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 moreThermondo raises €6M Series B from Rocket Internet, Holtzbrinck Ventures, E.ON, IBB and Grey Corp
“We only raise as much capital as we need to reach the next company growth and valuation milestone,” says Thermondo‘s CEO Philipp Pausder. In fact, that’s a pretty smart fundraising strategy that ensures the founders do not sell off their company too quickly before substantial value has been created with the help of the current financing round. Today, the Berlin-based late stage startup announced their €6M Series B that they collected from Rocket Internet, Holtzbrinck Ventures, E.ON, IBB and Grey Corp. Thermondo sells heating systems online and dispatches internal teams from 12 cities to every corner in Germany to install the units at the customers’ premises. Learning from Solarcity, Thermondo decided a while ago to vertically integrate the installation process in order to manage it digitally and minimise process costs.
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