July has been great for MachIQ – it has been exactly a month since we started at the MassChallenge accelerator in Lausanne. I must say, as rockets go, we feel like we have broken the sound barrier in real quick time and are approaching escape velocity to put MachIQ in orbit. Several aspects of the MassChallenge program have allowed us to gain momentum: insights from visionary speakers and advice from experienced folks during Office Hours but I will focus on an aspect that has delivered immediate value to MachIQ: Our Mentors.

A quick note about MachIQ: We are a Vertical SaaS meets Marketplace startup that helps manufacturing companies optimize their spare parts inventory and avoid downtime from equipment failure by connecting them to an ecosystem of peers, machine builders and maintenance & repair services companies.

Anton & I had heard of MassChallenge (MC) Boston and were excited that they were expanding across the Atlantic setting up in London, Tel-Aviv and Lausanne. When choosing between London and Switzerland, we picked the Lausanne hub because of the corporate sponsors which include brands like Nestlé and Barry Callebaut, and machine-building giants like Bühler and GEA.

We were convinced that being close to Bühler & GEA would help us better align our value proposition with the F&B sector but our mentors have encouraged us to set much more aggressive targets for the 4 month program. We are grateful to have Bruno Mendler who sits on the Executive Board of Bühler, Jamie Mikkelson – SVP of Product Engineering at GEA and Peter Stähli, the Chairman of the Swiss Economic forum, on board as our advisors. Their inputs helped structure our value proposition and this immediately yielded dividends by getting our pitch to consistently resonate with the prospects we are meeting. We have also had some rewarding interactions with other mentors in the MC network. I’d like to especially mention Eric Maire. Eric has been a source of continuous encouragement and support. We will certainly stay in touch with him in the months and years ahead.

The theory of relativity states that time travels slower for a fast moving object than for a stationary one. While we have travelled through the last month without even realising it, we have achieved a lot thanks to the program. I ‘d like to thank the MassChallenge Switzerland (MC-CH) team for our superlative experience despite this being their first cohort. We had great expectations coming into the program and they have exceeded them in every department. And it gets better – this was just our first 30 days. We look forward to the next three months!!