Foundation Report August 2023: Loss and profit go hand in hand
In August 2023, a total of 3688 new companies were founded in Switzerland, which means there were 13.67% fewer startups than last month. But compared to August 2022, there were 7.56% more startups.
2023 vs. 2022
Looking at the 7.56% increase from August 2022 to August 2023, the question is how 2023 compares to last year. 2023 has 34506 startups on record so far and last year had 32872 startups in the same time period (January to August). Thus, the value of 2023 is 4.97% higher than that of last year.
French-speaking Switzerland cracks the 1000 mark
With 1059 new start-ups, French-speaking Switzerland continued to lead the regions. However, it also suffered a loss. In July, it still showed 1184 start-ups, resulting in 10.56% more new companies than in August. Vaud was the canton with the highest number of start-ups with 414 new companies, losing only 5.48 percentage points compared to the previous month and increasing the number of start-ups by 21.76% compared to last year. The canton of Geneva caused a surprise with its 328 start-ups, as the result was 38.98% higher than last month.
Zurich gets a head start
In the canton of Zurich, there were 765 foundations in the summer month, showing a decrease of 5.09% compared to last month. However, last year only 662 new companies were founded. Therefore, there was a growth of 15.56% in this comparison. No other region managed to achieve such a high lead this month compared to last year.
Northwestern Switzerland in second place by a hair’s breadth
With 775 startups, Northwestern Switzerland landed in second place. However, the former lead over Zurich was thus barely there. Compared to the previous month, a loss of 21.08% was recorded and compared to August 2022, 10.40% was gained. In Central Switzerland, the decrease from July to August looked similar, as 19.84% less was founded and August consequently achieved a total of 501 new companies. This represented a slight growth of 1.38 percentage points compared to last year.
Ticino at the bottom
Ticino again brought up the rear in August, with 135 start-ups. This result corresponded to a decrease of 17.68% to the 164 start-ups that there were in July. Last year, 14.56% more new companies were founded in the region, making Ticino the only region to achieve a year-on-year loss. Eastern Switzerland was also among the weaker regions in terms of start-ups, with 453 new ventures. The difference compared to the previous month was -11.35% and +5.59% compared to last August.
Outlook
After the slump from June to July, there was a further contraction in August, which was, however, to be expected due to the development of the previous years. Based on prior year data, a slight increase is expected for the month of September. The comparison of 2023 to 2022 leaves us positive as there was an increase of 4.97%. We are curious to see what the fall months will bring.
