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- 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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- April
2016
Inven Capital announces €20M investment in Tado at Ecosummit Berlin 2016
Ecosummit TV: Our smart green innovation community is making deals and sharing breaking news at Ecosummit. During their ECO16 Berlin presentation, Petr Mikovec and his Inven Capital team announce their €20M investment in Tado, one of the fastest-growing smart green startups in Germany. The Munich-based late stage startup provides climate control services to households by controlling heating and air conditioning systems. Tado was founded in 2011, pitched at Ecosummit Berlin 2012 for the first time and grew their team to 100 employees. Inven originally contacted Tado in 2015 and wanted to join the last round but it was too late. Eager to get into the deal, Inven today invests alone at a higher valuation than Tado’s last financing round of €15.2M in October 2015. The existing shareholders Siemens Venture Capital, Statkraft Ventures, Target Partners, Shortcut Ventures and BayBG did not participate again and accepted dilution. Christian Deilmann, CEO of Tado, comments: “We currently have a lot of traction growing at 400% annually in 12 European markets, USA and Singapore. Although we are well-funded thanks to our last round in autumn 2015, Inven Capital presented a great opportunity to strengthen our position in Central and Southeastern Europe and further accelerate our growth and innovation leadership. Our goal is an IPO in a couple of years.”
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- March
2016
Corporate VC panel featuring Baker Botts, Inven Capital, Siemens Venture Capital and Sonnen
Ecosummit TV: Startups need corporates and corporates need startups. At ECO15 London, Tim Lafferty (Global Corporate Venturing) moderates an exciting corporate VC panel featuring Neil Foster (Baker Botts), Petr Mikovec (Inven Capital), Michael Hochholzer (Siemens Venture Capital) and Oliver Koch (Sonnen). It is a good idea to get in touch and start building relationships with corporates in the early stage of the startup. Even if corporates tend to invest at a later stage in a syndicate with financial VCs and other corporates, the strategic alignment of interests between corporates and startups is a key success factor and needs time to be elaborated well. A corporate minority investment usually doesn’t lead to an acquisition. For example, Siemens acquires around 10% of their portfolio companies and this seems to be the industry average. The contractual relationship between startups and corporates should be designed in a smart way that guarantees the strategic and operative freedom of the startup. Every line in the term sheet is flexible if experienced entrepreneurs with good lawyers sit at the table and multiple investors are interested in participating in the startup: Rights of first refusal can be negotiated out and liquidation preferences should not be higher than 1x.
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- September
2014
Eugen Mayer pitches Power Plus Communications
Ecosummit TV: Eugen Mayer pitches Power Plus Communications (PPC) at ECO13 London. The Mannheim-based late stage startup provides broadband powerline (BPL) communication systems in electricity networks and is very active in the smart grid and smart meter rollouts in Germany and UK, their 2 most important markets. Applications such as smart street lighting could communicate over PPC’s powerline technology, too. PPC is a fabless startup with 50 employees that is backed by Climate Change Capital, British Gas and Siemens Venture Capital. Power Plus Communications seems to be well positioned to benefit from the growing smart grid market and we are curious to see who will eventually buy this company.
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- May
2014
Detlef Pohl pitches Siemens Venture Capital
Ecosummit TV: Detlef Pohl pitches Siemens Venture Capital at ECO13 London. The cities of the future have to be sustainable, competitive and livable to attract the best companies and citizens. Therefore, cities need intelligent infrastructure that integrates buildings, mobility, water supply, waste management and security while minimising the carbon footprint. Siemens not only provides a myriad of new technologies for smart green cities but also venture capital and project financing for the development and deployment of such technologies. The ability to offer customised financing solutions drives the sales of smart green innovation. It’s useful to be a corporate and have a big balance sheet. As for venture capital, Siemens is an investor in the EV charging network Chargepoint that recently raised $22.6M and operates over 17.000 charging stations.
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- December
2012
Laurent Giai-Miniet pitches EnOcean
Ecosummit TV: Laurent Giai-Miniet pitches the late stage cleantech startup EnOcean at ECO12 Berlin. EnOcean provides wireless energy harvesting technology for smart green buildings and has become the de facto standard for batteryless building and home automation. Sensors and switches powered by EnOcean modules are used to control the lighting, heating and cooling of rooms depending on room occupancy and other variables such as open or closed windows. EnOcean’s investors include Wellington, Emerald, Chrysalix SET and Siemens. If you are planning a new or retrofit smart green building, EnOcean is the right choice.
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