START Business Incubator Zurich was opened May 1999 and has since then nurtured over 90 companies, creating more than 200 new jobs. Net space available for start-ups is 2'500 sqm with an average of about 35 tenants. Annually between 6 and 12 leave the centre and are replaced by new promising start-ups.

Currently START employs 4 people and we offer:

• Pre-incubation services (free consulting, courses and seminars), which are used by about 3'000 participants. The free consulting for potential start-ups is financed by the region, events and seminars by sponsors and participation fees.

• Complete incubation services for the start-ups in the centre (infrastructure, complete business services, targeted coaching and consulting offers for companies, trainings, networking, access to finance, marketing support, events and a semi-annual newsletter.

Interest of Start Business Incubator Zurich is in WP 2, especially Pre-incubation & incubation excellence, where we have first class experience. As a potential user we have an interest in active business idea scouting, an area so far not actively addressed in Switzerland.

We actively participated in the former HIGHEST project via SwissParks.ch, which was associated partner. So, START delivered and analysed data for the international benchmarking model developed by I3P.