Wingman Campus Fund welcomes new portfolio companies

With the two latest investments made in Ascento Robotics and We Play Sport, the Wingman Campus Fund continues to grow – both the portfolio and the team. This week 14 new students joined the Fund’s partner team, embarking on a one-year journey to explore the startup culture.

Student entrepreneurs from ETH Zurich, EPFL and the University of St. Gallen can apply for the Wingman Campus Fund (WCF) to receive a CHF 20’000 investment and access to experienced mentors to help them accelerate their development. Most recent additions to the portfolio include Ascento Robotics from the ETH and sportstech startup We Play Sport from the EPFL.

Ascento Robotics a RaaS (robot-as-a-service) startup that builds and rents two-legged robots that make on-site security cheaper and more efficient for companies. The company’s product Ascento Pro combines the best of two worlds: It uses the versatility of legs to overcome stairs and obstacles and wheels for a fast, energy- and cost-efficient locomotion. This makes the platform the ideal mobile robot for real-world deployment for many applications such as 3D scanning to create digital twins of facilities, security and structure assessment.

We Play Sport is an AI-based consumer app that lets anyone capture and watch the highlights of amateur games from a wide range of sports, starting with water polo. The app offers professional sports broadcasting features and builds a sporting archive for teams and athletes that have never had one. We Play Sport automates the curation of the captured raw video footage so that the players, their friends and family can relive, share, and discuss the game’s best moments on a social platform. The platform is currently being used in North America, the UK, France, Switzerland, Spain, Taiwan, and New Zealand.

A new partner team takes on new roles
The WCF was established in 2021 to educate students from Swiss campuses and support entrepreneurs to disrupt the startup culture on campuses, produce the next generation of tech leaders, and create more value for society. Every semester, WCF onboards new students onto its Partner teams. This semester, 14 additional Partners — 8 female and 6 male & high potential students from ETH Zürich (ETHZ), EPFL and the University of St. Gallen (HSG) joined the team.

As part of a 1-year fellowship in a program that sits at the frontier between a talent accelerator and a student-run VC, the 14 students will be trained by Wingman Ventures and tier-one European VCs and will be responsible for finding and selecting the 20 startups that Wingman Campus Fund intends to support with initial capital and mentoring in Fall 2022 and Spring 2023.

(RAN)