Starmind sets strategic direction for accelerated growth and communicates senior leadership appointments

• The Board of Directors has approved the proposal of CEO Marc Vontobel for the appointment of three new Executive board members
• As of 1 April, 2021, Jetro Capiaghi will serve as Chief Financial Officer, Irfan Cütcu takes up the role of Chief Product Officer and Matthew Swinden assumes responsibility as Chief Human Resources Officer
• In addition to his role of Chairman of the Board of Directors, Andreas Meyer will take on the role of Delegate of the Board to help further develop the market presence and business growth

Zurich, 24 March, 2021 - Driven by a strong market momentum, Starmind AG, one of Europe’s leading tech companies enabling people to build connections within large organizations based on what they know, has reviewed and aligned its strategy. To capture growth in a fast-changing environment, Starmind will use its patented Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to provide future-oriented solutions for organizations that seek to transform the way their employees exchange knowledge outside their direct team and beyond.

Using unique cutting-edge AI to understand which topics are most important, employees are empowered to directly connect to any colleague who knows, regardless of hierarchies, geographies, cultures and languages. This new way of collaboration leads to a significant and measurable productivity increase, while fostering an agile and inclusive culture.

Starmind has built a strong foundation in the past years and is preparing to scale to the next level of growth. The leadership team under CEO Marc Vontobel, together with the Board of Directors of Starmind, has decided on new strategic parameters following a comprehensive market potential analysis over the past few months. The aim of this strategic alignment is to achieve sustainable growth and to future-proof its business model.

Marc Vontobel, Starmind AG CEO, said: “Knowledge is one of the key resources to create value in our economy. The last year has shown how critical collaboration is in an environment that is rapidly changing. Uncovering knowledge in dynamic organizational situations is a key success factor to allow employees to work together beyond their direct team, personal network and organizational silos. With more and more companies establishing new ways of working, our technology can serve as an important enabler for collaboration and knowledge-sharing among employees, and avoids disconnect in a remote working environment. The strategic focus of our company is clear, and I am tremendously proud to be working with a leadership team spanning eight nationalities on the execution of this strategy.”

In addition to his role of Chairman of the Board of Directors, Andreas Meyer will take on the role of Delegate of the Board to help further develop the market presence and business growth in an agile environment that requires faster decision making and increased collaboration across organizational silos.

Commenting on the appointment, Andreas Meyer said:

“When I joined Starmind, I was intrigued by the potential and value its technology can create for employees. Within all the big companies I have worked for, such as ABB, Deutsche Bahn and SBB Swiss Public Railways, I valued the growing importance of using the knowledge and experience within the company for all employees, yet identified a lack of tools available to realize the full potential of people’s knowledge. Starmind clearly unlocks this potential. The development over the last year, during which companies had to reorganize the way in which they work, shows the true potential of Starmind. I am excited that we can embark on the next level of growth.”

To further underline the strategic positioning, the following appointments have been approved by the Board of Directors and are effective as of 1 April 2021:

In his new role as Chief Financial Officer, Jetro Capiaghi will work closely with CEO Marc Vontobel and the Starmind executive team to implement and achieve the company’s business expansion and profitable growth strategy.

Irfan Cütcu, appointed Chief Product Officer, will be responsible for scaling the product team and leading Starmind’s product portfolio.

Starmind strongly believes in maintaining and promoting a scalable, positive, equitable and inclusive culture for its team. This focus is a key enabler in delivering the strategy and positioning Starmind for growth whilst recognising the people that make it possible. To deliver on this promise, Matthew Swinden takes up the role of Chief Human Resources Officer, in which he will play a key role leading the company’s people strategy.

Starmind also welcomes Linda Myburgh to the leadership team. With her background in communications and technology with leading global financial services providers, as Chief of Staff to the CEO, Linda will help strengthen both positioning of the company and leadership as well as day-to-day management of the business.

Key to the company’s continued success is the ability to position the sales team for maximum effectiveness, and Starmind is pleased to confirm Antoine Amiel to the position of Global Head of Sales, recognising his achievements and realising his potential within the team.

Furthermore, Tracey Swanson, Senior Director Marketing and Andra Sas, Global Marketing Director will join the leadership team to drive the next stage of development at Starmind.

Starmind’s patented technology earned numerous international awards in the past years. ZP Europe recently recognized the company as the 2020 HR Innovation Award winner in the Transformation & Consulting category.

About Starmind

In today’s complex world we are faced with an endless search for the right information. Determined to tackle this challenge within the scientific community, two students from the University of Zürich and ETH in Switzerland, founded Starmind. They developed a unique self-learning AI algorithm to uncover knowledge and improve organizational efficiency by busting through complicated and broken corporate processes.

Starmind connects employees with people in their organization who know — across geographical, hierarchical and cultural boundaries. Starmind is a reliable and easy technology that enables employees to access the organization's full knowledge potential, gaining time, productivity, employee satisfaction and wellbeing. This human centric approach is also essential to successfully support remote work forces.

Starmind is fully GDPR compliant, ISO27001 certified and holds the ePrivacy Data Protection Seal.
With customers including PepsiCo, Bank of America, Accenture, Cognizant, Novartis, Roche, Telefónica, Swisscom, Swiss Re, Dräger, Munich Re and Fresenius, Starmind has helped businesses worldwide to realize over $1.4 billion in productivity savings. Over the past 5 years, Starmind has won several awards for its outstanding technology and business impact. These include Deloitte Technology’s Fast 50 Challenge award, Gartner’s Cool Vendor award, Microsoft’s Scale Up award, KMWorld’s 2020 Top 100 Companies and the 2020 HR Innovation Award. The company operates from its offices in Zurich, Frankfurt and New York, supported by Digital+Partners, a leading growth equity investor in B2B technologies.

Contact

For more information please contact Starmind’s press team: 

Starmind Zurich (HQ)
Mühlebachstrasse
162-164, 8008 Zürich,
Switzerland
Tel. +41 58 590 80 00 
E-Mail: press@starmind.com

Appendix

Executive Bios

Marc Vontobel,
Chief Executive Officer

Marc Vontobel is the co-founder and CEO at Starmind. He is a computer scientist turned entrepreneur with a real passion for building high tech companies - which he’s done on multiple occasions from bootstrapping through to double digit million venture capital funding rounds. He is an active member of both the Forbes Technology Council and the Global Panel of the MIT Technology Review. Marc is dedicated to driving forward Starmind’s vision of making collective human intelligence accessible to everyone with the power of AI. Continually fascinated by how technology can bring people together, Marc truly believes that the scale and power of human intelligence is something that’s vastly underestimated within organizations today. In his career, Marc founded several successful start-ups and held a variety of leadership positions. Marc studied Computer Science at the University of Zurich.

Jetro Capiaghi,
Chief Financial Officer 

Irfan Cütcü,
Chief Product Officer

Irfan joined Starmind in 2018 as Head of Product, driving the company’s product department, strategy and growth, setting up the product management team for success and excellence. Previous positions include project management roles at fast growing international internet companies such as Agoda and Trivago. Irfan holds an MBA from Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf and a Master’s degree from ESCP Business School.

Matthew Swinden,
Chief Human Resources Officer

Matthew Swinden joined Starmind in 2020 as VP Talent & Culture in 2020 and has been striving to shape the entrepreneurial culture at Starmind, building successful teams and fostering diversity and equality in the workplace. Prior to joining Starmind, Matthew served as VP People, Places & Culture at Beekeeper, Human Resources Business Partner at UBS and Global Talent Lead and Head of Human Resources Switzerland for Pentair. Matthew holds a Master’s degree in Human Resources Management from the Manchester Metropolitan University.

Linda Myburgh,
Chief of Staff to CEO

As a member of the Leadership Team, Linda leads business planning and operations across the company. On behalf of the CEO, Linda drives alignment across Starmind’s executives and their functions focused on strategy, innovation and leadership. Previously, Linda held the role of Director Marketing and Business at New Life Foundation and prior to that served as Head of Communications at UBS and Zurich Insurance. As an accomplished global communications and business development expert, Linda has delivered innovative and engaging strategies that achieved shifting and lasting impact.

Antoine Amiel,
Global Head of Sales

Antoine Amiel is a proven sales leader with a consistent track record of building and improving high performance sales organizations. Prior to joining Starmind in 2019 as Vice President Sales Europe, Antoine held sales leadership roles in FinTech organizations such as Orange Business Services or FIS.

Tracey Swanson,
Senior Director Marketing

Tracey joined Starmind in October 2019. As a marketing leader, Tracey is a motivational driver developing and executing exceptional market exploration campaigns while leading high-impact, cross-functional marketing teams. Tracey brings over 20 years of marketing experience in IT and will help Starmind extend its footprint in the North American market.

Andra Sas,
Global Marketing Director

Andra Sas is an experienced Marketing Director, driving end-to-end integrated global marketing strategies. Before joining Starmind in 2019, Andra was the Global Head of Customer Lifecycle Marketing for the International Workplace Group IWG based in Barcelona and prior to that, served as Senior Marketing Manager at Veeam Software in Bucharest.