Backed to the Future

Coming to Play

Michael Sidler likes to describe redalpine as a “one-stop shop” for founders. “We don’t only provide money,” he says. “We provide infrastructure, networks, sparring partners, and experience.” It’s a statement that comes to life in the firm’s four  pillars of portfolio success,  providing hands-on support  for founders as they scale their companies. The first focuses on talent: helping founders hire the right people and build complementary teams. The second addresses scalable processes, ensuring that what works for ten employees can also work for a hundred. The third, go-to-market acceleration, brings in operational experts and industry partners. And the fourth deals with key transitions: Fundraising rounds, exits, or large strategic partnerships.

“Many founders do all of this for the first time,” Sidler explains. “We’ve done it hundreds of times. So we can guide them through those transitions with fewer mistakes.” This pragmatic structure defines redalpine’s partnerships. Three stories – Lunaphore, Araris Biotech, and Lakera – show how these playbooks translate from guides to impact.

Lunaphore: The Anatomy of a Dream Team

Sidler calls Lunaphore “probably the best team we’ve ever seen.” The Lausanne-based health-tech company develops ultra-fast tissue-staining and analysis technology that revolutionizes cancer diagnostics. redalpine discovered Lunaphore early- through Venture Kick, a Swiss startup competition that has become a key feeder into the country’s venture ecosystem. “We saw their pitch and immediately recognized something special,” Sidler recalls. “And this is where we can distinguish ourselves from business-only VCs. Thanks to our scientists’ background, weimmediately realized that what they were doing was going to be a game-changer in the industry. They were able to accelerate a crucial process from several hours to ten minutes. And additionally, they found completely new use cases where their technology was applicable.”

What impressed him most was not just the science, but the way the founders- Diego Dupouy, Ata Tuna Ciftlik, and Déborah Heintze- handled growth. “They kept learning,” he says. “Whenever the company faced a new challenge, they adapted, they solved conflicts constructively, and they kept moving forward. It’s very rare.” This is the kind of trajectory Sidler talks about when he mentions extrapolating inflection points into guidance for success.

redalpine’s role went well beyond funding. The firm brought in Zühlke Ventures as an engineering partner to scale the product; structured internal processes for rapid growth; and finally, used its network to find an experienced chairperson from Thermo Fisher Scientific to guide the company toward acquisition readiness. “That’s what we mean when we say we build the puzzle around a company,” Sidler notes. “We bring in the right pieces at the right time.”

The strategy paid off. In 2023, Lunaphore was acquired by the Nasdaq-listed U.S. company Bio-Techne, validating not just the startup’s technology but also redalpine’s long-term partnership model. For Sidler, it remains a benchmark case: “It shows what happens when you combine an exceptional team with the right ecosystem support. You get a world-class outcome. And it stays rooted in Switzerland.”

Araris Biotech – Patience, Platforms, and Billion-Dollar Proof

If Lunaphore illustrates the art of scaling, Araris Biotech embodies scientific patience. The company, a spin-off from the Paul Scherrer Institute and ETH Zurich, developed a proprietary linker platform for antibody-drug conjugates- a complex therapeutic field that targets cancer cells with unprecedented precision. redalpine backed Araris early, drawn to its combination of deep scientific expertise and a management team that had already worked together in academia.

“Araris is a perfect example of experienced founders turning cutting-edge research into a business,” Sidler says. Unlike consumer startups, biotech ventures require years of testing before a product ever meets a customer. “You can’t rush the science,” he adds. “But you can make sure the team has the oxygen to breathe while they build.”

That patience was rewarded. In March 2024, Araris Biotech was acquired by a Japanese pharmaceutical group for USD 1.14 billion, one of the largest exits ever achieved by a Swiss biotech startup. 

Read more about Dragan Grabulovski, Founder and CEO of Araris Biotech in our dedicated Success Story.

Lakera – When Growth Means Leaving Home

The story of Lakera brings Sidler’s philosophy on internationalization into sharp focus. Lakera develops trust-and-safety infrastructure for AI systems- a response, he says, to one of the most underestimated risks in technology today. redalpine supported the company not only with capital but also with setting up its U.S. subsidiary and relocating the CEO to Silicon Valley.

redalpine’s U.S. presence made this possible. A full-time partner in San Francisco  works with founders as they enter new markets- navigating legal structures, hiring, and early customers. “Our job,” Sidler explains, “is to make sure the transition is smooth, so the founder can focus on building rather than bureaucracy.”

Lakera’s expansion shows how redalpine’s fourth pillar, navigating key transitions, works in practice. It’s not just about exits; it’s about moving from local to global. “Swiss founders have an advantage,” Sidler says. “Our domestic market is so small that they think internationally from day one. That DNA makes them perfect for global scale.”

Partnership as an Operating System

Lunaphore, Araris, and Lakera span health-tech, biotech, and AI- three industries with little in common except redalpine’s method. In each case, Sidler and his team acted as co-builders: supplying talent networks, operational frameworks, and strategic guidance through every stage of growth. Their involvement blurs the boundary between investor and partner, replacing the old VC archetype of “money and monitoring” with something more systemic.

“We live with our companies,” Sidler says simply. “That’s what makes venture capital worth doing.”