- 6
- September
2023
Smart 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 4-5 June 2024.
Read more- 14
- May
2013
Ecosummit in London: ECO13 Berlin, Market, Award, WHEB Partners and Friedola
Ecosummit TV: This is a short video recorded at our second Ecosummit Lounge London on 2 May 2013 at Taylor Wessing. It features very nice pictures of the city, another red bus going green for London and a preview of ECO13 Berlin, our 5th cleantech conference for startups, VCs and corporates. We also talk about the launch of Ecosummit Market, our new online platform for startups. Ecosummit Market is integrated with Ecosummit Award. 43 award nominees are busy mobilising votes on Facebook until 27 May. The application deadline for new startups to join the competition is 20 May.
Read more- 14
- May
2012
Smart Hydro Power raises €2.7 Million Series A from eCapital
Smart Hydro Power successfully closed their Series A financing round raising €2.7M from the German Cleantech VC eCapital which values the startup at €8.4M premoney. The seed investor High-Tech Gründerfonds converted their loan in this round. As Smart Hydro Power also won the Ecosummit Jury Award 2012 convincing our 53 judges, this milestone is a welcome opportunity to interview the CEO Karl Kolmsee and his investors about the deal and the prospects of this unique young company. Moreover, this deal proves that we continue to bring the best smart green startups onto our Ecosummit stage. To celebrate, we are happy to publish Karl’s fantastic ECO12 pitch on Ecosummit TV just in time for this story.
Read more- 13
- October
2011
Smart Green VC Khosla Ventures raises new billion-dollar fund
Vinod Khosla is a wise man and smart green investor. Originally from India, Co-Founder of Sun Microsystems, Partner at Kleiner Perkins and, since 2004, Founder and Managing Partner of Khosla Ventures, Vinod is probably the most successful Cleantech VC in 2011 with 3 successful IPOs already. Not afraid of taking big risks, ready to fail in order to succeed, focused on the relevance of the Chindia price (unsubsidised price competitiveness in China and India) and self-defining as venture assistant helping entrepreneurs build relevant companies, Vinod is a big role model for me. Now he has even more money to accelerate smart green startups. That’s awesome, dude, congrats to all of us!
Read more