- 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.
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- February
2013
Smart green dealflow: Sunfire, Greenergetic, Sonnenbatterie, LEDeXCHANGE, Valopaa and Friedola Tech
6 smart green startups successfully raised new venture capital recently: Power to gas and fuel startup Sunfire (seven-figure, Germany), PV online retailer Greenergetic (undisclosed seed, Germany), residential storage provider Sonnenbatterie (undisclosed, Germany), retrofit LED provider LEDeXCHANGE (€500K seed, Germany), LED lighting company Valopaa (€2M, Finland) and recycled plastics manufacturer Friedola Tech (€31M, Germany). The active cleantech VCs include Bilfinger Venture Capital, eCapital, High-Tech Gründerfonds, VNT Management, Silver Lake Kraftwerk and Kleiner Perkins.
Read more- 23
- August
2012
What cleantech startups and VCs in Europe and USA can learn from each other
Ecosummit TV: Europeans don’t think big enough. Michael Linse (KPCB), Pascal Mauberger (McPhy Energy), Oliver Stahl (Entelios) and Bart Markus (Wellington) discuss the differences between the cleantech startup and VC business in USA and Europe. There are many things we can learn from each other. On average, US cleantech startups get 4 times more capital than European ones. This has to do with the different environment in terms of market size, capital availability and competition.
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- June
2012
Michael Linse of Kleiner Perkins: humanity is about to hit a wall
Ecosummit TV: Michael Linse, Partner at Kleiner Perkins, talks about his favourite greentech investing framework at Ecosummit Berlin and comes to a scary conclusion: Humanity is about to hit a wall. Cleantech is about the impact of the macro trends on huge industries that will lead to a more sustainable functioning of these industries. The demand side of the equation is changing, in fact, it will go up tremendously. From now until 2030, 3 billion people will join the global middle class. This is significant as the resource consumption pattern increases most dramatically as people move from the scope of poverty to the middle class.
Read more- 14
- November
2011
Smart Green Dealflow: HTGF, Better Place, Epyon, Heliospectra, Tiramizoo, Compositence, Novaled and Proterra
Finally, I find a bit of time to highlight some recent investment deals in our smart green ecosystem. We plan to write our Smart Green Dealflow more often, so please keep sending us your cleantech deal press releases. This time we cover High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), Better Place, Epyon, Heliospectra, Tiramizoo, Compositence, Novaled and Proterra. These companies all work on the future of mobility and LED.
Read more- 19
- August
2011
11.000 VideoViews on Ecosummit TV – Let’s Celebrate by Rewatching the best Smart Green Startups and VCs
We are proud to announce having reached a new major milestone on Ecosummit TV, our wonderful Youtube HD channel: 11.000 VideoViews since we started in February 2011. This is a good reason for rewatching some of the best episodes on Ecosummit TV featuring smart green startups and VCs. Learn about hot Cleantech deals worth backing and how you should invest your fund for successful returns. One more thing: Ecosummit 2012 takes place on 22-23 March 2012 in Berlin and it’s going to be big. Stay tuned!
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- April
2011
Ecosummit TV accepted as official Youtube Partner
Today we have received good news from Youtube: Ecosummit TV has been granted official Youtube Partner status. This means we can now upload long videos (> 15 min) and include advertising to refinance our production costs. Ecosummit TV is the free on-demand IPTV channel covering the great transformation to the Smart Green Economy. We have started Ecosummit TV on 20 February 2011 and uploaded 42 videos in full HD quality that achieved 4.280 views as of today. Thanks to Youtube and Apple, Ecosummit TV is, in fact, high-quality Mobile TV as it looks fantastic on the iPhone and iPad.
Read more- 6
- April
2011
Ecosummit TV ECO11 Mix 1.0
Ane Mari Aakernes, Gernot Toegel and Jan Michael Hess have been busy producing Ecosummit TV during the last 10 days. Our first Ecosummit TV ECO11 Mix offers you some funky 10 minutes of ECO11 experience including many speakers, startups, investors and participants. A great opportunity to relive Ecosummit 2011 on 24-25 March in Berlin. The groovy Jazz music you can hear is the song “Lost in Bogota” by Erik Truffaz on his new album “In Between”. When shall we do the next Ecosummit to celebrate and accelerate the Smart Green Economy?
Read more- 31
- March
2011
Ecosummit TV – ECO11 – Michael Linse – KPCB
It’s the cost curves, stupid! – A cool title chosen for his speech by Michael Linse, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, at ECO11 in Berlin. The cost of production for all major green technologies including PV, Wind, Water, Batteries etc. will further go down. That’s the good news. Driving cost out of the business should be the focus of all Cleantech startups and corporates trying to scale their business and go global. According to Michael, it is also the key parameter for his investment decisions. Later stage deals mean that the technology risk has already been taken out. The next question is how to scale globally as fast as possible. Enter Michael’s KPCB Green Growth Fund.
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