- 19
- June
2013
Patric Gresko Pitches the Corporate Innovation Platform of the European Investment Fund
Ecosummit TV: Patric Gresko pitches the European Investment Fund at ECO13 Berlin. The EIF is Europe’s leading fund-of-fund with €12B under management. Since 2006, they have invested in 9 cleantech funds managed by 8 fund managers, i.e. dedicated cleantech VC firms. Patric is the EIF’s resident Mr. Cleantech and wants to support more cleantech VCs in the future. As most players in the market, the EIF also rides the corporate wave acknowledging the increasing importance of large multinational companies for the success of cleantech startups. Consequentely, the EIF set out to raise capital from corporates for their new Corporate Innovation Platform (CoIP). One of the 4 investment themes is sustainability for which 10 €10M tickets shall be raised from 10 corporates. The EIF then tops it up with another €50M. These €150M will be invested in the best cleantech VCs in Europe. If you are one of them, talk to Patric.
Read more- 18
- June
2013
Richard Youngman Presents the Third Wave of Cleantech Companies at ECO13 Berlin
Ecosummit TV: Cleantech is a theme spanning many industries including energy, transportation, buildings and agriculture. At ECO13 Berlin, Cleantech Group’s Richard Youngman shares his optimism and talks about the third wave of cleantech companies coming to the market with scalable value propositions that follow the idea of doing more with less. Richard confirms that cleanweb is an attractive investment area with many lean startups applying smart algorithms to all kinds of resource efficiency challenges. Geographically speaking, Richard votes for China as the key target market startups should approach rather sooner than later due to the huge demand stemming from a nationwide industrial policy inspired by cleantech.
Read more- 11
- June
2013
Ecosummit London 15-16 October 2013 – Join our Smart Green City Conference at the Crystal
Ecosummit TV: We want to live and work in a Smart Green City. And we like London. The smart green capital is an important cleantech hub, provides access to the UK market and serves as the bridge to America. Therefore, we are very proud to invite you to Ecosummit London 2013, our 6th cleantech conference for startups, investors and corporates. ECO13 London will be held on 15-16 October at the Crystal, the new urban sustainability headquarter of Siemens in the Docklands. Take a look at our short Ecosummit TV video and get ready for your cable car pitch. ECO13 London explores the city of the future and your company should be part of it.
Read more- 6
- June
2013
Sefaira, Tado, Solarbattery, Pirika, Bravo Motors and Oricane win Ecosummit Award 2013
Ecosummit Berlin 2013 was a blast. “The best event out there,” says Rene Savelsberg of Chrysalix SET. Rene was also very happy when he went on stage to receive the Ecosummit Award 2013 Jury Gold medal (€3K prize money) for his portfolio company Sefaira. The fast growing cleantech startup from UK/US convinced our 33 jury members with their smart green building software. Jury Silver (€2K prize money) went to Tado from Germany and their impressive smart green heating control and Jury Bronze (€1K prize money) was awarded to Solarbattery from Germany for their successful residential energy storage solution.
Read more- 27
- May
2013
Mobility 2.0 – E-volo, Carzapp, Flinc and Innovative Mobility Discuss how to Build Profitable Startups
Ecosummit TV: First the bad news: after burning $850M in 6 years Better Place files for bankruptcy. That’s not what you call a lean startup. The electric mobility operator had to accept that car makers don’t support a global startup standard for switchable batteries. Now the good news: peer-to-peer ride sharing startup Lyft raises $60M for global expansion from Andreessen Horowitz. To fight off the professional taxi and limo driver lobby, Lyft drivers get donations rather than payments from their riders. But VCs love transactions whatever they are called, especially if they smell like Airbnb on the road. Here in Europe, we eat humble pie. At ECO12 Düsseldorf, Fabienne Herlaut (Ecomobilité Ventures) discusses profitability with Alexander Zosel (E-volo), Oliver Lünstedt (Carzapp), Klaus Dibbern (Flinc) and Thomas delos Santos (Innovative Mobility). Some inspiration from the US may help.
Read more- 26
- May
2013
Holger Ulland Pitches O-Flexx and its Thermoelectric Generators
Ecosummit TV: Holger Ulland pitches O-Flexx at ECO12 Berlin. The German cleantech startup develops and manufactures thermoelectric generators that convert heat to electricity. After difficult times, O-Flexx recently raised €2.4M and achieved a quantum leap in their lab improving the output of their energy conversion process by a factor of 100. This is what their investor Markus Moor, Partner at Emerald, told me at the Global Corporate Venturing Symposium last week in London. Enough good reasons to watch this promising smart green startup on Ecosummit TV. Update: O-Flexx and NRW Bank met at ECO12 Berlin for the first time and NRW Bank invested in early 2013.
Read more- 20
- May
2013
Ecosummit Award 2013 – 43 Nominees from 11 Countries – Application Deadline Ends Tonight
Ecosummit TV: Last year, we ran our startup award for the first time. 52 nominees from 9 countries participated in the Facebook and jury voting. This Ecosummit TV video documents the award ceremony of 2012 and features BlaBlaCar, Carpooling.com and MyCO2 (Facebook winners) as well as Smart Hydro Power, Heliatek and Carpooling.com (jury winners). This year, the Ecosummit Award 2013 promotes 43 nominees from 11 countries that will be judged by the 33 members of our expert jury. If you want to join the smart green startup race, hurry up, because the application deadline ends tonight at 24:00, Berlin time.
Read more- 20
- May
2013
Smart Green Dealflow: Ubitricity, Saperatec, Skeleton, Waste2Chemical, O-Flexx and Romo Wind
Financing cleantech startups is a tough game these days. You need a strong team, product market fit and, even better, customers and revenues. In this difficult market environment, it is a great pleasure to report that 6 smart green startups managed to raise new venture capital: Ubitricity (around €3.5M, Germany), Saperatec (€3.3M, Germany), Skeleton (€2.2M, Estonia), Waste2Chemical (undisclosed, Netherlands), O-Flexx (€2.4M, Germany) and Romo Wind (€4.8M, Switzerland). The active cleantech VCs include Earlybird, IBB, NRW Bank, HTGF, eCapital, Dutch Greentech Fund, Emerald, Yellow&Blue, ABB and b-to-v. Let’s take a closer look at the startups and their new investors.
Read more- 18
- May
2013
Cleanweb Startups from Berlin – Meeting Ecotastic and FutureWatt at CeBIT Code_n 2013
Ecosummit TV: Our mobile Ecosummit TV studio stops again at CeBIT Code_n 2013 for more smart green startup interviews. This time, Jan interviews the Berlin-based founders Anna Yukiko Bickenbach of Ecotastic and Philipp Pausder of FutureWatt. Ecotastic is a new green marketing service provider that runs a reward system to foster green consumer behaviour. Consumers document their green actions with their smartphone and are rewarded with gift certificates from partner companies.
Read more- 14
- May
2013
Ecosummit in London: ECO13 Berlin, Market, Award, WHEB Partners and Friedola
Ecosummit TV: This is a short video recorded at our second Ecosummit Lounge London on 2 May 2013 at Taylor Wessing. It features very nice pictures of the city, another red bus going green for London and a preview of ECO13 Berlin, our 5th cleantech conference for startups, VCs and corporates. We also talk about the launch of Ecosummit Market, our new online platform for startups. Ecosummit Market is integrated with Ecosummit Award. 43 award nominees are busy mobilising votes on Facebook until 27 May. The application deadline for new startups to join the competition is 20 May.
Read more- 10
- May
2013
Martin Riedel Pitches the Small Wind Startup Enbreeze
Ecosummit TV: Decentralised local energy production is a key trend in the Energiewende. While small PV systems are already widespread, small wind is a new market with large potential growing at 30% CAGR. The advantage of small wind is that the wind also blows during the night and on cloudy days. At ECO12 Düsseldorf, Martin Riedel pitches the German early stage cleantech startup Enbreeze that develops small wind turbines.
Read more- 9
- May
2013
Guido Luetsch Pitches NTS and its High-Altitude Wind Technology
Ecosummit TV: “Fish don’t need electricity,” says Aloys Wobben of Enercon. While offshore there is more wind, there is also less demand. As Guido Luetsch explains in his pitch, the German startup NTS tackles this problem by going to an altitude of 500m onshore in order to harvest stronger winds. NTS has got a running prototype in which high-altitude kites are steered by robots sitting on a straight track system on the ground. NTS is backed by 3M and wants to raise €5M from new investors for the closed loop pilot system. Moreover, NTS is partner of Autodesk’s cleantech programme using their software to design the steering robots and track system.
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