I know it’s weird to ask, but I’m looking for a guarantee for my Swiss visa. I have money, but it’s not enough, and I also don’t want to misuse the guarantee. I don’t ask him/her for money; only guarantee me to get my visa for this academic position I got offered. It’s a life-and-death matter for me. I even joined a website that offers sugar daddies, but it’s not who I am. I’m just looking for someone to invest in me, and I will repay in the future with my start-up or money.
I suggest you start with friends, family, investors or get a loan.
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My dad is not in Switzerland but has assets, apartments, houses, stores, and land. Do you think the embassy would accept that instead of money in a bank account?
If you want someone to invest in you, paying back with a startup is probably the most risky investment they’d ever make. If you still insist, you would be best served by putting together a business plan that tells the investor how your startup will fight these statistics. (And I’ve worked with startups, including my own, for 30 years.)
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What exactly are you hoping that a bunch of complete strangers will guarantee you?
Obviously money is involved. How much and what would make that guarantee become payable??
I totally agree with you but, I don’t mean to start it that soon. The thing is this kind of research (bioengineering in particular gene therapy) is my dream field (also the delivery part) and the lab that offered me position is working on my favorite disease too, so I truly don’t want to lose it. And then I was thinking of applying for another master’s there and use the opportunity of turning my thesis to start up idea(EPFL and ETH has such thing). Or, applying for my beloved lab in another university in which the lab director has his own start up with some of his lab members and vast my knowledge, learn the tricks to start my own.
So, right now I don’t have precise business plan (the field grows so fast) and I want it to be multinational and focused to treat disease (eye diseases, genetic based or diabetic related) in Asia and middle east, cause they don’t have enough access to these kind of next generation therapies. I have plan to raise fund from UAE or Saudi Arabia too.
Basically, it’s a long way and I’m struggling in the first step. How can I find a person who invest in me? Now when I give more thoughts on it, it’s crazy:)). But don’t want him/her to pay me at all, cause the university has hosting houses and I can deal with food with my saving, just the embassy part…
About startup failure, I think it’s important to start with a strong group. A known lab, professor and having connections would help. This is not for sure but the start-ups I follow and were build in this way are kinda successful. Can I ask what was your startup focused on and why it didn’t work?
If you are offered an academic position, there is no need for a financial guarantee, your work contract is the guarantee…
If it is for studies and you pay yourself, they need to see the 20k chf per year to cover the fees+living; if you don’t have that you have to consider cheaper places. Yes they accept the parent’s fortune abroad. It is not an admin thing to just sign a paper, it is a pragmatic evaluation of how much you will pay here.
Also you need to look for scholarships (in Switzerland or your home country) if you are as good as you claim you should have no problem. The visa at the embassy is really the last step in the process.
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Oh, it’s working quite well–our pharma security company is over 15, but it’s been a long slog because we didn’t want investors eating up our shares (which they will demand–VCs are the worst). Because of that, we still operate like a startup–mean and lean. Before that, I worked with about 20+ university-based startups, helping them to refine their business plans and out-license technology that wasn’t central to their business. It is not a place for the naive. BTW, no lab boss with his own (competing) startup is gonna want you anywhere near.
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Yeh! A bit late for a Friday thread.
This sounds like a Nigerian 419-style scam. It usually starts with “no money needed, just be a guarantor” and then gradually shifts toward investment schemes, crypto, and similar pitches. Be careful, everyone.
On a related note, a friend of mine bought something on Ricardo/FB Marketplace last year and paid via Twint, but the item never showed up. He filed a police report, and months later the seller was caught. The court eventually sentenced him to two years in prison — he was an immigrant from one of the Balkan countries.
As it turned out, he’d been contacted by a group on WhatsApp promising him millions of francs. In exchange, he had to open bank accounts and hand over the online banking credentials to this group. Over time, he opened dozens of accounts and passed along the login details. The gang then used these accounts to run scams through Ricardo/FB Marketplace, collecting victims’ payments, shuffling the money between accounts, and eventually wiring it out to Africa — hundreds of thousands of francs in total. Not clear how much he personally got out of it, but it’s hard to imagine what he was thinking, handing his banking access to strangers like that. Probably figured he’d hit the Nigerian-prince jackpot, ha.
It also strikes me as odd that Switzerland doesn’t seem to catch these suspicious accounts more effectively. Why would banks let some random guy open dozens of accounts in the first place? And shouldn’t there be safeguards to flag or block money being shuffled around and then wired out of the country like that? Just seems like a gap somewhere.