen below:

• The youngest podcast guest so far and his story about ETH Entrepreneur club’s mission - [2:32]
• Inspiring highlights from ETH Entrepreneur Club - [6:52]
• How has a global movement attracted tremendous attention in Switzerland? - [11:01]
• Why is university not enough when you want to be an entrepreneur? - [13:45]
• The Swiss hardware startup ecosystem, its advantages and relation to the universities - [16:03]
• Key points that differentiate ETH Entrepreneur Club from other similar clubs worldwide - [18:40]
• If you could time travel into the future, what would you give yourself? – [22:42]
• Which book had the biggest impact on his career? – [24:13]
• Gregory’s morning fueling routine – [25:05]
• Challenges that Gregory had to overcome throughout his experience with the Entrepreneur Club – [26:04]
• What is the best way to reach Gregory? – [28:02]