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- February
2020
Epilot raises Series A from Enercity after meeting at Ecosummit
At Ecosummit deals get done. We saw the need for bringing new climate tech to the global market a long time ago. Thus we already have 10 years track record of matching smart green startups with investors. Here’s one more success story about a fast growing energy e-commerce startup and a transforming city utility that met for the first time at Ecosummit Berlin 2019 to explore common ground with the help of coffee. Good deals take time. 9 months later, on 11 February 2020, Epilot announced at E-world the closing of its Series A in which Enercity invests a significant but undisclosed amount of growth capital to buy a 25,1% stake in Epilot’s cap table. After finishing our startup tour running around Germany’s leading energy trade fair, we joined Epilot’s lively stand party to celebrate the deal closing, interview the co-founders and enjoy a few Kölsch together.
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- February
2020
Smart tank inventor Mixergy raises £3.6M Series A led by Foresight Williams
The new era of smart hot water tanks is here. Tanks that optimise energy consumption and accelerate the integration of renewables into the grid, putting more money into consumers’ pockets and offering grid balancing services with the help of demand response. Mixergy is that future of smart hot water tanks, on course to take over the UK domestic market and beyond. They started this year on a positive note, having raised a £3.6M Series A on 13 January 2020 led by Foresight Williams and backed by all previous investors including Centrica Innovations and IP Group, both regular sponsors of Ecosummit.
Read more- 26
- 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.”
Read more- 28
- January
2015
Yüksel Sirmasac pitches Rockethome
Ecosummit TV: Smart energy and smart home, empowered by the Internet of Things (IoT), are hot markets that continue to attract a growing number of startups. One of the established German smart home enablers with a strong focus on usability is Rockethome that was founded in 2010 in Cologne. At ECO14 Berlin, Yüksel Sirmasac gives a company update and pitches Rockethome. The startup provides a software platform for smart home services that connects all kinds of devices and applications. The Rockethome solution is already licensed to 40 telcos and city utilities in 6 countries. Rockethome has got 35 employees, doubles revenues every year and is backed by Born2grow, a seed fund managed by Zukunftsfonds Heilbronn, and KfW. Now Yüksel is interested in talking to new financial and strategic investors that can help grow the business.
Read more- 15
- 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.
Read more- 4
- May
2014
Trued Holmquist pitches ATC Industrial Group from Sweden
Ecosummit TV: Trued Holmquist pitches ATC Industrial Group from Sweden at ECO13 London. ATC develops a self-learning home energy management system called Scypho. Targeting single family houses the system uses neural network technology to provide comfort on demand to the end users. Scypho controls the heating and cooling system of the building using a gateway, sensors and smartphones as user interface and enables energy cost savings of up to 30%. Up to now ATC has been active in Sweden and wants to raise €2.5M to grow faster and enter new international markets. In the future, Scypho will be extended to serve as a smart home platform that integrates more services such as lighting control or intelligent demand response. As the smart home marketplace is quite crowded already, it will be interesting to watch which startups outrun the competition.
Read more- 1
- October
2013
Thomas Goette pitches Greenpocket
Ecosummit TV: Thomas Goette pitches Greenpocket at ECO13 Berlin. In particular, Thomas talked about their multi-level benchmarking tool that is based on smart meter data and allows to compare energy consumption data and receive recommendations for optimisation.The smart green startup from Cologne is backed by NRW Bank, Schwetje Digital (Betafabrik), Rheinland Venture Capital and KfW. Founded in 2009, Greenpocket has 30 employees and provides a powerful software platform for smart metering and smart home management. Greenpocket has got over 40 utilities and telcos as customers in Germany, Austria, Spain and UK.
Read more- 12
- July
2013
Christopher Schlaeffer pitches Yetu from Berlin
Ecosummit TV: Christopher Schlaeffer pitches Yetu at ECO13 Berlin. The Berlin-based startup develops an open smart home platform that they license as a service to utilities and telecoms. Christopher left Deutsche Telekom to found Yetu 2 years ago because he believes that smart home is the third wave of the consumer Internet. An open platform is badly needed that connects everything with open APIs. A unique feature of Yetu’s energy management module is device recognition based on algorithms allowing the user to compare their energy consumption per device. It is too early to tell whether Christopher and his team will reach their goal of establishing as the leading smart home platform that also enables universal applications including entertainment and security. However, this startup should be on your watch list. Moreover, they are fundraising and are interested in talking to smart green investors and utilities.
Read more- 28
- April
2013
Florian Meyer-Delpho pitches solar e-commerce startup Greenergetic
Ecosummit TV: Florian Meyer-Delpho pitches Greenergetic at ECO12 Düsseldorf and believes that the market is ready for their solar e-commerce business model thanks to grid parity. Greenergetic develops an online portal to bring PV and smart home solutions directly to residential end customers. Houseowners can plan, finance and order their preferred PV system online. The Bielefeld-based cleantech startup also offers a whitelabel solution for utilities that are increasingly interested in selling solar systems to their customer base. Backed by eCapital and following the role model of Solarcity, Greenergetic is about to launch their new portal very soon.
Read more- 16
- August
2012
Yueksel Sirmasac pitches the smart home startup Rockethome
Ecosummit TV: Yueksel Sirmasac, Founder and CEO, pitches Rockethome from Cologne. The German startup provides a software platform to utilities and enables them to offer userfriendly smart home and smart energy applications. Rockethome was founded in 2010, has 25 employees and already 30 customers. Rockethome provides a connected platform that analyses and optimises energy consumption and production data, e.g. from solar or CHP systems, and enables the user to change his energy behaviour with the help of a smart home control system.
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- July
2012
Norbert Verweyen showcases RWE Effizienz, the smart green utility speedboat of RWE
Ecosummit TV: Norbert Verweyen, Managing Director of RWE Effizienz, showcases the strategy of his smart green utility speedboat which is able to launch new products more quickly than the mother ship RWE. Making money with energy efficiency is a big challenge for utilities and it’s a smart move of RWE to create their own startup with a lot of freedom to try out new ideas in the market. RWE Effizienz can be a good distribution channel for startups that have useful products at competitive prices. If you are active in electric mobility, home automation or decentralised generation you should get in touch with Norbert and his team.
Read more- 22
- June
2012
Christian Deilmann unveils the smart green heating service Tado
Ecosummit TV: Christian Deilmann, Co-Founder and CEO of Tado, presents the Munich-based startup that fosters home energy efficiency at Ecosummit Berlin. Tado is backed by Target Partners and provides a new smart green heating service that saves up to 30% of the energy bill by learning from user behaviour. The smart home solution is based on a microcontroller box that is connected to the central heating system and communicates with Tado’s server and client app. The founders call their service cloud climate control and launch it in fall 2012.
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- May
2012
Greenpocket raises €3.5 Million Series B led by NRW Bank
Greenpocket from Cologne raised €3.5M in their Series B financing round led by NRW Bank, the development bank owned by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Greenpocket’s existing investors also participated and include Schwetje Digital (Betafabrik), Rheinland Venture Capital and KfW. The smart green startup was founded in 2009, has 40 employees and provides a powerful software platform for smart metering and smart home management. Greenpocket has 30 utilities as customers in Germany, Austria, Spain and UK. The CEO Thomas Goette pitched his startup at Ecosummit Berlin 2012 and you can watch Thomas on Ecosummit TV. We also did an interview with Thomas to learn more about the financing and Greenpocket’s international strategy.
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