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- August
2021
Wirelane raises €18M Series B led by Abacon Capital
Ubiquitous electric mobility and EV charging play an important role to save our climate and planet and this is the decisive decade to limit global warming to 1.5°C. By 2030, Transport & Environment’s Road2Zero scenario forecasts a need for 2.9 million public EV chargers in the EU. Just-in-time, Wirelane raises €18M Series B (€12.1M fresh capital and €5.9M converted loans) to accelerate its growth and contribute to rolling out more EV charging stations. The B round is led by Abacon Capital, the investment arm of the Büll family office in Hamburg. Early investors in Wirelane include Vito Ventures, HTGF and Coparion. Founded in 2016, Wirelane employs 40 emobility experts in Munich and Berlin and targets €5M+ revenues in 2021. Among the B2B customers are BMW and Vattenfall.
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- December
2016
Lilium raises €10M Series A from Atomico to commercialise its electric VTOL jet
On-demand urban air transportation is the next big thing according to Daniel Wiegand, CEO and Co-Founder of Lilium. The German aviation startup develops an electric VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aircraft called Lilium jet since 2015. Today, Atomico invests €10M Series A and Niklas Zennström joins the board. Daniel and his team of 35 employees have the vision to make urban aviation electric, silent and available for everyone with the help of airtaxis and other aviation services. Uber also shares the vision that urban mobility should go vertical and is already working on matching pilots and passengers that want to bypass street-level congestion and traffic jams. In October 2016, the Californian mobility giant unveiled Uber Elevate in a 97-page must-read whitepaper. It would be no surprise if they soon co-invested in Lilium as übercool VTOL jets are the missing link to launch Uber in the air.
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- March
2016
Smart green angel Frank Thelen invests in Lilium Aviation to fly an electric plane
Ecosummit TV: Electric aviation is the future of aviation. Co-Founder and CEO Daniel Wiegand pitched Lilium Aviation at ECO15 London on 6 October 2015. On 7 March 2016, the famous German smart green angel Frank Thelen invested in Lilium Aviation buying 15% of the company. The Munich-based startup is supported by Climate KIC and develops an electric plane that can take off and land vertically due to tiltable electric engines. The plane has a beautiful design, will travel at 400 km/h and achieve an all-electric range of 500 km. The first manned flight is planned in 2016 and the commercial rollout starts in 2018. The Lilium jet costs €300K and can already be pre-ordered online – Tesla style. We think Lilium Aviation is one of the hottest and most innovative smart green startups in Europe. For sure, Elon Musk will love it, too.
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- August
2014
Christian Deilmann pitches Tado that recently raised €10M for global expansion
Ecosummit TV: Christian Deilmann pitches Tado at ECO13 London. Since then the Munich-based smart heating startup launched in the UK, developed and kickstarted a smart cooling app – Christian’s original idea – and raised €10M from Target Partners, Shortcut Ventures and other unnamed investors to accelerate their growth and global expansion. Tado is Nest‘s best positioned competitor in Europe. In the last 3 years the team of 40 employees developed a scalable Internet of Things platform that supports 5.000 different types of heating systems and a growing number of air conditioning systems. In the future, Tado will connect other appliances in the smart home, too. In our opinion, a smart home rather needs only one open gateway that communicates with all online devices in the household. The question is who enters and controls the smart home first. It may well be Tado rather than Nest.
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- October
2013
Dirk Dens pitches Govecs
Ecosummit TV: Electric mobility on 2 wheels grows a lot faster than on 4 wheels. Dirk Dens pitches Govecs at ECO13 Berlin and shows how Govecs is surfing this VC-friendly trend. The Munich-based late stage startup is backed by Gimv and makes very cool electric scooters that are manufactured in Wroclaw, Poland. Govecs makes scooters not only for consumers but also for companies, especially urban delivery services. The new trend is scooter sharing and Govecs recently started the first project together with Ecooltra in Barcelona. If Govecs continues to execute its strategy well, they may be an exit candidate rather soon.
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- August
2013
Leopold von Bismarck pitches Tado from Munich
Ecosummit TV: Leopold von Bismarck pitches Tado at ECO13 Berlin. The Munich-based startup provides a smart green heating management service that helps consumers save up to €300 per year. At €99 annual subscription fee, this is a fair deal that makes economic and ecological sense. Customers connect a small hardware box to their central heating system and control it with a smartphone app. Backed by Target Partners and Shortcut Ventures, Tado is one of the most promising cleantech startups in Germany. At the same time, they are a very good case study to learn how cleantech and Internet grow together by making things smart and connecting them to their users. Thus your heating system goes green by operating less, only when it is really needed. The expert jury of the Ecosummit Award 2013 also thought that Tado is on a roll and sent them home with a silver medal and some useful prize money.
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- October
2012
Jakob Assmann pitches smart green utility startup Polarstern
Ecosummit TV: Jakob Assmann pitches Polarstern at ECO12 Berlin. Polarstern is a German startup that positions as a retailer of green electricity and green gas. They have big plans and believe they can be more innovative than the big utilities because they are fast, smart and green. Polarstern is based in Munich, raised €350K and has 12 employees. Polarstern claims to be the first utility in Germany that can offer a green gas product at a competitive price as a result of having developed their own green gas trading system.
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- June
2012
Tom Schulz presents how Entelios brings demand response to the market
Ecosummit TV: Tom Schulz, Co-Founder and COO of Entelios, pitches the German demand response management startup at ECO12 Berlin. According to the Smart Energy Demand Coalition, intelligent cooperation between consumption, transmission, distribution and generation acting as equal partners in the electricity market is at the heart of the smart grid. Entelios sits between the demand side and the supply side and balances both by aggregating and shifting electricity demand away from peak hours, or rather peak minutes.
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- April
2012
Cleantech Inside Is The Future – Reporting From Cleantech Forum Europe 2012
“Cleantech inside is the future,” forecasts Sheeraz Haji, CEO of the Cleantech Group. I totally agree with Sheeraz and like to call it: sustainable by default. The next wave is pervasive cleantech and ubiquitous sustainability management that will be adopted by every company in every sector. Of course, it will take time to make it real but the good news is that there are many smart green investors, startups and corporates working on it. This was obvious at the fantastic Cleantech Forum Europe 2012 which Sheeraz and his team organised this week in Munich. Before I share some of the general challenges VCs and startups are facing, let me brief you on the strategy of the Cleantech Group.
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- July
2011
5th Munich Cleantech Conference on 14 July 2011 – Interview with Curt Winnen
On Thursday next week, 14 July 2011, the Munich Network, headed by Curt Winnen, produces the 5th Munich Cleantech Conference (MCC11). That’s rather sustainable and proves a lot of experience in bringing together smart green startups, investors and corporates. Below you find our interview with Curt about the MCC11. Myself, I joined the investor-heavy congress last year and will attend the upcoming MCC11, too, as Ecosummit is one of the media partners.
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