Two years ago, ETH spin-off Seervision presented at the Bergos event Next weekend. The company has now achieved an “exit” and has been acquired by a US company.
Eugen Stamm
Exit study: How Seervision got acquired by California-based audio company QSC
How the idea was born
The idea of Seervision was born during a lecture at ETH Zurich. Nikos Kariotoglou was pursuing a Ph.D. within the Automatic Control Laboratory. Professor John Lygeros made a joke about the camera system in the room, which was tracking the motions of the lecturer, but too slowly. “I’m sure you could do a better job than this,” he joked.
Nikos didn’t just laugh. He took it to heart.
Together with a colleague, he took a couple of video cameras, developed the mathematical models that underlie autonomous systems, and programmed the software for the prototype. That was the idea on which the company Seervision was established in 2016.
Today, the system is used in meeting rooms, lecture halls, studios, and other spaces to enable hybrid collaboration and simplify audio-visual operations.
It allows autonomous control of multiple cameras with smooth, broadcast-quality motions.
In June, Seervision announced an agreement to join Q-SYS, a division of QSC LLC. The acquisition by Q-SYS represents an exciting milestone for Seervision, as it opens up new opportunities to further expand the reach of its AI-driven camera automation software solutions, delivering innovative and transformative AV experiences to customers worldwide.
Why exits matter
High-growth technology and science startups are funded by business angels and venture capital firms over many years and several financing rounds. In Seervision’s case, Verve’s investor network first invested in Seervision’s Seed round in 2018 and then again in their next financing round in 2021.
Eventually, the shareholders of startup companies “exit”. This means that they receive money for their shares either through the process of an initial public offering (IPO) on a stock exchange or from a so-called trade sale, as in this case, when the startup gets bought by another company.
Exits are important because they allow startup investors to realize the value of their holdings and achieve a return on their investments. The cash the investors receive often gets recycled back into other venture deals and fuels new investments. On the individual company level, an exit is a sign that a startup is mature, successful and valuable enough for a buyer (be it a corporation or the wider public in the case of an IPO).
Aggregated, the number and size of exits are an indication of the strength of a startup ecosystem and its ability to produce, nurture and grow exciting and fast-growing companies.
High exit proceeds do not only enrich a few founders and investors. They strengthen an ecosystem by providing a bigger stock of risk-seeking capital that will benefit the next generation of founders.
Successful exits also have an intangible value, inspiring budding entrepreneurs to try their luck. Every exit transports the message that you can succeed if you try hard enough. Really big exits make headlines around the world.
Exists take time
According to data of Swiss exits that Verve has collected, half of the startups that exit do so faster than 6 years from their incorporation and half take longer, sometimes much longer.
Looking more closely at the numbers reveals that biotech and hardware companies take slightly longer to mature (with a median of 7 years) than software companies. This intuitively makes sense. Software startups can move quicker than startups that need to go through many iterations until their product is ready or need to follow a regulatory path with clinical trials.
The takeaway for investors is that you need a lot of patience, let’s say, a time horizon of 10 years, if you invest very early.
If that’s excessive stoicism to you, you could consider investing in later financing rounds that are closer to a potential exit. However, such rounds are much more
difficult to access as a private investor.
Eugen Stamm joined Verve Ventures in 2018 and covers startups and investment topics. He has invested in more than 30 startups and joined the board of directors of a fintech startup. Eugen has more than a decade of experience in financial journalism (including working for Neue Zürcher Zeitung) and wrote a book about family governance. He is an official partner of Bergos AG.
Bergos is not responsible for the content of the guest article and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bergos and the statements expressed herein do not constitute investment advice. Investments in Start Ups are risky and are only available for qualified investors.