Interview with Ralph Schonenbach, Co-Founder of Envoy.

What is the idea behind Envoy?

The idea behind Envoy is to enable everyone to efficiently and effectively use their professional and social networks as an asset to develop sales opportunities and find funding and talents for their ventures.

How was the funding process in Switzerland?

For our funding process in Switzerland, we went through private investors, using our private network. It’s not easy to identify who is actually investing privately, so you have to knock on a lot of doors, but after you knock on quite a few, it amounts to quite a sum of money. Out of the funding that we raised, about 60% came from Switzerland. I would say, the remaining came out of other parts of Europe, Asia, and South America.

How can the fundraising process in Switzerland be improved?

In Switzerland, I think it would be quite helpful for entrepreneurs if there was a way to speed up the funding process. It should not take six to seven months to receive a few hundred thousand dollars in funding, it should take weeks. Getting the funds faster would help significantly.

What’s your vision?

At Envoy, our vision for the future is to enable our users to use their networks as an asset to help them grow their businesses, find funding and develop sales opportunities. Today, we have really sophisticated products to manage our money, and in the future, with Envoy, we will have a product to manage our network as a true asset.