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- March
2016
Corporate VC panel featuring Baker Botts, Inven Capital, Siemens Venture Capital and Sonnen
Ecosummit TV: Startups need corporates and corporates need startups. At ECO15 London, Tim Lafferty (Global Corporate Venturing) moderates an exciting corporate VC panel featuring Neil Foster (Baker Botts), Petr Mikovec (Inven Capital), Michael Hochholzer (Siemens Venture Capital) and Oliver Koch (Sonnen). It is a good idea to get in touch and start building relationships with corporates in the early stage of the startup. Even if corporates tend to invest at a later stage in a syndicate with financial VCs and other corporates, the strategic alignment of interests between corporates and startups is a key success factor and needs time to be elaborated well. A corporate minority investment usually doesn’t lead to an acquisition. For example, Siemens acquires around 10% of their portfolio companies and this seems to be the industry average. The contractual relationship between startups and corporates should be designed in a smart way that guarantees the strategic and operative freedom of the startup. Every line in the term sheet is flexible if experienced entrepreneurs with good lawyers sit at the table and multiple investors are interested in participating in the startup: Rights of first refusal can be negotiated out and liquidation preferences should not be higher than 1x.
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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- 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- 3
- December
2013
Smart green dealflow: E-volo crowdfunding, Lock8, Yetu, Thermondo and Zim Plant Technology exit
5 startups that pitched at Ecosummit conferences in the past celebrate new funding rounds. Within 3 days, 9 hours and 52 minutes electric aviation pioneer E-volo raised €1.2M in a record-breaking crowdfunding event on Seedmatch. Just in time, the Karlsruhe-based cleantech startup managed the first unmanned flight with the prototype of their green Volocopter VC 200 (see video below). Ecosummit contributed €1K and joined a group of 750 fearless crowd investors that agree that this worldwide innovation is ready for take off. With the help of E-volo Seedmatch established firmly as Germany’s leading crowdfunding platform for startups having raised over €10M for 50 projects since August 2011.
Read more- 1
- December
2013
Patric Gresko presents the European Investment Fund
Ecosummit TV: At ECO13 London, Patric Gresko gives an update on the cleantech activities of the European Investment Fund. Patric is the EIF’s resident Mr. Cleantech who wants to increase the support for cleantech VCs. In particular, the EIF is interested in training and funding first-time management teams as a way to grow the number of active cleantech investors in Europe. The EIF is Europe’s leading fund-of-fund with €12B of assets under management of which €3.8B go into early stage VCs. Since 2006, €280M were invested in 12 pure play cleantech funds managed by 9 fund managers (VC firms). A few more fund investment deals are in the pipeline.
Read more- 5
- July
2013
Carl Berninghausen pitches Sunfire
Ecosummit TV: Carl Berninghausen pitches Sunfire at ECO13 Berlin. The Dresden-based cleantech startup made very good progress since their first performance at ECO11 Berlin. Now they have 50 employees, most of them engineers, who aim at €5M revenues in 2013. Recently, Bilfinger Venture Capital joined as corporate VC and strategic partner for the construction and operation of new Sunfire plants. Sunfire’s core technology is a high-temperature fuel cell which can be used for power-to-gas and power-to-liquids processes. At Ecosummit Berlin, we observed Sunfire in intensive talks with more than one VC. That’s the way it should be.
Read more- 23
- June
2013
Smart green corporate venture capital panel with Eon, Aster, Electranova and Entelios
Ecosummit TV: Tim Lafferty of Global Corporate Venturing moderates the smart green corporate venture capital panel featuring Susana Quintana-Plaza (E.ON), Alexander Schlaepfer (Aster), Philippe Ringenbach (Electranova) and Tom Schulz (Entelios). Being an important pillar of the open innovation strategy of multinationals, corporate venture capital is a big trend as 500 new CVC units were created in the last 3 years. At least 10% of the CVCs are active in one or several of the cleantech sectors. Next to money, CVCs offer strategic value through market access and technological expertise.
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- 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. Consequently, the EIF set out to raise capital from corporates for their new Corporate Innovation Platform (CorIP). 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.
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- April
2013
Urban Keussen introduces Connecting Energies, the new CVC of EON
Ecosummit TV: Urban Keussen presents EON’s innovation strategy for its smart green utility transformation and introduces their new corporate venture capital (CVC) activities. At ECO12 Duesseldorf, Urban announced EON’s CVC called “Connecting Energies” that co-invests in mid and late stage startups in Europe and the US that are focused on distributed renewable energy, energy storage, smart grid and customers and data. Moreover, Urban and his team work on a lot of innovation that does not have a business case yet but may well have in the future. Thus they are open for joint projects with smart green startups, especially if their solution is able to accelerate the Energiewende (energy transformation), the key task of all utilities.
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- 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.
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- February
2013
Fabienne Herlaut looks for promising ecomobility startups In Europe
Ecosummit TV: At Ecosummit Düsseldorf 2012, Fabienne Herlaut, Managing Partner of Ecomobilité Ventures, presents her multi-corporate fund which is focused on investing in ecomobility startups in Europe. Ecomobilité Ventures is financed by French national railway operator SNCF, mobile telephone operator Orange and energy company Total. While the €25M fund is still young, it already invested in 3 sustainable mobility startups: Move About, EZ‐Wheel and Ouicar. Fabienne is looking for a fourth corporate investor from the automotive industry, preferably from Germany. At the same time, she is always interested in meeting fundable ecomobility startups that look for smart green investors with industry expertise.
Read more- 18
- October
2012
Urban Keussen presents EON’s smart green innovation strategy
Ecosummit TV: Urban Keussen, SVP Technology & Innovation, presents the smart green innovation strategy of EON at ECO12 Berlin. Urban gives a very informative lecture on how a big utility like EON analyses megatrends and new key technologies that are decisive for the Energiewende (energy transformation). Although EON is still very active in large-scale energy generation with fossil fuels, it invested over €7B in renewables during the last couple of years, mostly in wind. Urban is the perfect point of contact for high-quality cleantech startups that are interested in doing business with EON. We look forward to his upcoming talk at ECO12 Düsseldorf.
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- 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- 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.
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