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Jan Michael Hess |
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- 20
- February
2017
Call for smart green startups: Pitch at ECO17 Berlin and apply for ECO17 Award and Ecosummit Europe 100
Since 2010, we have established Ecosummit as Europe’s leading smart green innovation and impact conference for startups, corporates and investors active in energy, mobility, buildings, cities, materials and food. In 2017, we organise 4 conferences in Berlin, Amsterdam, Stockholm and London presenting over 150 startups. Our flagship event Ecosummit Berlin 2017 takes place on 9-10 May 2017 at the Radialsystem, unites over 300 participants and is supported by an innovative group of sponsors. Now we call the best smart green startups in Europe to get promoted by pitching at ECO17 Berlin, applying for ECO17 Award and getting featured in our new startup list Ecosummit Europe 100. Past Ecosummit Award winners include Sonnen (Series D), Heliatek (Series D), Tado (€20M from Inven) and Kiwigrid (Series C).
Read more- 2
- February
2017
Kiwigrid raises Series C to build global energy IoT platform
Kiwigrid raises a double-digit million Euro Series C from Aqton, Stefan Quandt’s family office that also invested in Heliatek’s Series D, Innogy and LG Electronics to build a global energy IoT platform. The Dresden-based smart green startup won the ECO16 Gold Award in the late stage category and has got over 105 employees. High-Tech Gründerfonds, Germany’s largest seed investor with 80% public money, and Innogy Venture Capital, the old corporate VC fund of Innogy that is in its divestment period, sold their shares completely and celebrate a financial exit with positive returns.
Read more- 5
- January
2017
Icos Capital raises €50M IC Fund III from Akzo Nobel, Bühler, Wuppermann and City of Rotterdam
Corporates play an important role for startups and VCs and often combine direct and fund investments to get access to external innovation. After a 2-year fundraising journey that even included the bankruptcy of one LP, the Dutch VC Icos Capital announces today the first closing of its third fund Icos Capital Fund III at €50M. The fund investors comprise the City of Rotterdam and the corporates Akzo Nobel from the Netherlands, Bühler from Switzerland and Wuppermann from Germany. Peter van Gelderen, one of the 3 GPs managing the fund, describes their investment philosophy as collaborative corporate venturing and emphasizes the close cooperation with the 3 multinationals that don’t have inhouse corporate VC units. According to Peter, new corporate relationships take a lot of time and many meetings until the board makes an LP commitment in your VC fund.
Read more- 5
- December
2016
Lilium raises €10M Series A from Atomico to commercialise its electric VTOL jet
On-demand urban air transportation is the next big thing according to Daniel Wiegand, CEO and Co-Founder of Lilium. The German aviation startup develops an electric VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aircraft called Lilium jet since 2015. Today, Atomico invests €10M Series A and Niklas Zennström joins the board. Daniel and his team of 35 employees have the vision to make urban aviation electric, silent and available for everyone with the help of airtaxis and other aviation services. Uber also shares the vision that urban mobility should go vertical and is already working on matching pilots and passengers that want to bypass street-level congestion and traffic jams. In October 2016, the Californian mobility giant unveiled Uber Elevate in a 97-page must-read whitepaper. It would be no surprise if they soon co-invested in Lilium as übercool VTOL jets are the missing link to launch Uber in the air.
Read more- 8
- November
2016
Statkraft Ventures teams up with ETF Partners and leads $5M Series A in Greenbird from Norway
Ubiquitous smart meters are a key infrastructure component for the smart green utilities of the future because they generate a lot of valuable data and enable new energy services and dynamic pricing. In fact, it is a surprise that smart meter rollouts happen rather slowly in most countries due to slow regulators and hesitant utilities that are not yet ready to make substantial upfront investments in millions of smart meters that may bring more economic benefits to consumers than to the utilities themselves. Luckily, the Nordic countries and their resident startups have a headstart. Today, Düsseldorf-based corporate VC Statkraft Ventures leads the $5M Series A in Greenbird teaming up with London-based ETF Partners who were on the top of their potential co-investor list. The Norwegian energy IoT startup is Statkraft’s second investment this year after DEPsys from Switzerland in June.
Read more- 2
- November
2016
Relayr raises $23M Series B from Munich RE/HSB Ventures, KPCB and Munich Venture Partners
The Internet of Things, Industry 4.0 and the insurance industry are coming together. Berlin-based IoT startup Relayr raises $23M (€20.7M) Series B from Munich RE/HSB Ventures, KPCB and Munich Venture Partners. It turns out that the industrial insurance company Hartford Steam Boiler (HSB), since 2009 part of Munich RE, has started to embrace IoT a while ago to make their life easier and insurance business smarter. In a nutshell, HSB insures manufacturing companies against the risk of equipment breakdown and other reasons for suboptimal factory performance. By making the machines smart and connecting them to the Relayr cloud, their health status can be monitored online. If the automated machine data analysis identifies any problems, the malfunctioning machines can be repaired or replaced before it is too late and the production line has to be put on hold without knowing why.
Read more- 25
- October
2016
ParkBee raises €1.8M from InnovationQuarter and angels
Wouter de Bruijne pitched ParkBee at Ecosummit Amsterdam on 7 July 2016 and explained why sharing commercial parking assets is a smart green business idea. Today, Wouter and the Co-founders Jian Jiang and Tom Buchmann celebrate having raised €1.8M from InnovationQuarter, the regional development agency for West Holland, and 4 undisclosed angel investors. The Dutch startup makes unused private parking garages, mainly office building car parks, available to the public. This makes sense as cars are parking most of the time and everybody knows how difficult it is to find parking in crowded city centres, especially when you are in a hurry to your next business meeting or running multiple private errands on a busy day. ParkBee is integrated in the Dutch parking apps Parkmobile, which is majority owned by BMW since 2015, and Park-line rather than trying to build their own consumer brand.
Read more- 18
- October
2016
Sonnen raises €76M Series D led by Envision Energy and targets IPO
This is a massive financing round. In fact, it is the biggest equity round raised by any Ecosummit startup so far because Sonnen‘s €76M Series D is pure equity. Christoph Ostermann pitched for the first time at Ecosummit Düsseldorf 2012 when he was still working on his Series A. Having secured €20M in three prior funding rounds, the total venture capital raised now amounts to €96M. The new investors are the Chinese wind turbine maker Envision Energy and the family office of Thomas Pütter, ex-CEO of Allianz Capital Partners. At the same time, GE Ventures that were announced as a new investor in June 2016 and the early investors Ecapital, SET Ventures, Munich Venture Partners and Inven Capital all participated in the Series D, too. Make no mistake, Sonnen is a well-funded and licensed utility that challenges all incumbent utilities by inventing new energy services and making electricity free for owners of PV and battery systems.
Read more- 11
- October
2016
SET Ventures announces investment in Energyworx at Ecosummit London 2016
Our smart green innovation community is making more deals and sharing breaking news at Ecosummit. During today’s ECO16 London presentation, Rene Savelsberg announces the new investment of SET Ventures in Energyworx, the Dutch software provider for energy data analytics and management for utilities. SET Ventures joins the existing investor HenQ to complete Energyworx’ Series A in which both VCs co-invested a couple of million Euros and made additional capital reserves for follow-on investments. Energyworx is the first investment since the Amsterdam-based smart energy VC reached the first closing of SET Fund II at €60M in February 2016. With the software skills of HenQ and the energy experience and network of SET Ventures Energyworx is now poised to accelerate its growth and win new utility customers in Europe and America.
Read more- 1
- October
2016
Ecosummit accelerates smart green London on 11 October 2016 at CodeNode
We believe that startups need corporates and corporates need startups. Startups need corporates as development partners, customers, distribution channels and investors to make better products and grow faster. At the same time, corporates need startups to sell new products to their customer base and survive the global competition. By connecting the companies that should be connected, Ecosummit accelerates startups, investors and corporates with a focus on smart green energy, mobility and cities. Our unique conferences are a physical marketplace enabling personal meetings and long-term relationships in a relaxed and productive atmosphere. Our next Ecosummit takes place on 11 October 2016 at CodeNode in the City of London. The agenda features 37 startup pitches and the conference will be recorded for our YouTube channel Ecosummit TV. Check out our participants, get your tickets and join us. Let’s warm up with a few innovation stories that will be elaborated at ECO16 London.
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