Updates / 4 October 2026
Half of new Swiss companies close within five years. Here is why.
My first study: what official data says about which companies survive, and why money and location matter less than you think.
Switzerland creates more companies every year. But only half of them are still alive five years later.
I wanted to know why, so I built a research project from scratch: official data from the Federal Statistical Office (BFS) and the Swiss Venture Capital Report, cleaned in Python and analysed in Power BI.
Three things surprised me
Zug founds the most companies and keeps the fewest. It creates 13.7 new companies per 1,000 residents, about 2.5 times Zurich. Yet only 46.8% survive five years, the lowest of the five cantons I compared.
Money does not explain survival. Lucerne receives almost no venture capital and survives as well as Zurich. I expected the opposite.
How you start matters more than where. One-person starts survive 49%. Companies that start with 10 or more employees survive 68%.
What it means
The survivors start with a team, enter a market with a real barrier or stable demand, and keep their early bets small and reversible.
The full study covers eight sectors, the role of AI, scenarios to 2030 and recommendations for founders, investors and cantons.