- 2
- April
2014
Jonathan Tyler presents Climate-KIC and its startup accelerator
Ecosummit TV: Jonathan Tyler presents Climate-KIC and its startup accelerator at ECO13 London. The public-private partnership is funded by the European Commission via the EIT (European Institute of Innovation and Technology) with a budget of €63M in 2014. Climate-KIC has got 6 national centres embedded in leading universities in UK, Denmark, Netherlands, France, Germany and Switzerland and fosters education, innovation and entrepreneurship with a particular focus on early stage cleantech startups. Among the many startups funded by Climate-KIC are Tado (Germany), Waste2chemical (Netherlands) and Aqdot (UK). Climate-KIC Germany partners again with Ecosummit Berlin 2014 and sends their best fundable startups to our smart green innovation conference.
Read more- 18
- March
2014
Alexander Bigge Lidgren presents Swedish Energy Agency and its cleantech portfolio
Ecosummit TV: At ECO13 London, Bigge presents the Swedish Energy Agency that turns out to be the most active funder of cleantech companies in the Nordics with over €120M invested in 2013 and 2012 respectively. As of October 2013, the Swedish Energy Agency had funded 53 energy-related companies with soft loans that either go to projects or directly to the companies. Only if the startup is a success and starts invoicing, the agency gets their money back. Ecofective, ATC Industrial Group and Ecospark are the 3 cases that joined ECO13 London. Clean Motion and their electric 3-wheeler Zbee and Sol Voltaics are also backed by the agency. If you are interested in innovation and dealflow from the Nordics, meet Bigge again at ECO14 Berlin.
Read more- 30
- August
2013
Aaron Best and Franka Birke present the European startup accelerator Climate-KIC
Ecosummit TV: At Ecosummit Berlin 2013, Aaron Best and Franka Birke present Climate-KIC, the European initiative to foster cleantech entrepreneurship and education. Climate-KIC runs a startup accelerator that provides up to €95K, office space and coaching to young startups in Germany, UK, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands. They also organise master classes with famous startup gurus such as Steve Blank or Alexander Osterwalder. During the Climate-KIC session, Ingo Potthof (UnternehmerTUM Fund) interviewed Alexander Zosel (E-volo), Niels Beisinghoff (Bettertaxi), Philipp Pausder (Futurewatt), Philipp von Seherr-Thoss (Milk the Sun) and Martin Burkhardt (Boxtango). If you are an early stage startup or support startups with capital or industry expertise, you should definitely join the Climate-KIC network.
Read more- 19
- August
2013
Oleg Pertsovskiy presents Skolkovo Foundation, the new startup epicentre of the Russian economy
Ecosummit TV: Oleg Pertsovskiy presents Skolkovo Foundation at ECO13 Berlin. Skolkovo is a strategic development initiative backed by the government to diversify Russia’s economy through innovation and entrepreneurship. To kickstart a new startup culture, the Skolkovo ecosystem consists of an innovation centre with 5 clusters including an energy cluster, a university in cooperation with MIT as well as a new smart green city quarter located 20 km in the west of Moscow’s city centre (Kremlin). In particular, Skolkovo supports startups with a 50% co-financing grant of up to $1M to cross the gap from the research lab to the market. The other half should come from angels or VCs. Recently Skolkovo got another $4B commitment from the government to accelerate the development until 2020. Skolkovo is a very important project that contributes to making Russia more independent from finite resources like oil and gas.
Read more- 15
- August
2013
Carsten Schneider of Osborne Clarke presents the German public investment grant for business angels
Ecosummit TV: Carsten Schneider is a Partner of the law firm Osborne Clarke in Cologne, Germany. At ECO13 Berlin, he gives an overview of the new German law called “Investitionszuschuss Wagniskapital” that was launched on 15 May 2013 and is managed by BAFA (Federal Office of Economics and Export Control). The law constitutes a public venture capital subsidy for private investors that get a 20% investment grant for their investments into startups. The target group are business angels (natural persons or their solely owned investment vehicles that are based in the EU). As many angel rounds consist of a syndicate of angels, a single investor may get this grant for investments of maximum €250K per year. Per startup investments of up to €1M per year will be supported. Eligible startups must have their headquarter in the EU, a registered office in Germany, less than 50 employees and maximum €10M revenues. While Carsten believes that this grant will have an impact on shareholder agreements, it is a very good initiative for angels and the startups they support.
Read more- 11
- August
2013
Markus Leuenberger pitches the Dutch cleantech institute ECN
Ecosummit TV: Markus Leuenberger pitches ECN at ECO13 Berlin. The Dutch research institute is based in a beautiful location in the dunes north of Amsterdam. 550 researchers and experts develop new green technologies with a strong focus on renewable energy and energy storage including Power to Gas. Recently, ECN launched a new technical due diligence service for cleantech VCs across Europe. This makes a lot of sense as many cleantech VCs don’t have sufficient inhouse competence in each of the many cross-industry cleantech markets. Moreover, the cleantech institute also helps startups during product development. A small version of Fraunhofer in Germany, ECN looks like they are equally smart and very entrepreneurial. If you need deep cleantech technology expertise, go and talk to ECN.
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- 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- 1
- April
2013
Ecosummit Award 2013 – call for smart green startups
Ecosummit Berlin 2013 takes place on 4-5 June and features Ecosummit Award 2013. The ECO13 Award brings fame and fortune to the best early and late stage smart green startups. Ecosummit Award is integrated with our new online platform Ecosummit Market. To apply for the award, please create a public startup profile on Ecosummit Market and click on “Apply for ECO13 Award.” The application deadline is 20 May 2013. 43 cleantech startups are nominated.
Read more- 25
- March
2013
Thomas Grigoleit invites startups to invest in the cleantech nation Germany
Ecosummit TV: Thomas Grigoleit, Director Renewable Energies & Resources at Germany Trade & Invest (GTAI), invites the best smart green startups from all over the world to invest in the cleantech nation Germany at Ecosummit Düsseldorf 2012. GTAI is a governmental organisation that provides a free location consulting service to cleantech startups and corporates interested in taking advantage of Germany’s Energiewende (energy transformation) and its long-term business opportunities. Thomas presents a few case studies of foreign startups GTAI successfully attracted to Germany including Bsolar from Israel and Parmenion from Canada. Talk to Thomas if you want to follow their example.
Read more- 27
- November
2012
Climate-KIC USA Startup Tour 2012 at Ecosummit Lounge Silicon Valley
Ecosummit TV: Ecosummit and Climate-KIC, the EU programme to foster cleantech entrepreneurship and education, joined forces to organise an evening of Smart Green Business Networking in California. The Ecosummit Lounge Silicon Valley took place on 6 September 2012 at the famous Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale. We enjoyed 2-minute pitches by the 13 European cleantech startups that participated in the Climate-KIC USA Startup Tour to Silicon Valley, Washington and Boston. On behalf of all startups on the tour, I would like to thank Climate-KIC for supporting us.
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