Ecosummit Berlin 14-15 June 2023
Ecosummit accelerates smart green startups in energy, mobility and cities to save our climate, decarbonise our economy and electrify our planet. Our events are startup markets enabling fundraising, lead and co-investing, portfolio development, corporate venturing, open innovation and M&A. Ecosummit Berlin 14-15 June 2023 is supported by 46 sponsors and takes place at Spindler & Klatt, Köpenicker Strasse 16-17, 10997 Berlin, the perfect location for sunshine and outdoor networking. The agenda features 116 speakers including 79 startups. Get your tickets and start arranging your meetings with our 329 participants using Linkedin. We look forward to hosting you.
Read moreEcosummit Berlin 23-24 June 2022
We want to live in 100% sustainable cities powered by 100% renewable energy and 100% electric mobility. Founded in 2010, Ecosummit accelerates smart green startups in energy, mobility and cities to save our climate, decarbonise our economy and electrify our planet. Our events are startup markets enabling fundraising, lead and co-investing, corporate venturing, open innovation and M&A. Ecosummit Berlin 23-24 June 2022 takes place at Spindler & Klatt, Köpenicker Strasse 16-17, 10997 Berlin, the best smart green startup conference in the perfect location for sunshine and outdoor networking. Get your tickets and join us. Ecosummit is a European platform supported by 55 sponsors from 17 countries. The agenda features 108 speakers including 67 startups. Check out our amazing list of 300 participants and start arranging your meetings with the help of Linkedin. All participants must be fully COVID-19 vaccinated/recovered. We serve vegetarian/vegan food, excellent wines, good music and 2 dinner parties. Extend your stay for the weekend, bring your families and enjoy our special programme for Ecosummit participants, included in the conference ticket, on Saturday, 25 June 2022: We celebrate the Ecosummit Afterparty on the island Lindwerder, Havelchaussee 43, 14193 Berlin in the Havel, Grunewald from 15:00 until late. Let’s accelerate smart green startups together to maximise our impact until 2030.
Read moreEcosummit Zoom 10 March 2021
We focus on connecting fundraising startups and active investors to foster 100% electric mobility, 100% renewable energy and 100% sustainable cities. Ecosummit Zoom 10 March 2021 is co-hosted by Christoph Ostermann (ex-Sonnen), Gerard Reid (Alexa Capital) and Bart Markus (GAP Technology Holding). The agenda features 10 exciting speakers including 3 CVCs with portfolio pitches: Nils Aldag (Sunfire) building a global hydrogen powerhouse, Jan Lozek (Future Energy Ventures) managing Europe’s largest energy startup porfolio, Nick Woolley (ev.energy) optimising EV charging, Erin Hallock (BP Ventures) investing in game-changing energy startups, Tom Anderson (Grid Edge) providing AI for building energy systems, Nicolas Milerieux (Encevo) redefining smart energy corporate venturing, Arnaud Legrand (Energiency) enabling energy intelligence for manufacturing, Davor Sutija (NexWafe) advancing solar wafer deeptech, Florian Meyer-Delpho (Installion) scaling the installation service provider for the energy transition and Janice Goodenough (Hydrogrid) developing the autopilot for hydropower plants. Please get in touch if you want to pitch at Ecosummit Zoom to accelerate your startup, fund or portfolio. Now it’s your turn to get your tickets and join us.
Read moreEnergiency raises €4.5M Series A led by Encevo
Ecosummit startups are startups that pitched at least once at Ecosummit. Ecosummit investors are investors that have at least one Ecosummit startup in their current portfolio. Today the Ecosummit startup Energiency announces its €4.5M Series A led by the Ecosummit investor Encevo. At the same time, we get one more assist because CEO Arnaud Legrand first met VC Analyst Quentin Dupraz at Ecosummit Paris on 6 March 2018. The French startup and the Luxembourg utility speak the same language and quickly found out that they not only understand each other but also have similar ideas for developing joint business opportunities in the industrial energy market. As Nicolas Milerioux and his team are on the mission to expand corporate venturing and open innovation, Energiency turned out to be a really good match for Encevo’s strategy and portfolio.
Read moreSmart green VCs you should know
There are many smart green VCs in Europe and the US that back startups in energy, mobility, buildings, cities, materials, food and circular economy to create impact as well as environmental, financial and strategic returns for their fund investors (LPs). In the VC food chain, early stage investors prefer to invest, at lower valuations and higher risk, in the Seed, Series A and Series B financing rounds of young startups working on product market fit and traction (users, customers, revenues). On the other hand, late stage VCs like shorter holding periods and time-to-exit and, consequently, advanced startups with more than €5M revenues, experienced management teams and fast growth. The existence of KPIs, ideally going up over time, makes the life of every investor easier. Facing climate change, technology revolution and global competition, the majority of corporates have adopted corporate venturing and open innovation strategies in order to invest in and do business with startups. The result are different investment strategies and sometimes competing portfolios that startups should know before pitching. Let’s co-invest and meet at Ecosummit Berlin.
Read morePerfect pitch: How to raise money for your startup
Startups not only got to pitch to and network with potential investors at Ecosummit Berlin 2017, they also got some valuable lessons on how to do it right. Leonie Baneke from Eneco Smart Energy gets sent lots of startup pitch decks, asking her for capital. This is the second year in a row Eneco has sponsored Ecosummit and Baneke says, they were part of the event since the beginning of their corporate venturing activities to look for cool and challenging ideas to invest in. The Dutch have money to spend, allocating 10 to 30 million euros per year to invest in external startups, follow-on investments and internal startups.
Read moreInven invests in Cloud&Heat and Eneco invests in Next Kraftwerke
2 European corporate VCs announce their new investments today at Ecosummit Berlin 2017 proving that German smart green startups are innovative, competitive and very attractive investment opportunities. Inven Capital, funded by the Czech utility CEZ, met Cloud&Heat one year ago at Ecosummit and today invests in the Dresden-based early stage startup. Founded in 2011, Cloud&Heat provides energy efficient data centres that use server heat for hot water and heating in commercial buildings, reducing operating costs of data centres by 50%. The Dutch utility Eneco invests in Next Kraftwerke and acquires a large minority interest of 34%. Founded in 2009, the Cologne-based late stage startup operates a large Virtual Power Plant (VPP) across 8 countries in Europe with 2.8 GW of renewable energy capacity under management. After acquiring 50% of Lichtblick in January 2017, this is the second major smart green energy investment of Eneco in Germany.
Read moreIcos 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 moreStatkraft 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 moreEcosummit 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.
Read morePeter van Gelderen presents Icos Capital and the art of collaborative corporate venturing
Ecosummit TV: Dutch smart green VC Peter van Gelderen presents Icos Capital and the art of collaborative corporate venturing at ECO13 London. Founded in 2006, Icos Capital has got €75M under management and manages a portfolio of 8 cleantech startups. One of the best performing portfolio companies is Greenclouds that aggregates idle IT resources in the cloud. Recently Icos exited Resteel and currently they are on the fundraising trail for their new cleantech fund. The Amsterdam-based VC is focused on the early stage and close cooperation with their LPs of which many are corporates with deep industry expertise and an open innovation strategy. In the past, Peter has learned that cleantech means complex markets that need industry expertise, the most promising startups often need massive support and many follow-on investments and corporate LPs bring technology insight and are able to validate market demand for the startups’ products. However, the relationship between a corporate LP and the VC only works if the corporation is willing to spend a lot of time with the portfolio companies while leaving the financial decisions to the fund manager.
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