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.
Read moreJohan Reynaert presents the European Investment Fund and shares their LP lessons learned
Ecosummit TV: Johan Reynaert presents the European Investment Fund (EIF) and shares their LP lessons learned at ECO14 London. EIF is the biggest fund investor in Europe and a major LP in 16 sustainability VC funds such as Munich Venture Partners, Environmental Technologies Fund, Demeter, Capricorn, VNT Management, Aster Capital, Emertec, WHEB and Icos Capital. According to Johan, sustainability as an asset subclass within venture capital is maturing. GPs and LPs have learned from the past and nowadays focus on capital efficiency, value creation and cooperation with corporates in their startup portfolio. A new trend – that we just discussed with Johan’s colleague Patric Gresko at the Cleantech Forum in Florence – is the interaction of impact investors and smart green VCs. The deep integration of impact investing into the investment strategy and portfolio management enables VCs and startups to tap into a lot of new capital from family offices and other impact investors.
Read moreHenrik Olsen chats with Jan Michael Hess about being a smart green VC
Ecosummit TV: “We like to get to know the people behind the business,” explains Henrik Olsen, Partner at Environmental Technologies Fund (ETF), when it comes to building a strong relationship before the investment. Sometimes, relationship building can take a couple of years. In fact, it took 4.5 years in the case of E-Leather from the first meeting until the investment. This may well be a slow investment record but what counts in the end is the fund performance as a result of backing the right startups. E-Leather reprocesses waste leather while making it lighter and stronger to save weight and fuel, e.g. in planes.
Read moreChristoph Ostermann pitches Sonnenbatterie at ECO14 London
Ecosummit TV: Christoph Ostermann pitches Sonnenbatterie at ECO14 London. Since then a lot has happened to the famous solar storage startup from Bavaria. Just 2 days ago, Sonnenbatterie was chosen in New York as New Energy Pioneer 2015 by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. In December 2014, Sonnenbatterie raised €7.5M Series B from Munich Venture Partners, SET Ventures and Ecapital, bringing up the total capital raised to €10.5M. With 2014 revenues of €15M, Sonnenbatterie turns out to be very capital efficient. Moreover, a new management team was hired including COO Oliver Koch (Paramount Solar, acquired by Solarcity), CTO Hermann Schweizer and US Country Manager Boris von Bormann, a very smart and well connected German living on the West Coast for 25 years. In fact, Sonnenbatterie USA will officially launch at Intersolar San Francisco on 14-16 July 2015 and currently works on adapting their battery system to the local market and finding strong production and distribution partners. Christoph plans the Series C in 2016 and wants to bring in American co-investors while keeping the HQ in Germany for the foreseeable future.
Read morePedro Miranda talks about the smart green city strategy of Siemens
Ecosummit TV: At ECO14 London, our second conference at the LEED Platinum-certified Crystal, our host Pedro Miranda presents the smart green city strategy of Siemens and its key drivers. Electrification, automation and digital transformation have got a huge impact on the business of the German corporate and its customers. In fact, the digital and physical world are merging to continuously create better and more resource efficient solutions taking advantage of the latest smart technologies. Many companies are working hard to be part of the Internet of Things. According to Pedro, digital growth is exponential and the amount of data generated by humans and machines doubles every 2 years. In smart green cities, smart buildings are connected to the smart grid while the energy and data flow bi-directionally from the producer to the consumer and back to the producer. At the Crystal, Pedro and his team know everything that’s going on thanks to the omniscient building management system they put in place.
Read moreSonnenbatterie raises €7.5M Series B from Munich Venture Partners, Chrysalix SET and Ecapital
Sonnenbatterie raises €7.5M in their Series B financing round from the co-investors Munich Venture Partners, Chrysalix SET and Ecapital. The Bavarian startup sold over 4.000 smart energy storage systems and is one of the fastest growing smart green startups in Germany. We like Sonnenbatterie since their first pitch at Ecosummit Düsseldorf 2012. In January 2013, Ecapital invested €3M in the Series A. At ECO13 Berlin, Sonnenbatterie won Ecosummit Award 2013 Bronze and Philipp Schröder, now at Tesla, performed a great pitch. Sonnenbatterie also joined our first Ecosummit London 2013. In March 2014, we co-hosted our first Ecosummit Advisor Workshop in the energy village Wildpoldsried. Among our advisors were Martin Kröner (MVP) and Rene Savelsberg (Chrysalix SET) and, as you can see, they went home more impressed than ever before. At ECO14 Berlin, Sonnenbatterie won Ecosummit Award 2014 Gold and Benjamin Schott jumped on stage. At ECO14 London, Christoph Ostermann pitched again after we enjoyed an incredible sponsor dinner at Home House and then got lost in London’s taxi underground. Now it is time to celebrate before doubling annual production and revenues in the years to come. Long live Sonnenbatterie and very big the exit shall be.
Read moreCall for startups to pitch at Ecosummit London 2014 on 7-8 October
Our second Ecosummit London takes place on 7-8 October 2014 at the Crystal. As in the past, we want to feature a lot of smart green startups on stage as this is what VCs and corporates really want – meeting innovative startups in a cool location in a time and cost efficient way. During our new Ecosummit Startup Showcase we promote startups from Europe that have raised less than €1M venture capital. We give away at least 10 free 5-minute pitch slots to fundable startups. To apply for a free pitch please create and update your startup profile on Ecosummit Market and email us your investor presentation as soon as possible (see guideline below). We announce the winners on a first come, first serve basis. Check the ECO14 London speakers to find out which startups are part of the showcase. Startups that have raised more than €1M and need more money and publicity can secure their pitch slot by buying a startup pitch ticket for £500,00 + VAT. Please contact us if you are interested and we send you a startup ticket discount code.
Read moreSusana 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 moreEcosummit London 2013 happens on 15-16 October at the Crystal
This is our preview of Ecosummit London 2013, our 6th cleantech conference that we hold for the first time in London. The agenda is online and presents 58 speakers including 31 startups and 15 sponsors. The growing list of participants features a promising startup and VC density. 2 embedded Ecosummit TV videos show my introduction of ECO13 London and my opening of ECO13 Berlin. With 2 weeks to go, there is plenty of time to get your ticket and join us at the Crystal, the perfect location for our smart green family reunion. A unique experience for the participants will be the cable car pitch overviewing The Thames and Canary Wharf. Finally, it is our pleasure to share the dates of our next 4 events in Berlin and London in 2014 and 2015 for which we look for long-term sponsors and partners.
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