Mission Statement
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| "To award up to five times CHF 100’000.- each to young entrepreneurs in Switzerland every year" |
The Most Valuable Prize for Young Entrepreneurs in Switzerland
“Switzerland needs entrepreneurs. It’s where the future lies”. Such, in a nutshell, was the credo of William A. de Vigier (1912 – 2003), who established the foundation of the same name.
When he created the W.A. de Vigier Foundation in 1987, canton of Solothurn-born William de Vigier wanted to provide something that young entrepreneurs with good ideas so often lack, something indeed that he had also lacked when setting up his own company Acrow Engineers Ltd: the necessary start-up capital.
At the peak of his entrepreneurial activity, William de Vigier presided over a global steel conglomerate that employed more than 12’000 people.
The W.A. de Vigier Foundation is another success story. So far, more than 80 young entrepreneurs have won the prize, of whom more than 2/3 continue to be active in the market.
Moritz Suter, Chairman of the board of trustees, considers this “an excellent result given the number of entrepreneurs who start off successfully but then fall by the wayside”.
In the meantime the foundation also offers free consulting hours for young entrepreneurs to be, is organizing Alumni events for the former prizewinners and Nominees and is supporting a number of promising initiatives to foster entrepreneurship in Switzerland.
In 2010 the foundation introduced the award of the Supporter of the Year, an honor dedicated to people that have contributed greatly to the entrepreneurship in Switzerland.
In the same year the foundation also co-initiated the launch of the news website www.startupticker.ch.
The Foundation will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2012 with an exhibition about the life of W.A. de Vigier (31.5.-31.10.2012) at the Sommerhaus (www.sommerhaus-devigier.ch).