The Story Behind Citrix Secure Developer Spaces: Dr. Laurent Balmelli on How Secure Developer Platforms Get Built, Swiss Innovation & the Start-Up Mindset

What does it take to build secure developer platforms in a world defined by cloud computing, speed, and constant technological acceleration? In this interview, Dr. Laurent Balmelli—General Manager of Citrix Secure Developer Spaces—reflects on a career that spans cutting-edge research, global corporate leadership, and entrepreneurship. Trained at the height of the telecommunications boom and shaped by the intellectual cultures of Bell Labs and IBM Research in New York and Tokyo, Balmelli has spent more than two decades moving between ideas and execution, from academia to start-ups later acquired by Snapchat and Citrix. Today, operating at the intersection of cloud-native development, intellectual property protection, and organizational efficiency, he shares why leadership rarely follows a predictable rhythm, how storytelling functions as a core operational tool rather than a marketing exercise, and what academic rigor still offers in an age of AI-generated code. Central to his approach is persuasion—grounded in clarity rather than manipulation—which he views as one of the most underappreciated capabilities in building resilient technology companies and cultivating a distinctly Swiss-inspired entrepreneurial mindset. Part of The Persuasive Discourse interview series The Story Behind, this conversation offers practical insights for builders, leaders, and early-career professionals navigating the future of software.

Coming Soon: Ep. 15

Interview by Sorina I. Crisan – Matthey de l’Endroit, PhD

Illustration: Dr. Laurent Balmelli giving the keynote address during the 143rd SICTIC Investor Day on September 4, 2025, at the unlimitrust campus, Lausanne, Switzerland. Photo by Dr. Sorina Matthey de l'Endroit.

I. Citrix Secure Developer Spaces & the Role of a General Manager

Question 1: What are Citrix and Secure Developer Spaces (formerly known as Strong Network)?

Answer: Citrix is a company that provides secure remote access to computing resources. For me, it has always been something of a mythical company, because I’ve known about Citrix since I first started working with computers.

What we’ve created at Citrix actually stems from a startup I founded in 2020. Citrix Secure Developer Spaces is designed to give developers access to an environment that is truly suited for modern development. Today, that means development that is largely cloud-native and web-based. The overall idea is to provide not only strong security, but also alignment with the processes most teams now use for efficient code development—what we commonly refer to as DevOps, a contraction of development and operations. That is essentially the goal of the platform we created, which is called Citrix Secure Developer Spaces, or SDS.

Question 2: And what is your current job?

Answer: My current role is general manager for that platform.

The goal is to align everything—from business outcomes like customer adoption, to the engineering effort required to build the product, to the product management work that supports those goals. In many ways, it’s like managing a small company within Citrix.

Citrix isn’t organized around a series of independent general managers in the traditional sense. Instead, each product is managed holistically. The general manager is responsible not only for business outcomes, but also for technical outcomes.

Question 3: Is it fair to say that there really is no such thing as a typical day for you and that it changes depending on the needs of the business?

Answer: Let’s put it this way: whatever improves the business outcome tends to define my day.

In practice, that might mean working through alignment issues with the product, making sure we’re delivering the right message to customers, or ensuring that our teams in the field are operating as efficiently as possible—based on how we believe a salesperson should engage with a customer. So my “typical day” can be almost anything.

To clarify, the role of a general manager is to coordinate, but also to be extremely hands-on—at least, that’s the approach I take. I believe that if you’re not hands-on, it’s very difficult to understand the real struggles and needs of each function. For example, if I don’t understand the product in detail—especially the new features we need to build, how the market is evolving, or how we compare to competitors—it becomes much harder to be effective.

It is important to note that there’s always a balance between staying hands-on and creating concrete artifacts. That could mean preparing an analyst briefing, working on the design of a specific feature, or making sure we have the right approach with a particular customer.

In short, anything that helps move the business forward is my daily job and a “typical day.”

Question 4: You mentioned the importance of having the right message for the customer. What do you mean by that?

Answer: I think it really comes down to storytelling, especially in a role like that of the general manager. In some ways, it’s similar to the role of a founder, though not exactly the same, because you have to be able to create a clear narrative around your product.

Every product has a story. That story needs to be well understood and clearly articulated. Customers will naturally ask questions like: What does your product actually do? Why do you believe this product has no equal? Why is it the right choice for our business? And those answers need to be crystal clear.

At the same time, we need to keep in mind that the message is never completely static because it constantly evolves. As a product matures, the messaging tends to settle. But in emerging markets, that process takes longer.

For example, with Secure Developer Spaces, we’re operating in what is still an emerging market. It’s becoming clearer to customers what the business benefits are, but there’s still a strong need to articulate and explain the value that our products can bring to them. When I was at IBM, we used to say that part of our job was also to educate the market. And, that idea still holds true today and I believe that it applies to almost any product.

Question 5: Can you give an example of the kind of product that could be built using Secure Developer Spaces within the finance sector?

Answer: In finance, a lot of value is tied to how you solve a problem. That solution might take the form of an algorithmic approach to predicting or assessing the value of a security or determining how and when to trade it. At the same time, you might also need to be focused on maximizing profit around a specific transaction involving that security. These are the kinds of problems investment managers deal with, as well as investment banks that rely heavily on algorithmic support.

And the aforementioned examples are good illustrations of products that can be built using Secure Developer Spaces. The intellectual property behind these solutions is extremely valuable, so it’s critical that developers working on them can protect that IP. That’s a very typical use case for Secure Developer Spaces. In other words, you can think of it as an enclave, or an environment where developers can create something that delivers real business value, while ensuring that value is protected at the same time.

II. Citrix’s Global Positioning & Partner-Led Business Model

Question 6: Citrix serves customers around the world. How do you go about serving such a broad market?

Answer: Citrix has customers globally and optimizes its business by working closely with partners. It has been extremely successful in carefully prioritizing which customers are served directly and which are better supported through its local partners.

For example, Citrix will work directly with customers that have large, complex needs, and who are investing significant amounts in the platform. At the same time, there’s an entire ecosystem of smaller companies that also benefit from our technology and these are often better served by our partners who can operate at a more granular, local scale. You can think of our partners essentially as being ‘boots on the ground’. A smaller company example might be that of an SME, or a local company with only a few hundred employees, that also requires the same core technology as one of our larger customers. In those cases, our partners are often better positioned to provide smaller companies with direct support.

Therefore, Citrix segments the market, by working hand in hand with partners to ensure that every customer is supported in the most effective way.

III. From Academia to Industry: The Value of a PhD

Question 7: Based on what you’re describing, your current role sounds extremely complex. I’d like to step back and look a bit at your background and education. What path did you take?

Answer: I earned my PhD in 2000. If you step back about twenty-five years, to the late 1990s and early 2000s, a lot was happening in the world of communications. Mobile communications were emerging, and network infrastructures were rapidly evolving toward fiber optics and similar technologies. There was massive investment in infrastructure during that period, which—incidentally—eventually contributed to the dot-com crash. We built far more capacity than was needed at the time, although that capacity was ultimately put to use later on.

At the time, communication systems were very much a trending field of study. The focus was on mobile communications and network communications more broadly. I studied computer science at EPFL and received my engineering diploma in 1996.

After that, I had the opportunity to pursue a PhD in communication systems. Back then, it wasn’t yet a full department at EPFL—it was a division, connected to electrical engineering. It eventually became its own department, but back then it was still emerging.

My PhD work focused mainly on optimizing three-dimensional models. To clarify, think of the kinds of models used in computer graphics or gaming consoles. Together with my advisor, I took a mathematical approach to the problem. We asked how these representations could be optimized so they would be more efficient to render, communicate, and ultimately use. That work took about four years, and I completed my PhD in 2000.

Question 8: After completing a PhD, did you notice transferable skills between academia and your first job?

Answer: Yes, absolutely. For me, the biggest benefit of doing a PhD was developing a rigorous approach to problem-solving. In particular, it taught me how to structure answers to any complex questions. And, I don’t think there’s a single day when I don’t apply that structured approach. When I’m asked a question, my instinct is to start by asking: What is the state of the art? What has already been done? And what could be done differently?

One of the most important lessons of a PhD is learning how to ask the right question before trying to find an answer. If the question isn’t relevant, the answer won’t be very useful. And I do not claim that every PhD is useful, but it can be useful to you if you start by asking: What is the right question to ask? Then you work toward an answer. And even if your answer isn’t ultimately the best one, a well-formulated question can still have a lot of value because sometimes someone else will come along later and solve it. To me, that’s a real PhD.

Question 9: Do you think a PhD is necessary in the field you’re working in today?

Answer: It depends on what you do and what your expectations are. I don’t think a PhD is strictly necessary. People can absolutely develop a structured approach to problem-solving without one. That said, I do think it helps to have PhD because it can give you tools that make it easier to find your way through complex problems, especially when it comes to creativity. And, creativity, like anything else, has to be trained.

A PhD gives you the confidence to say, “This doesn’t quite make sense,” or, “There might be another way to approach this.” Without that kind of training, it can be harder to feel confident when you present an answer that isn’t perfect but is thoughtfully constructed. Even if it’s not the final or correct answer, you know it wasn’t produced in five minutes. There’s structure behind it. There’s substance. And I think that’s one of the lasting values of doctoral training.

IV. A Global Career & Cultural Adaptation:

Learning Across the U.S., Japan, & Switzerland

Question 10: After you finished your PhD, you started working at IBM in New York. From what I’ve read, that seems like a pivotal moment. Was it?

Answer: I was already in New York for part of my PhD. I was fortunate that my advisor had a relationship with Bell Labs, which at the time was owned by Lucent Technologies. Bell Labs was—and still is—a mythical place. It’s where the telephone was invented, and historically it was home to a remarkable concentration of PhDs in physics and several Nobel Prize winners. It was a very special environment. And, I was lucky enough to work there for a little over a year, as an intern. After that, I returned to Switzerland for a few months to wrap up my thesis.

When I started looking for my first job, the timing worked in my favor, because it was 1999, and there were many opportunities in the U.S. for people with PhDs and advanced technical education. There was strong demand for engineers, especially in research labs. So, I received several offers. One of them came from someone I had met at Bell Labs who had moved to IBM Research in New York. That’s the offer I eventually accepted. I also had an offer on the West Coast, at HP Research. But I felt the East Coast was more my style, so I moved to New York and started working at IBM.

In retrospect, that was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Moving to the U.S. and working in New York was very different from the environment I knew in Switzerland, and it gave me an incredible amount of experience.

Question 11: I also saw that you worked in Japan afterward. How did that experience compare to New York?

Answer: Japan came as a huge opportunity. I had been fascinated by Japan since I was a kid. I loved Japanese cartoons, robots, and the whole technological imagination associated with Japan. It really resonated with me, so when the opportunity came up, I thought, why not?

There was an opening with a team in Japan that felt like exactly what I was looking for. In 2006, I moved there with my wife—I was already married at the time—and continued working at IBM Research, this time at the Tokyo Research Lab. I spent five years in Japan.

In terms of experience, it was completely different from New York, especially culturally. Japan is not an easy place to adjust to—there’s a lot of adaptation required to truly fit into the culture. For example, IBM Japan, despite being part of a global company, is very much a Japanese company. That’s something they even say themselves: “It’s IBM, but it’s Japan.” Things are definitely done differently. And, from a customer perspective, the experience was excellent. I was able to work closely with customers there, and once again, the cultural differences were very clear. There was a lot of learning.

Question 12: When you compare team dynamics across the U.S., Switzerland, and Japan, what stands out to you?

Answer: There are patterns.

In the U.S., there’s a strong culture of openness and, in research, in particular, there tends to be less red tape.

In Japan, I encountered more of what’s often called a “not invented here” mentality. Teams were sometimes uncomfortable adopting technologies or early-stage products that didn’t originate within the Japanese team—even if those ideas came from elsewhere within the same company, in this case IBM. And that’s not unique to IBM Japan. You see similar dynamics at other Japanese companies, like Sony. It’s a broader cultural pattern.

Switzerland is harder for me to describe in this context, because I never worked in research there. All my work experience in Switzerland is around entrepreneurship. But I can say that the way communication, research, and the transfer of products from the lab to the customer work is very different from what I experienced in Japan or the U.S.

V. Entrepreneurship & the Start-Up Mindset

Question 13: I’d like to pivot to your experience with entrepreneurship. From what we’ve discussed so far, it feels like all of this set the groundwork for you to eventually create something on your own. What was that journey like, and what did you build as a startup?

Answer: My move into entrepreneurship came from the realization that my time at IBM was coming to an end. I had spent about twelve years there, and I started asking myself what else I could do and how much more I could really grow in that environment. I was also approaching my forties. When I left IBM, I was around 39, and I thought: Why not try something on my own? It was something I had been tempted to do before, but like any cocoon you get comfortable in, it’s hard to step out.

You see this in academia as well. Many people finish a PhD but never really leave the university—they stay on as collaborators, researchers, or under whatever title is available. And you see the same thing in large companies. You stay for a long time, life is comfortable, and you focus on surviving each round of job cuts. You dodge one, and you think: OK, I’ll stay a bit longer.

At some point, though, I think it’s healthy to take a chance and just go for it. And for me, that first entrepreneurial experience was truly life changing. When I left IBM, I was convinced that this was the right next step. Then, two or three months later, I remember thinking: Oh no, what did I do? Was this really a good idea? But you must adapt. One of the first things you gain when you jump out of the boat is that you get used to uncertainty. And whether you succeed or not, that’s already something valuable.

Question 14: That brings us to the topic of team-building, and I know that many people struggle with that part. How important is it to create a team early on as an entrepreneur?

Answer: I completely agree, it’s a critical step. Building a team is always going to be one of the defining aspects of a company, and also one of the defining skills of an entrepreneur.

In my case, with my first company, Strong Code, the team came together in a particular way. I met a group of people who already had an idea, or more precisely, an MVP. And at the time, we weren’t sure it was viable to bring a prototype to the market. But after having moved back to Switzerland—after leaving Japan and IBM—this opportunity simply came up, and in that situation, the team was more or less imposed on me. These people contacted me, and I often describe it like being dealt a hand of cards. Those are the cards you have, and now you have to play them as well as you can.

If you’re lucky, things go well. If you’re unlucky, they don’t. But either way, it really puts your managerial skills to the test: your ability to build consensus, to motivate people, and to calm tensions. So even when you don’t have the luxury of choosing your team, those soft skills become extremely critical.

Question 15: On September 4, 2025, during SICTIC’s Investor Day keynote address, you said something that really stuck with me: “A startup isn’t a job, it’s a vocation.” Can you expand on that mindset?

Answer: Yes, absolutely. A creative startup requires a huge amount of energy. It also brings a lot of doubt, and it demands an intense level of focus.

There are so many things converging toward a single goal—to simply make sure the thing works—that you need to be extremely motivated. So, a vocation is something you don’t have to remind yourself of when you wake up in the morning. You don’t ask: Why am I doing this? You just know: This is what I’m made for.

That doesn’t mean you have to do everything. I don’t believe you need to be a Swiss Army knife, you can’t do everything. For example, you might be the person who creates the product, or the one who sells it, or the one who leads engineering. And that is why I strongly believe that building a startup is not a one-person show. It’s a combination of complementary skills. And for that reason, choosing the right people—when you have the chance to do so—matters enormously.

VI. The Role of Persuasion & Storytelling in Product & Company Building

Question 16: My work focuses on persuasion across different fields, so I’d like to ask: How do you define persuasion, and what role does it play in your work?

Answer: Persuasion is a key skill when you’re building a company. And there are many forms of persuasion.

The first one is storytelling. If you can’t craft a narrative around your product—and also around the company—you’re going to struggle. And those are two different things. A narrative about the product alone isn’t enough.

For example, when you’re at a company like Citrix, you build a narrative around the product to motivate your team. But in a startup, those two narratives often blur together, because the product is the company. Most startups focus on a single product, not a portfolio, so the identity of the company and the identity of the product are essentially the same.

At the root of persuasion is the ability to create that narrative. Of course, you need to be convinced yourself first, but you also need to convince others. And there are many stakeholders that you need to convince of your product: your employees, who need to follow you and understand the urgency; your customers, who need to believe that this is the product they need and that it will help them make progress. And, that sense of progress is fundamental to product adoption. This is because we adopt products when they allow us to do something useful, something we couldn’t do before.

And second, persuasion is unavoidable in sales: How do you sell something if you can’t persuade someone?

For example, before my second startup, I read Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. I recommend it to everyone. Even though it was written some time ago, it’s still incredibly relevant. It offers concrete examples of how people can be nudged to think differently. And I wouldn’t call these techniques “tricks,” because I don’t want people to feel tricked. But, at the end of the day, everyone is trying to persuade everyone else in some way, using different skills. So, persuasion is at the core of building a company.

Question 17: That leads naturally to storytelling and narrative. You produce a lot of content yourself. What is your advice on the craft of writing for entrepreneurs and junior professionals?

Answer: Writing is something I recommend to anyone who is building a company, because it has multiple benefits.

First, writing helps you persuade yourself. Writing forces you to examine whether what you’re doing actually has substance—whether there’s logic behind it, whether it’s coherent, whether it’s carefully thought through. That alone helps you move to the next step. Second, writing is a communication medium. You need to communicate your ideas clearly. If you can lay them out in a way that is pleasant to read and makes sense, it becomes much easier to convince your stakeholders—employees, customers, investors—that you’re on a meaningful path and that it’s worth following. For example, when we raised money for my second startup, one of the first things we told people was: If you want to understand why we’re focused on this space, read this article. And that was often enough.

Today, this has changed somewhat with AI, because it can often write better than most people. But the ideas still have to be yours. AI can help put them into context or express them more eloquently, but the thinking remains human. For example, when I started writing to reach potential investors, tools like ChatGPT didn’t exist. Still, I think writing remains essential. Learning how to craft a narrative is something you should do early when you’re building a company.

VII. Lessons from Building a Second Company

Question 18. You’ve also founded a second company. What lessons from that experience do you think others could learn from?

Answer: My second company, Strong Network, came after Strong Code. For some context, I should mention that Strong Code was acquired by Snapchat in 2016, and Strong Network was founded in 2020, after I left Snapchat.

The second company was very different from the first, in several ways.

First, I had more maturity. I had a clearer sense of what to do—and what not to do—when building a company. But there’s a saying that you never step into the same river twice, and I think that’s true. Every company is different. You have different people, a different market context, and different investors.

Second, for Strong Code, I was able to choose my team. That was a big difference, and a big advantage. I partnered with a former employee from Snapchat who decided to follow me, and that turned out to be a very good decision.

In terms of similarities, we faced a familiar challenge: defining what we were doing, clarifying the idea, and learning how to describe it. What’s interesting about Strong Network is that we never really pivoted and that’s uncommon. Many startups pivot multiple times—this doesn’t work, let’s try that instead. But from the beginning, the idea was to create a secure development environment for developers, much more aligned with modern development needs and much more efficient in terms of performance. That idea stayed consistent and eventually, it became clear that Citrix could use this approach to onboard developers far more effectively for modern development. That’s how we ended up being acquired by Citrix. A lot of events came together in a way that led to a very positive outcome. But the lack of major pivots is something that is not very common.

VIII. Tech Acceleration & the Future of AI

Question 19. One last question regarding your field: Should we be afraid of AI?

Answer: No, I don’t think we should be afraid of AI. Are we afraid of the internet? No. I think it’s the same thing.

Being afraid of the future is natural. Everyone is afraid of the future in some way. I’m afraid for my kids, for the planet we’re leaving them. Anyone who has children understands that feeling.

But technology itself isn’t something to fear. The misuse of technology is a different problem. AI will be misused—there’s no doubt about that—and we should do everything we can to prevent harmful outcomes. But embracing technology is essential.

One thing that is different today is the pace. Technology keeps accelerating, and that’s something we need to be careful about. There’s not enough time to do everything.

If you can become fluent in using these tools—not just to correct emails or generate code, but to challenge your own ideas—you gain a real advantage. For example, I do this all the time. Just this morning, I was having a philosophical discussion with ChatGPT about investment theses. These aren’t algorithmic decisions; they’re conceptual, reflective questions. And the tool is incredibly useful. And I actually texted my wife while I was doing it and said, “It’s humbling how smart this thing is.”

Sometimes I meet entrepreneurs who say, “I have this idea,” and I ask them, “Have you challenged it with an AI tool?” And you could use ChatGPT, Grok, or Gemini which has a deep research function. I believe that if you’re not challenging your ideas this way today, I’d question whether you’ve really gone to the bottom of the problem. So, I strongly encourage entrepreneurs to use these tools—not just to produce output, but to stress-test their thinking. Yes, there will be hallucinations and that’s fine because you can think of hallucinations as a form of lateral thinking. We all have strange ideas sometimes—why not use that creatively? If you have a solid sense-making function of your own, you can decide what makes sense now, what might make sense later, and what doesn’t.

So no, I don’t think we should be afraid of AI.

Question 20: Speaking of improving ourselves, how can interested students and entrepreneurs work with you? I understand you teach in Japan and also mentor in Switzerland.

Answer: My teaching in Japan is driven by my love for the country. I love being there. I’ve been working with a host professor there, who is a close friend, for about seventeen years now.

Honestly, I could teach almost anything there and I wouldn’t mind. I genuinely enjoy the time I spend with the students. What I try to create is more of a mentorship relationship than traditional teaching. We focus on questions that really matter for their professional paths. For example, when it comes to AI, we use it from day one in the class, because the entire course is built around it. Everything we do is supported by AI and the main goal is to teach students how to use it to their advantage. Thus it is not about letting AI do everything for them, because that wouldn’t make sense. Thus, we treat AI as a baseline, almost like an oracle that provides a lot of information. The idea is: use that foundation, then build something on top of it. That’s very different from giving a class where some students secretly use AI to answer questions while others don’t.

Because of how fast things are changing, I’ve been redesigning the class every year because after each year, the course can already feel obsolete. And I’ve discussed this approach with other professors there. Some of them don’t change their classes at all, and they’ll say, “I’m retiring in two years anyway, so why bother?”

In Switzerland, mentorship is more informal. I don’t have a structured program. I don’t teach classes there, but I speak with entrepreneurs quite often, on a case-by-case basis.

IX. Self-Perception: Developer, Entrepreneur, or Both?

Question 21: Before we conclude our conversation, is there anything you wish I had asked you about your career journey and overall work?

Answer: One important question is whether I see myself as a developer first. And yes, because I think that what we do today almost always ends up in code. The world is made of a lot of code now. But you’re still a developer of ideas or the initial input first, and then the code is just one instantiation of those initial ideas.

Something I’ve found interesting recently is the idea of starting from a narrative—from a product story or specification—and then generating artifacts from there. A lot of people have ideas and jump straight into coding. For reasons of speed and efficiency, they skip the step of writing a specification that describes what the product actually is before it’s implemented.

That approach—doing the writing requirements first—can feel old-fashioned. People say: “That takes too long, let’s just start coding.” But one of the positive aspects of AI-driven code generation is that it gives us time to return to that specification and let AI code it. Why is that important? Because it can let us focus again on asking questions: “What is this product supposed to do? And what market problem are we actually trying to solve?” Then we can let AI handle much of the implementation.

That’s important because if the idea is wrong, no amount of testing or code optimization will save it. Engineers often feel progress simply because they’re producing code. But if that code doesn’t address a real market need, it won’t help the company.

So I find it encouraging that as code becomes more automated, we may spend more time reflecting on ideas, narratives, and market problems—which, in the end, matter far more.

X. Advice for Early-Career Professionals & Entrepreneurs

Question 22: To conclude, what is your overall advice for students and early-career professionals inspired by your path and wanting to follow in your footsteps?

Answer: My first advice would be: don’t follow my path too closely. It’s a life of struggle. There’s probably a bit of masochism involved in how I’ve done things. That being said, I believe struggle is necessary in everyone’s life, so make sure you’re doing as much as you can. You’ll eventually hit your pain threshold—and that’s usually where people stop. But sometimes it’s worth pushing a bit beyond this threshold. And, I often tell my kids this: “Something didn’t go well? It sucks—but it makes you stronger. At the end of the day, it’s still learning.”

For me, my late twenties felt too early to start something on my own. Maybe it wasn’t objectively too early, but that’s how it felt at the time. Now that I’m past fifty, I feel much more confident. So, my second advice would be: Jump in. If it doesn’t work, don’t worry—you’ll get back on your feet and do something better the next time.

And my third advice is: find people who can advise you. Ask for help. One thing I’ve noticed through my relationship with my kids is that intergenerational conversations have become much easier. If you ask someone twenty years older than you a thoughtful question, that’s usually a good thing, not a bad one. And, if the person in front of you has empathy, they might give you a very good answer. Sometimes luck plays a role, too.

So, my overall advice is simple: jump in and ask for advice.

Thank you for reading.

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Laurent Balmelli, PhD

General Manager | Citrix Secure Development Spaces | Switzerland

*Note: This interview was conducted on November 29, 2025, and has been edited for clarity, ease of readability, and length.

*Acknowledgments: The interviewer first met Dr. Balmelli during the 143rd SICTIC Investor Day on September 4, 2025, and thanks the organizer of this event, for the invitation to attend this conference that took place at the unlimitrust campus in Lausanne, Switzerland (more info here).

***Illustrations: The profile photo shown in this interview is made available on LinkedIn. The main cover photo was taken by the interviewer during the September 4, 2025, SICTIC event.