- 25
- September
2016
Heliatek raises €80M Series D to increase production capacity by a factor of 40
Capital-intensive smart green startups in Europe aiming at building their own hardware factories have a hard time fundraising. Financially motivated VCs require capital efficiency and prefer hardware startups that outsource manufacturing and the necessary CAPEX. Financing new PV factories in Europe is even more difficult due to China’s hegemony. It turns out it can only be done if you develop the next generation of PV technology, continuously improve efficiency and work diligently on building a co-investor syndicate of family offices, corporates and governments. Keep in mind that it was the Chinese government that backed a myriad of Chinese manufacturers to hijack the global PV industry. After a very long fundraising journey, 10-year old Organic Photovoltaics (OPV) pioneer Heliatek finally found the capital to build its second 3G solar factory in Dresden, Germany’s epicentre of photonics and organic semiconductors.
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- March
2015
Ines Bergmann pitches corporate venture capital provided by E.ON
Ecosummit TV: We just met Ines Bergmann at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco where she is spending 6 months scouting new innovation that can be brought to Europe. At ECO14 Berlin, Ines pitches the benefits of corporate venture capital provided by E.ON. The German utility is one of the most active corporate co-investors in smart energy startups. E.ON’s added value is rolling out the products of their portfolio companies to their 35 million customers, increasing startup revenues one market after the other. This turns out to be a very useful market entry strategy especially for US startups planning to enter Europe. E.ON’s portfolio includes Orcan Energy (ECO14 Award Bronze), Thermondo, Autogrid, Firstfuel, Sungevity, Opower and Bloom Energy. While many utilities are also working on becoming technology companies, it remains to be seen when E.ON’s CVC activities will result in the first acquisitions.
Read more- 26
- August
2014
Rolf Adam of Cisco talks about new business models for public lighting by making it intelligent
Ecosummit TV: Smart green cities need intelligent lighting. At ECO13 London, Rolf Adam of Cisco talks about new business models for public lighting by making it intelligent. IP-based lighting infrastructure reduces OPEX by remotely managing and metering a large network of street lamps. When cities and utilities plan to upgrade public lighting to energy-efficient LEDs, they should also think about new business models that are enabled by the internet, sensors and smart algorithms. For example, the Dutch startup Tvilight implemented the brilliant idea of light-on-demand with the help of sensors that detect nearby users. If there aren’t any people or cars present, the street lights are dimmed and energy is saved. The street lights of the 21st century may be used for wireless internet access, location-based advertising, traffic control, street parking, measuring air quality and, last but not least, charging electric vehicles as promoted by Berlin-based Ubitricity. The more services you want to integrate, the more service providers you have to bring together to make money with smart lighting.
Read more- 16
- August
2014
Susana Quintana-Plaza presents the co-investment strategy of EON
Ecosummit TV: Susana Quintana-Plaza presents the co-investment strategy of EON at ECO13 London. Since 2013 the German utility has been very active as a corporate co-investor in the US and Europe having made 9 direct investments including Opower, Sungevity, Bloom Energy, Orcan Energy (ECO14 Award Bronze) and, most recently, Berlin-based heating system online retailer Thermondo. EON also made 1 fund investment into the American VC Westly Group to quickly learn the trade. With 35 million customers and revenues of €122.5B in 2013, EON co-invests with the aim of rolling out the startups’ products to their customer base to help generate new revenues. This means that startups should have a competitive product and revenues to get EON excited about a participation. The next opportunity to pitch to Susana and her team is ECO14 London on 7-8 October.
Read more- 31
- October
2013
Pedro Pires de Miranda envisions the smart green urban future for Siemens
Ecosummit TV: Siemens is not Apple. While Steve Jobs envisioned a new HQ from outer space for 12.000 employees, Pedro Pires de Miranda just wanted a smart green city technology showcase, conference centre, public exhibition and cutting edge sales office for the Siemens competence centre Cities. 18 months and €60M later, The Crystal opened doors in September 2012 and already upgraded more than 120.000 visitors to a new understanding of our urban future. 2 weeks ago we celebrated Ecosummit London 2013 at Siemens’ new urbanity palace.
Read more- 9
- April
2013
Rolf Adam discusses critical infrastructure for the new energy system
Ecosummit TV: On 15 November 2012, the city of Munich experienced a power outage affecting 450.000 people, the first one in 20 years. Just in time Rolf Adam of Cisco goes on stage at Ecosummit Düsseldorf to discuss 6 megatrends affecting large and small utilities in their efforts to manage the critical infrastructure for the new energy system: economics, employees, resources, innovation, industry fragmentation and regulation. To be fit for the future, Rolf recommends that utilities take a system approach, embrace rapid innovation and align their business model with 2050 rather than betting the company on today’s industry setup.
Read more- 26
- March
2013
Bernard Scherrer discusses open innovation at EDF and introduces Electranova Capital
Ecosummit TV: Bernard Scherrer discusses open innovation at EDF, one of the biggest utilities in Europe. Part of the long-term innovation strategy is the new corporate venture capital fund called Electranova Capital that already made 2 startup investments in Actility (smart grid M2M applications) and Seatower (offshore wind foundations). To get the cooperation started, Bernard and his colleague Valerie are interested in doing pilot projects with the best cleantech startups in Europe that fit into their open innovation areas. Please get in touch if you are interested in doing business with EDF.
Read more- 14
- March
2013
Juergen Finke presents Evonik corporate venturing
Ecosummit TV: More and more corporates create their own venture capital business units to support external innovation that is relevant to their core business. One of the new kids on the block is Evonik, the German specialty chemistry group with €14.5B revenues and 33.500 employees in 2011. At Ecosummit Düsseldorf 2012, Juergen Finke unveils the investment strategy of Evonik Corporate Venturing. Having started at the beginning of 2012, Evonik dedicated a €100M fund, made 3 fund investments (HTGF, Pangea and Emerald) to run up the learning curve and is working on their first direct startup investments. If your startup matches the strategy and expertise of one of Evonik’s business units, go and talk to Juergen. Smart green corporate venture capital may be your best choice.
Read more- 26
- February
2013
Paul Cousens of Autodesk talks about designing better cleantech products
Ecosummit TV: “We are all trying to help promising clean technology get to market faster,” says Paul Cousens, Global Cleantech Business Development Manager at Autodesk, at Ecosummit Düsseldorf 2012. Most of the innovation happens at the early stage level, but early stage startups typically don’t have a lot of money. That’s why Autodesk started their Cleantech Partner Programme that provides free product design software to startups with a value of up to €120K. In his talk, Paul discusses how design technology drives clean technology innovation. “Make all your mistakes in pixels instead of atoms,” sums it up best.
Read more- 10
- August
2012
Marie-Anne Brodschii presents the Veolia Innovation Accelerator
Ecosummit TV: Marie-Anne Brodschii, VP Innovation at Veolia, explains how Veolia drives cleantech innovation and how the cooperation with startups works in practice. The French corporate has got cleantech in its DNA and is pretty big: 230.000 employees generate €29.6B revenues and are active on 5 continents. Veolia’s business is focused on the management of water, waste, energy and energy efficiency. In fact, Veolia is very open towards smart green innovation coming from startups. To foster open innovation, Veolia launched the Veolia Innovation Accelerator (VIA) 2 years ago.
Read more- 11
- July
2012
Norbert Verweyen showcases RWE Effizienz, the smart green utility speedboat of RWE
Ecosummit TV: Norbert Verweyen, Managing Director of RWE Effizienz, showcases the strategy of his smart green utility speedboat which is able to launch new products more quickly than the mother ship RWE. Making money with energy efficiency is a big challenge for utilities and it’s a smart move of RWE to create their own startup with a lot of freedom to try out new ideas in the market. RWE Effizienz can be a good distribution channel for startups that have useful products at competitive prices. If you are active in electric mobility, home automation or decentralised generation you should get in touch with Norbert and his team.
Read more- 10
- July
2012
Rolf Adam explains Gridonomics – the energy strategy of Cisco
Ecosummit TV: Rolf Adam, Business Development Director Smart Grid and Utilties of Cisco in Europe, shares his thinking about the future of the smart grid and the Internet of things at Ecosummit Berlin 2012. Industry transitions don’t wait for anyone to happen. The energy industry is changing dramatically and utilities have to build a new energy platform to manage this disruptive change. Cisco calls its energy strategy Gridonomics and it’s about the future of the entire energy system combining technology, economics and policy.
Read more- 11
- June
2012
Joerg Fabri of Allocate recommends a holistic business strategy for the energy turnaround
Ecosummit TV: Joerg Fabri, Managing Partner of the consulting firm allocate, talks about a holistic business strategy for the utilities to manage the energy turnaround (Energiewende). To implement the transformation to the clean energy system companies need to reallocate their 4 key corporate resources: capacities, capital, people and energy and materials. There is a new paradigm driven by energy efficiency which means that the former business model of megawatt growth will not work anymore. The smart green utility of the future has to become an allocation manager that learns how to better manage the increasing complexity in the supply side and the demand side.
Read more- 5
- June
2012
Hans Streng shares the emobility strategy of ABB
Ecosummit TV: Hans Streng, SVP and General Manager of EV Charging Infrastructure at ABB, sold Epyon, which was incubated by Yes!Delft, to ABB and summarises his startup experience: “The true nature of a cleantech startup is how you manage continuous fluctuations and disruptions. Business changes on a day-to-day basis. The closer you get to the Internet domain, the faster the changes come. The closer you move to the CAPEX domain, the bigger the changes are.” At ECO12 Berlin, Hans presents ABB’s emobility strategy and talks about working with a small startup team inside a big corporate.
Read more- 22
- May
2012
Bernard Scherrer explains how EDF fosters open innovation
Ecosummit TV: Corporates are elephants and startups are mice. EDF is the French utility elephant on its long way to become a smart green utility. Bernard Scherrer is Head of Open Innovation at EDF and his job is to bring external innovation inside and internal innovation outside. It’s encouraging to see that corporate elephants make an effort to become friends with startup mice. Talk to Bernard if you are a smart green startup and want to do a pilot project with EDF. The best of you may even end up as new suppliers of EDF. To get a briefing on EDF’s open innovation strategy, watch Bernard’s authentic ECO12 talk on Ecosummit TV. I also recommend the fantastic books of Henry Chesbrough who believes that open innovation is the best strategy to innovate in a hyperconnected and hypercollaborative economy.
Read more- 21
- May
2012
Kurt Kaltenegger of ABB proposes sustainable art of corporate venturing
Ecosummit TV: Kurt Kaltenegger is CTO of ABB Technology Ventures which did 11 cleantech investments since it was founded 2.5 years ago. ABB’s corporate VC (CVC) approach combines strategic and financial goals when investing in startups that have innovative technologies ABB can use for new business. Now Kurt challenges his fellow VCs to reconsider their current investment strategies by implementing a new symbiosis between VCs and CVCs. Kurt believes that corporates like ABB bring so much expertise and added value to the table that valuations should be lower for them. That’s a cool way to start a negotiation with the startup CEO and her existing investors.
Read more- 12
- May
2012
Erwin Burth Presents Autodesk Cleantech Partner Programme At ECO12 Berlin
Ecosummit TV: Erwin Burth manages business development for Autodesk in Europe in the cleantech industry. Autodesk was founded 30 years ago, is a public company with a market cap of $8.2B and plays a pivotal role in the Smart Green Economy when it comes to designing smart green products. At ECO12, Erwin presents Autodesk’s design philosophy and its powerful design software solutions for the physical world. Autodesk believes that all problems can be solved with the help of intelligent design. In fact, that’s exactly what every cleantech startup building hardware needs. Autodesk is a very generous corporate and offers free software with a value of up to €120K to cleantech startups. Many Ecosummit startups are already a member of the Autodesk Cleantech Partner Programme such as Smart Hydro Power that won the Ecosummit Jury Award 2012. I strongly recommend that you apply asap.
Read more- 5
- April
2012
Jan Michael Hess Opens Ecosummit 2012 Berlin – With A Little Help From Some Friends
Ecosummit TV: Ecosummit Founder Jan Michael Hess opens Ecosummit Berlin 2012 on 22 March at Radialsystem. The sun is shining and many smart green people are in the house, visibly motivated to share ideas and grow their network. Our third Smart Green Business Conference is climate neutral thanks to the carbon offset powered by ClimatePartner. According to Bart Markus of Wellington Partners, Cleantech includes many big markets such as wind, solar, water or efficiency. Big markets attract lots of VC money and absorb experiments and execution mistakes. According to Prof. Karl Leo, Europe is good at basic research – this is our culture – but bad at application and bringing new ideas fast to global markets. At ECO12, we aggregated 225 startups, VCs and corporates to accelerate Smart Green Innovation. And we announced Virtual Ecosummit powered by ubivent. Let the show begin!
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