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Orsières (Valais, Switzerland) April 2020. Opaline, an original juice production company with high social and environmental standards had begun in 2010. It took founder Sofia de Meyer over 10 years to build a responsible and impactful company aligned with her own aspirations, not just a lifestyle venture but one that would capitalize on her deeply rooted values, shared with many in the valley. Opaline was her experiment to prove to the world that a different type of capitalism was possible, one that put human and environmental aspects where they belonged – at the epicenter of a business revolution. De Meyer had regularly been asked in interviews why Opaline was not trying to grow faster, rather than ensuring that its existing suppliers and distributors developed alongside the company. She always replied by drawing an analogy with a growing forest, in which no tree stood much higher than the others or else it would fall, alone, with the next storm. The analogy proved robust but now a more violent storm – a global pandemic – was brewing that was hurting everyone at once. What would it mean for all the projects the team had set out for 2020? And more fundamentally, could Opaline weather this storm as it had already done several times thanks to its strong ecosystem of partners? Would it pay the price for not having extended its roots deep enough when it could?

FULPMES, AUSTRIA, AUGUST 2021. Sergey Ignatyev, the founder and CEO of Bobsla, had arrived in Austria in 2019 from his native Saint Petersburg, attracted to the country by Startup Tirol, a foundation dedicated to bringing top technology startups to Austria. His revolutionary electric vehicle, a hybrid between a snowmobile and a sled on tracks, had already won multiple prestigious technology and innovation awards and was the talk of the town on European slopes. The list of possible uses was growing every day. At the same time, the quest for investors had proved more arduous than expected. The question now was whether he could salvage his startup and finally turn it into the “Tesla on Snow.” Prototypes were making the rounds between exhibitions and technology fairs already, attracting attention and supportive editorials. The thrill of riding an electric snowmobile at 30 km/h sitting only millimeters above the snow was an incomparable and addictive experience. The hard part now was to define a proper business model (Selling hardware? Organizing events? Licensing the patented technology? B2B or B2C? Austria, US or Canada?) and developing a robust business plan to take the Bobsla to the world’s snowy slopes. Every dimension of the plan needed to be internally consistent and sustainable to make the Bobsla the “Tesla on Snow,” the ideal replacement for the snowmobiles craved by nature lovers around the world but which were actually environmental disasters: noisy, polluting and gas guzzling.