Passing it on

Why start-ups fail

Between 80 and 90 per cent of start-ups fail in their first years. The reasons usually given are flawed business and pricing models, weak demand, financial difficulty, conflict in the founding team.

In Reichelt's experience the most common cause in German-speaking Europe is a different one: the founders are not suited to being entrepreneurs. Not the idea, not the business plan. The mindset and the soft skills.

Every insolvency is a personal disaster for the people involved and a loss to the economy and to society. That is the reason for everything that follows.

Support, free of charge

Mentoring, coaching and tailored incubator programmes for ambitious founders. What is brought to the table: nearly fifty years of experience in founding companies, strategic advice in marketing and management, and a network of specialists.

The path stays with the founders. Strengthening their independence is the point of the exercise.

Founders Oriented to Nonprofit Thinking

Many socially valuable ventures (a children's home, a new model of care, an education programme for disadvantaged young people) fail not on the idea but on the capital. Private investors and conventional venture capital do not reach them.

The GR-FONT provides seed funding with no obligation to repay. It is financed from 10 per cent of the proceeds of the book, 10 per cent of proceeds from shareholdings, 10 per cent of the fee income of Albis Philanthropie, and from donations.

‘The GR-FONT is not an investment in returns. It is a contribution to a better future.’

Entrepreneurship, quality of life and education

The charitable Transpareo Foundation, seated in Zug, is being established. It promotes entrepreneurship, quality of life and education, and regards acting independently and taking responsibility as the central levers by which people and whole regions improve their circumstances under their own power.

It will hold 51 per cent of the share capital of Transpareo AG. The foundation comes under the Swiss Federal Department of Home Affairs and the Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations (ESA), which ensures that foundation assets are administered and applied in accordance with its purpose.

A first possible focus

Small-scale enterprise will become the principal basis of future income across much of the world. As artificial intelligence permeates almost every area of business, a substantial share of existing jobs will disappear or change fundamentally. This structural shift cannot be stopped, and it falls hardest on developing and emerging economies.

The intention is therefore to support young companies in those countries: repair businesses for physical goods and recycling enterprises in particular:

• Teaching the basics, the know-how and the skills of running a business
• Access to tools, machinery and infrastructure
• Provision of premises
• Loans and start-up funding
• Shared repair and recycling centres

Why company and foundation fit together

The connection is not a construct. It follows from the subject itself.

By law, the Digital Product Passport contains exactly the information a repair business needs: material composition, spare-part availability, repair and recycling instructions.

What European regulation demands of manufacturers is at the same time the tool that makes small-scale repair enterprise possible elsewhere. Through the customers and network of Transpareo AG, worldwide and legally obliged to make their products repairable and recyclable, such partnerships can be set in motion deliberately.

A compliance obligation in Europe becomes a livelihood somewhere else.

For partnerships and donations

Customers and partners of Transpareo AG can contribute directly: with product knowledge, technical training, workshop equipment or contacts to manufacturers. The foundation provides the framework in which entrepreneurial competence, financial support and practical collaboration work together.