A Matter of Scale

The Corporate Paradox

Olivier Laplace has sat in every seat at the table. He has been the engineer building the product, the banker structuring the product, the corporate strategist buying the product, and now, the VC funding the product.

This 360-degree view offers him a rare clarity on the structural differences between Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) and independent VC. Having built the CVC arm at Swiss Post and navigated the internal politics of Kudelski, Laplace is candid about the limitations of the corporate checkbook.

This distinction – between Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) and independent VC – is often lost on early-stage founders, especially in Switzerland.

“There is huge diversity in corporate VCs, but founders don’t realize it,” Laplace warns. “They see a brand name and they pitch. But they should be doing due diligence on the money.”

Laplace describes a spectrum of corporate capital. On one end, you have the “Single LP” model, like Swisscom Ventures. They have a corporate backer (Swisscom), but they operate with the autonomy and financial discipline of a traditional fund. On the other end, you have what Laplace calls “Pre-M&A” – teams like Migros’ former Sparrow Ventures, where the investment is essentially a down payment on a future acquisition.

“When you speak to a corporate VC, you need to know: Are you talking to an independent decision-maker, or do you need the signature of a Business Unit manager?” Laplace asks. “If you need a Business Unit approval, you are entering a world of politics.”

At Swiss Post Ventures, Laplace fought to secure a model that sat in the sweet spot: strategic relevance, but operational autonomy. “We invested in cybersecurity and drones before the Post knew they needed them,” he says. “My job wasn’t to buy companies for today; it was to find the technology that would matter in ten years.”

The “Five Weeks of Vacation” Fallacy

If the source of capital matters, the expectations attached to it matter more. Laplace is blunt about the “contract” a founder signs when they take venture money.

“There is a time value of money,” he says. “Your investors are expecting you to work like crazy to bring back that return.”

He draws a sharp line between the growth expectations of a CVC versus a VC. A corporate investor might be satisfied if a startup survives, provides strategic insight, and returns 2-3x the capital. They are playing a strategic game. A VC is playing a mathematical one.

“When we do an investment, we ask: Can this single company pay back the entire fund?” Laplace explains. “If the answer is no, it’s not a VC case.”

This leads to his most uncompromising piece of advice for Swiss founders, who sometimes struggle to shed the employee mindset: “If you want your five weeks of holiday and you want to keep all your weekends… do not raise venture capital. Probably do not even raise corporate capital. Don’t raise money at all.”

Coalition of the Willing

Olivier Laplace is candid about the “secret sauce” behind Vi Partners’ enviable list of Limited Partners. When asked how the firm gained the trust of giants like ABB, Hilti, Nestlé, and Schindler, he is very direct:

“We got lucky,” he says. “Let’s be clear.”

That luck had a name: Thomas Knecht. In the year 2000, Knecht was the Managing Partner of McKinsey Switzerland. He possessed a vision that predated the current hype cycle by two decades – a vision of a “Deep Tech Nation” before the term existed.

“Knecht decided to set up a fund called Venture Incubator,” Laplace explains. “He convinced the Dean of ETH and many major corporates to jump on board and finance Swiss innovation.”

It was a moment of industrial alignment that is hard to replicate today. It was a coalition of the willing, driven by a charismatic leader who could walk into a boardroom and convince captains of industry to bet on the future.

The 25-Year Pitch

But if the initial trust was a product of “right place, right time, right person,” keeping that trust for a quarter of a century has been a matter of discipline.

“What is more important than convincing them initially is to convince them all along the journey,” Laplace notes.

Venture capital is usually a transient business. LPs come and go based on the vintage. Yet, nearly 25 years later, Vi Partners has managed to retain the support of its original backers: ABB, Hilti, Bühler, Schindler, Nestlé, and Suva.

Laplace points specifically to Marco Meyrat, member of the board of directors of Hilti AG and a Trustee of the Martin Hilti Family Trust, and Vi Partners’ own Chairman, as a cornerstone of this continuity. “He is a super big supporter because he sees what we’ve been doing for the Swiss ecosystem for the past 25 years. He wants the story to continue.”

Vi-26: The Dual Engine

This institutional trust has culminated in the firm’s latest milestone. At the time of writing, Vi Partners is executing the first close of Vi-26, a new fund with a target size of CHF 150 million.

The thesis is precise: Digitize the sectors where Switzerland already holds a structural global advantage. The fund employs a Dual-Pillar Strategy, balancing its allocation between Technology (Enterprise SaaS, AI, Industrial Tech) and Healthcare (Healthtech, Biotech, Medtech).

“We are looking for the next generation of leaders in healthcare, finance, and precision manufacturing,” the firm states. The strategy acts as a hedge: Tech offers rapid scaling and high beta; Healthcare offers binary outcomes decoupled from economic cycles.

The fund will deploy roughly 60% of its capital in Switzerland and 40% across selected European innovation hubs. This geographical split acknowledges a reality Laplace deals with daily: Switzerland is a powerhouse of innovation, but scaling often requires a European runway.