Inside the Startup Tech Race: Swiss Startup 'BTRY' Crowned Champion in the Founders Fight

Session: Startup Tech Race: Founders Fight

Host / Moderator

• Jan C. Küster: The host and moderator of the "Startup Tech Race", who guides the audience and participants throughout the event.

Startup Founders (Competitors)

• Jeronimo von Ah: Head of Business Operations at BTRY, who pitches the world's thinnest solid-state battery in the red corner during the first round.

• Jan Wiese: CEO of production.AI GmbH, who pitches an industrial data and AI platform in the blue corner during the first round.

• Pranjal Kumar: Co-Founder of ApexSignal, who pitches a geopolitical risk management platform in the red corner during the second round.

• Hilal Kurt Irfanoglu: Founder & CEO of PODER, who pitches a construction site documentation software in the blue corner during the second round.

"Haymaker" Judges

• Céline Flores Willers: CEO & Founder of The People Branding Company GmbH, who evaluates the startups from the perspective of an experienced founder.

• Viola Paszkiewicz: Investor in Industrial, Deep & Climate Tech at HTGF, who questions the startups on market defense and scalability.

• Theodora Preda: Principal at the early-stage VC firm Plug and Play.

• Olivia Bias: Head of Industry Marketing for Automotive & Manufacturing at AWS, who evaluates the pitches through the lens of deep-tech storytelling.

• Dr. Markus Schillo: Representative of the European Investment Fund (EIF) in Germany, who evaluates the startups based on the broader European funding and deep-tech landscape.

Session Summary: The Startup Tech Race is a dynamic pitch competition where founders rhetorically battle each other without slides and face intense cross-examination from expert investor judges. The live audience acts as "the market," voting with red and blue cards to decide the winner of each round. In this session, the audience and judges ultimately crowned the Swiss solid-state battery startup, BTRY, as the grand champion.

The European tech ecosystem witnessed a spectacular display of innovation and competitive spirit at the latest Startup Tech Race, an event affectionately dubbed the "Founders Fight". Hosted by Jan C. Küster, Director of the Founders Fight Club, the high-energy format challenged startups to pitch their solutions without the safety net of slides, defending their business models against rival founders and a panel of expert investors. Ultimately, the audience—serving as "the market"—held the deciding vote, raising red or blue cards to determine which startup would survive the rigorous evaluations.

The "Haymaker" Panel

To truly test the founders, the event featured a heavyweight panel of judges, referred to as "haymakers" for their ability to deliver high-impact insights and challenges. The panel represented a diverse cross-section of the global tech landscape:

• Viola Paszkiewicz: An Investor in Industrial, Deep & Climate Tech at HTGF, looking to identify and support the next big champions.

  
  

• Theodora Preda: A Principal at Plug and Play, the globally operating early-stage VC firm running open innovation platforms across 65 offices worldwide.

  
  

• Olivia Bias: The Head of Industry Marketing for Automotive & Manufacturing at Amazon Web Services (AWS), acting as the panel's deep-tech storytelling expert.

  
  

• Dr. Markus Schillo: A representative of the European Investment Fund (EIF) in Germany, an organization that drives the European startup ecosystem forward by financing VC funds.

  
  

• Céline Flores Willers: CEO & Founder of The People Branding Company GmbH, uniquely positioned as a founder herself to understand the intense pressures the startups faced on stage.

Round 1: Hardware Innovation vs. Manufacturing AI

The opening bout pitted deep-tech hardware against industrial software:

• BTRY (Red Corner): Pitched by Jeronimo von Ah, Head of Business Operations, this Swiss-based startup emerging from ETH Zurich is developing the world's thinnest solid-state battery. Designed for the Internet of Things (IoT), medtech, and consumer electronics, the batteries are as thin as a human hair and can charge in just one minute. Crucially, the company focuses on these highly specialized niches and scalable European production to maintain a competitive edge against heavily funded Asian manufacturing giants.

• production.AI GmbH (Blue Corner): Represented by CEO Jan Wiese, this startup connects factory machines to eliminate industrial data silos. By utilizing anomaly detection and real-time interaction with factory workers, production.AI unlocks "black box" factories to deliver actionable predictive maintenance insights, boasting over 40 existing customers.

The Verdict: AWS's Olivia Bias praised BTRY's highly differentiated story and their strong local supply chain strategy. The audience agreed, flashing a majority of red cards to send BTRY to the finals.

Round 2: Geopolitical Resilience vs. Construction Tech

The second matchup focused on enterprise software solutions addressing complex modern liabilities:

• ApexSignal (Red Corner): Co-Founder Pranjal Kumar showcased a real-time risk management platform designed to help corporate strategy teams navigate geopolitical threats, citing the Middle East conflict, the EU-China trade tensions, and Trump tariffs. Unlike static consulting reports, ApexSignal creates a "risk digital twin" of a company's operations to proactively forecast specific supply chain vulnerabilities.
  

• PODER (Blue Corner): Founder & CEO Hilal Kurt Irfanoglu pitched a software solution for the construction industry, turning standard site photos into searchable, timestamped, and GPS-verified evidence. Already live with customers in Turkey and Germany, the startup (officially PODER BİLİŞİM TEKNOLOJİLERİ SAN. VE TİC. A.Ş.) aims to prevent costly legal disputes and project penalties between contractors and clients.

The Verdict: Céline Flores Willers challenged PODER on the risk of manually staged photos and questioned who bears the software's cost in a fragmented construction market. Meanwhile, Olivia Bias noted that ApexSignal tackles highly complex and "invisible threats" in global supply chains. Driven by roaring audience cheers, Jan C. Küster declared ApexSignal the winner of the round.

The Grand Finale

In the final showdown, BTRY and ApexSignal faced off for the ultimate title. The judges cast their rapid-fire votes, with a strong consensus forming around BTRY. Viola Paszkiewicz from HTGF cast her vote for the Swiss hardware startup, officially disclosing that her VC firm had actually made an early investment in the team due to the massive global problem they are solving. While Dr. Markus Schillo voted for ApexSignal—emphasizing Europe's urgent need for deep tech amid rising geopolitical tensions—the panel leaned heavily red.

In the end, the ultimate decision fell to "the market". The audience raised a sea of red cards, officially crowning BTRY as the undisputed champion of the Startup Tech Race.