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- January
2016
Fast-growing solar e-commerce startup Greenergetic attracts investment from RWE
Ecosummit TV: Selling PV systems online is a great business idea for a smart green startup. You can grow at Internet speed and drive the Energiewende by spreading renewable energy. If you want to build your startup in a capital efficient way with a small burn rate, it is also a good idea to minimise your customer acquisition costs by adopting a B2B business model and working with distribution partners. This is exactly what CEO Florian Meyer-Delpho and his co-founders did in 2012 when they launched Greenergetic as a white label portal for utilities to sell PV systems to their customers. At ECO15 Berlin in May, Florian pitched Greenergetic to increase investor demand for their €2M financing round (see Ecosummit TV video below). On 15 December 2015, RWE Vertrieb, the German sales company of RWE with 4 million customers and €12B revenues, announced their minority investment in Greenergetic. While the terms of the deal are undisclosed, we assume that Florian managed to raise a bit more than he was looking for given that Greenergetic expected €5M revenues in 2015.
Read more- 23
- November
2015
Christian Reitberger and Jan Michael Hess chat about smart green angel investing
Ecosummit TV: We need more smart green angels in Europe. At the same time, angels should get better at co-investing in smart green startups and creating value during the holding period. With this motivation Christian Reitberger and Jan Michael Hess chat about the art of smart green angel investing at ECO15 Berlin. Christian is a VC and angel at the same time. This double role is possible as Wellington Partners stopped doing new investments in resource efficiency and, as a result, there is no conflict of interest. While many angels stay in the background, Christian gets a lot of dealflow because there is a general shortage of early stage investors and many people just know him. During the last years, he made 12 angel investments including 1 exit and 1 write-off. His active portfolio contains Romo Wind and Electrochaea.
Read more- 27
- July
2015
Andreas Spiess pitches Solarkiosk at ECO15 Berlin
Ecosummit TV: Andreas Spiess pitches Solarkiosk at ECO15 Berlin. The Berlin-based smart green startup operates Solarkiosks designed by Graft in emerging markets and targets people living in offgrid communities at the Base-of-the-Pyramid (BoP). By the end of 2015, 200 Solarkiosks will be online in 7 countries in Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Botswana, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Nigeria). Founded in 2011, Solarkiosk has got over 60 employees, raised more than €10M and will be fundraising in 2016 looking for the best impact investors and VCs that believe in the tremendous business opportunities in emerging markets. Solarkiosk’s ultimate goal are 300.000 Solarkiosks in Africa, Asia and South America. Solarkiosk is one of the most exciting startups in Europe and a superb impact investment opportunity.
Read more- 22
- May
2015
Sonnenbatterie, Sunfire, Thermondo, Agrilution, Ubitricity and Bettervest win the Ecosummit Award at ECO15 Berlin
Ecosummit Berlin 2015 was our best event so far – in terms of product quality, customer feedback and revenues. 250 super happy participants came to the Radialsystem on 19-20 May 2015 and were blown away by our unique mix of smart green people, superb conference location, fresh air on the Spree terrace, long networking breaks, tasty food, delicious wine, onsite parties with funky DJs and live act as well as a packed agenda that we ran through on time – for the first time since 2010. The secret of time keeping is collective discipline fostered by a speaker clock that is also visible to the moderator and skipping questions from the audience. During our award ceremony on 19 May 2015, we announced the 6 smart green startups winning the Ecosummit Award 2015.
Read more- 26
- March
2015
Jan Marckhoff pitches BEN Energy
Ecosummit TV: Jan Marckhoff pitches BEN Energy at ECO14 Berlin. The smart green startup enables customer intelligence and engagement for utilities and competes with Opower and Tendril. Being the market leader in Switzerland, BEN Energy recently entered the German market and already won a large customer and a powerful distribution partner. The founders successfully bootstrapped their spin-off from ETH Zurich to €1M annual revenues and are currently raising their first financing round. Jan will pitch again at ECO15 Berlin to change the way people experience energy.
Read more- 30
- October
2014
Ecosummit Berlin 2015 takes place on 19-20 May 2015 at the Radialsystem
Ecosummit TV: We are very happy to announce our 9th conference Ecosummit Berlin 2015 taking place on 19-20 May 2015 at the Radialsystem – the best event location in Europe’s leading smart green city for startups. As a warm up, we share the opening of ECO14 Berlin on Ecosummit TV. Last year, the theme of Ecosummit was Accelerating Smart Green Startups. We believe that everybody should think and act like an accelerator trying to reduce capital and time to market while growing the team and revenues faster. This is what our industry needs: Faster startups and bigger exits. While a fast and small exit that results in an aquihire for the buyer may be a good thing, what VCs and LPs really want are big exits by big startups that have big economic and ecological impact. To make big exits happen, founders and their investors have to constantly work on the 4 success factors of startups: People, capital, product and customers. Only if you have the best team, enough capital, a competitive product and lots of happy customers, you are able to become a global market leader. At ECO15 Berlin on 19-20 May 2015, we will continue to work together on accelerating smart green startups aiming at big exits.
Read more- 1
- October
2013
Ecosummit 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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