Patrick Delarive

Patrick Delarive (b. 1962 in Göteborg, Sweden) is a Swiss serial entrepreneur who moved to Switzerland as a child and started working young — taking on odd jobs from age 12 and beginning a clerical apprenticeship at Banque Populaire Suisse at 16. He spent roughly a decade in banking with Credit Suisse and Citibank in Switzerland and the US, reaching vice-president by age 26 before leaving to build his own ventures.

In 1995 he founded the Delarive Group, which began in asset management and financial brokerage and grew into a holding of around ten companies. Reinvesting wealth-management profits into property launched his real-estate business, which he says accounts for roughly CHF 800 million of developments over two decades (via Chappuis & Delarive SA and Delarive + Associés). His group spans multiple industries: hospitality (the eco-glamping concept Whitepod, acquired 2008, and the Definitely Different hotel group founded in 2022), real estate (the flat-fee brokerage platform Neho), CBD/botanicals (Babylon Sciences / ID Swiss Botanicals), and the Swissvet Group, which consolidates veterinary clinics in French-speaking Switzerland. He also produced Swiss musician Bastian Baker.

Despite not completing traditional schooling, Delarive has held a teaching role at HEC Lausanne and is an associated researcher on managerial innovation and change at ESSEC Business School in Paris (Chaire IMEO). He is also an instrument-rated PC-12 pilot, an ASCA-certified maieutics therapist, a published novelist, and has sat on boards/committees including the Montreux Jazz Festival and Human Rights Watch Geneva.

• Invests as a business angel from his own capital, typically at seed stage, bringing operating and network value rather than acting as an institutional fund.
• Strong affinity for Swiss deep-tech and fintech — his anchor startup bet, Biowatch, was a wrist-vein biometric authentication company.
• Frames his broader philosophy around innovation and challenging the status quo: ESSEC describes him as someone who "systematically questions the status quo through innovation."
• In hospitality he champions "experience as the new luxury" ("L'expérience est le nouveau luxe"), reflecting a preference for differentiated, concept-driven businesses.
• His favorite maxim — "Talent is a gift but success is a profession" — signals a bias toward founders with disciplined execution, not just ideas.