- 7
- May
2015
Frédéric Mazzella pitches BlaBlaCar
Ecosummit TV: Co-Founder and CEO Frédéric Mazzella pitches BlaBlaCar at ECO14 London and explains in every detail how they disrupt mobility and build a fast-growing global startup. If you want to grow fast, you have to postpone profit and invest everything in managing growth with a flexible strategy how to enter new markets. Sharing corporate values with existing and new employees is a key success factor. Founded in France in 2004, BlaBlaCar reached 1 million members in 2011 and 10 million members in September 2014. In July 2014, Index Ventures and Accel Partners co-lead the Series C and injected $100M. In April 2015, BlaBlaCar acquired Carpooling.com, their strongest competitor in Germany. Frédéric believes that long distance ride sharing is very different from city-focused Uber as the average trip matched by BlaBlaCar is 300 km. However, this competitive situation may change in the future and that’s why BlaBlaCar keeps on accelerating. This is a must-see video for every smart green startup and their investors.
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- October
2013
Oliver Luenstedt pitches Carzapp from Berlin
Ecosummit TV: Oliver Lünstedt pitches Carzapp at ECO13 Berlin. While there are now 4 p2p car sharing startups in the German market, Carzapp is the first one to have developed their own hardware solution called ZappKit. The ZappKit enables wireless car access with smartphones used as digital keys. The magic hardware box also includes GPS and an immobiliser that prevents theft. While Carzapp is about to start their beta test in Berlin, they also offer their ZappKit to companies with significant car fleets they want to share. The B2B business of Carzapp is bound to grow quickly as the ZappKit is pretty price competitive. Carzapp is backed by angels and raised €250K in a crowdfunding round on Seedmatch earlier this year. Now Carzapp looks for fresh money to accelerate its growth. Meet Oliver at ECO13 London to get an update and talk smart green business.
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- October
2013
Fabienne Herlaut pitches Ecomobilité Ventures
Ecosummit TV: Fabienne Herlaut pitches Ecomobilité Ventures at ECO13 Berlin. The Paris-based multi-corporate VC is focused on investing in sustainable mobility startups in Europe. Ecomobilité Ventures is financed by French national railway operator SNCF, mobile telephone operator Orange and energy company Total. The €25M fund is invested in 3 startups: Move About, EZ‐Wheel (ECO13 London) and Ouicar. At the moment, Fabienne works on new investments into promising startups as well as expanding the financial muscle of Ecomobilité Ventures with the help of more corporate limited partners. We are proud to have Fabienne among our Ecosummit Advisors and look forward to meeting her again at ECO13 London next week.
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- September
2013
Niels Beisinghoff pitches Bettertaxi
Ecosummit TV: Niels Beisinghoff pitches Bettertaxi at Ecosummit Berlin 2013. The Berlin-based smart green startup enters a crowded market of mobility apps and competes directly with Mytaxi. However, Bettertaxi connects to existing taxi dispatch centres and works everywhere in Germany. They also want to enable taxi ride sharing to make taxi mobility cheaper and greener. This is a cool idea which we had back in 2010 when we envisioned Sustainable Social Mobility (Weniger Autos ist mehr). Now Bettertaxi wants to raise €500K to accelerate its growth. Check out their iPhone and Android app to find out which one is the best taxi service in Germany. The ultimate goal are ubiquitous shared electric taxis. That’s what smart green cities really need.
Read more- 3
- April
2013
Cleantech crowdfunding rocks – meeting Carzapp and Seedmatch at CeBIT Code_n 2013
Ecosummit TV: P2P car sharing meets crowdfunding at CeBIT Code_n 2013. Jan Michael Hess interviews Oliver Lünstedt of Carzapp and Jakob Carstens of Seedmatch to learn more about Carzapp’s recent cleantech crowdfunding round and enjoy a magic ZappKit demo. Carzapp raised €250K within 3 weeks from 350 investors on Seedmatch, Germany’s crowdfunding pioneer. At Code_n13, Carzapp won a useful award sponsored by Continental who invites Carzapp to join their big booth at IAA 2013. Since September 2011, Seedmatch raised more than €4.5M for 36 startups from more than 3.000 investors. Cleantech crowdfunding rocks!
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- March
2013
Cleantech crowdfunding in Germany – invest in Carzapp and Changers now
While many cleantech VCs are holding back their money when early stage startups knock on their door, crowdfunding is another financing solution with added marketing value. In fact, cleantech crowdfunding is happening today in Germany. Starting at 14:30 and going on until the funding limit is reached, German residents can invest in p2p car sharing made by Carzapp and social solar device charging made by Changers. Both Carzapp and Changers want to raise €250K selling 10% of their smart green startup with the help of a profit participating loan (partiarisches Nachrangdarlehen) managed by Seedmatch, Germany’s crowdfunding pioneer. Update: Within 3 weeks Carzapp raised €250K from 350 investors including us and successfully closed this crowdfunding round. Cleantech crowdfunding rocks!
Read more- 17
- February
2013
Oliver Luenstedt pitches p2p car sharing startup Carzapp
Ecosummit TV: Oliver Lünstedt, CEO of Carzapp, pitches the German p2p car sharing startup. While there are already 3 peer-2-peer car sharing startups in Germany, Carzapp is the first one to have developed their own hardware solution called ZappKit. The ZappKit enables wireless car access with smartphones used as digital keys. The magic hardware box also includes GPS and an immobiliser that prevents theft. Moreover, the Berlin-based startup has an idea for the cost-efficient rollout of electric cars and participates in the electric mobility showcase Berlin-Brandenburg by adapting their platform to support p2p electric car sharing. Carzapp is backed by angels and looks for €1M to enter the German market in the first half of 2013.
Read more- 30
- June
2012
Ecosummit Lounge London at Taylor Wessing on 19 September 2012
Ecosummit and Taylor Wessing, the international law firm with extensive cleantech and private equity experience, joined forces to invite you to a high-voltage evening of Smart Green Business Networking. Our first Ecosummit Lounge London takes place on 19 September 2012 at Taylor Wessing’s spacious London office. At the lounge, we will enjoy a keynote by Niki Rosinski, Partner at Generation Investment, talking about Sustainable Capitalism, 6 startup pitches by SolarFuel, Sefaira, Carzapp, Ventive, EnergyDeck and Ecosummit, tasty drinks, finger food and all that Jazz. Tickets for the Ecosummit Lounge London are available for £30,00. The amazing list of participants is included at the bottom of this article. We look forward to seeing you in London.
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- June
2012
Gorka Espiau pitches Hiriko – the first foldable electric city car designed for car sharing
Ecosummit TV: Gorka Espiau, Head of International Programmes at Hiriko, pitches the Spanish EV startup at ECO12 Berlin. Hiriko aims at reinventing sustainable social mobility in smart green cities by building a foldable electric vehicle optimised for car sharing that was originally invented at the MIT Media Lab. The networked city car shall only be offered in car sharing fleets which is a pretty disruptive distribution strategy. The first prototype is available and Hiriko is looking for investors who want to accelerate their vision of sustainable urban mobility.
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- June
2012
Fabienne Herlaut presents the corporate VC Ecomobilité Ventures
Ecosummit TV: Fabienne Herlaut is the Managing Partner of the French corporate VC Ecomobilité Ventures that has 4 very powerful limited partners: SNCF, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Total and Orange. Fabienne presents her new €30M fund at Ecosummit Berlin 2012 and shares her investment strategy into smart green startups working on new technology and business models for sustainable mobility. I strongly recommend that you talk to Fabienne if you are an ambitious ecomobility startup with an international strategy that wants to take advantage of the added value of this promising group of corporates.
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- May
2012
Mar Alarcón Pitches P2P Car Sharing Startup Social Car At ECO12 In Berlin
Ecosummit TV: Mar Alarcón is the founder and CEO of Social Car, Spain’s leading p2p car sharing operator. Before Social Car Mar co-founded Social Energy, a PV project developer based in China. I like the brand name Social Car very much and I am very bullish with regards to the business model of p2p car sharing as it is very capital efficient and scaleable. Mar did a great pitch at Ecosummit 2012 on 22-23 March in Berlin.
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- February
2012
3 Smart Green Startups from Germany Poised to Conquer the Global Market
As a warmup for ECO12, I would like to present 3 smart green startups from Germany that are in a unique position to be successful on the global Cleantech market. They have unique technology, achieved major milestones and look for strategic investors, partners and clients to enter new markets and grow faster. Let’s take a closer look at SolarFuel (Power to Gas), Heliatek (Organic Photovoltaics) and Flinc (Realtime Ride Sharing). All 3 startups are nominated for the ECO12 Award and join Ecosummit 2012 on 22-23 March in Berlin.
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- January
2012
Smart Green Dealflow: myTaxi, Comuto, Younicos, Solarkiosk, Smartblue and FFK
Taxi 2.0: myTaxi, a very useful mobility service of Intelligent Apps, today raised €10M from car2go (Daimler), T-Venture (Deutsche Telekom), Xing Founder Lars Hinrichs (Cinco Capital, Hackfwd) and KfW. myTaxi is the taxi centre for the Mobile Economy and the app is available for iPhone and Android. Interestingly, Robert Henrich, CEO of car2go, believes that “car2go and myTaxi do not compete but complement each other.” In fact, I partly disagree as one way car sharing actually enables short trips from A to B leaving the car behind, the same way taxis do.
Read more- 8
- September
2011
Weniger Autos ist mehr – Intelligent in die automobile Zukunft
Mein Gastbeitrag für den Daimler Blog vom 06.09.11: Reduce to the max, finde ich, ist auch heute noch ein gutes Beispiel visionärer Kreativität, gerade weil dieser Werbeslogan bereits 1997 von Smart erfunden wurde. In meiner Vision ist die Mobilität der Zukunft nachhaltig und sozial, denn immer mehr Kunden konsumieren ökologisch und ökonomisch zugleich. Sozial ist, wenn wir Autos gemeinsam effizienter nutzen. Nachhaltigkeit verpflichtet uns, unsere Autos mit erneuerbarer Energie anzutreiben. Das englische Zauberwort dafür ist Sustainable Social Mobility und beschreibt einen intelligenten Weg in die automobile Zukunft.
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- May
2011
Elon Musk – Super hero of the smart green economy
Elon Musk turns 40 this year and is already the super hero entrepreneur of the smart green economy. Being an engineer he believes entrepreneurship means applying logic and critical thinking to a given problem in order to develop the best new solution. Elon likes to reinvent and reengineer problems on a big scale, especially transportation on the road and in space and production of clean energy. Next to being CEO and Product Architect of Tesla Motors, Elon is also CEO and CTO of SpaceX and Chairman of Solar City.
Read more- 29
- April
2011
Ecosummit TV – ECO11 – Klaus Dibbern – Flinc – Ride Sharing
At ECO11, Klaus Dibbern, CEO of Flinc, pitched his dynamic ride sharing startup to investors and was interviewed by our Ecosummit TV moderator Ane Mari Aakernes. Flinc matches people that want to join the social mobility network to share rides to make money (driver) or save money (passenger). If you share rides in shared cars including taxis then we like to call it Sustainable Social Mobility. That’s the future of mobility. Flinc already has €1.2M funding and looks for a new funding round of approximately €1M. Klaus agreed to share his Flinc slides as PDF.
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- April
2011
Ecosummit TV – ECO11 – Young Future Mobility Leaders – Panel
At Ecosummit 2011, Jan Michael Hess (Ecosummit) moderated the panel Young Future Mobility Leaders with (from the left) Konrad Erzberger (Tamyca), Michael Kuhn (car2gether, Daimler Business Innovation), Beres Seelbach (Lautlos), Klaus Dibbern (Flinc) and Knut Hechtfischer (Ubitricity). We all agreed that the Sharing Economy will change the automotive industry.
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- April
2011
Ecosummit TV – ECO11 – Konrad Erzberger – Tamyca – P2P Car Sharing
Konrad Erzberger pitches his German startup Tamyca to investors at Ecosummit 2011. Tamyca offers peer-to-peer car sharing in Germany. This means that the shared cars are owned by private people and not professional fleet operators. The trick is an insurance tariff that covers any damage happening when you rent your car to another driver to make some money. Tamyca is first mover in Germany but already has 2 competitors. The business model is executed in several other countries by competitors, too. We believe it’s a hot business model and worth investing in.
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- December
2010
Sustainable Social Mobility with Car and Ride Sharing
Based in Spain’s Basque country, Hiriko is the first company to build the electric City Car developed by MIT’s Medialab. Hiriko sounds Japanese but it is in fact a mix of Basque and Spanish: hiri = urban, ko = short for coche (car). Hiriko’s networked urban cars are designed to be used only as shared cars. Imagine a future where you can take any car when you leave your home or office. Imagine a future where all shared cars are electric. That’s where we have to be.
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