- 6
- September
2019
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.
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- February
2017
Call for smart green startups: Pitch at ECO17 Berlin and apply for ECO17 Award and Ecosummit Europe 100
Since 2010, we have established Ecosummit as Europe’s leading smart green innovation and impact conference for startups, corporates and investors active in energy, mobility, buildings, cities, materials and food. In 2017, we organise 4 conferences in Berlin, Amsterdam, Stockholm and London presenting over 150 startups. Our flagship event Ecosummit Berlin 2017 takes place on 9-10 May 2017 at the Radialsystem, unites over 300 participants and is supported by an innovative group of sponsors. Now we call the best smart green startups in Europe to get promoted by pitching at ECO17 Berlin, applying for ECO17 Award and getting featured in our new startup list Ecosummit Europe 100. Past Ecosummit Award winners include Sonnen (Series D), Heliatek (Series D), Tado (€20M from Inven) and Kiwigrid (Series C).
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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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- 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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- April
2014
Jonathan Tyler presents Climate-KIC and its startup accelerator
Ecosummit TV: Jonathan Tyler presents Climate-KIC and its startup accelerator at ECO13 London. The public-private partnership is funded by the European Commission via the EIT (European Institute of Innovation and Technology) with a budget of €63M in 2014. Climate-KIC has got 6 national centres embedded in leading universities in UK, Denmark, Netherlands, France, Germany and Switzerland and fosters education, innovation and entrepreneurship with a particular focus on early stage cleantech startups. Among the many startups funded by Climate-KIC are Tado (Germany), Waste2chemical (Netherlands) and Aqdot (UK). Climate-KIC Germany partners again with Ecosummit Berlin 2014 and sends their best fundable startups to our smart green innovation conference.
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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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- June
2013
Sefaira, Tado, Solarbattery, Pirika, Bravo Motors and Oricane win Ecosummit Award 2013
Ecosummit Berlin 2013 was a blast. “The best event out there,” says Rene Savelsberg of Chrysalix SET. Rene was also very happy when he went on stage to receive the Ecosummit Award 2013 Jury Gold medal (€3K prize money) for his portfolio company Sefaira. The fast growing cleantech startup from UK/US convinced our 33 jury members with their smart green building software. Jury Silver (€2K prize money) went to Tado from Germany and their impressive smart green heating control and Jury Bronze (€1K prize money) was awarded to Sonnenbatterie from Germany for their successful residential energy storage solution.
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- March
2013
Ecosummit Lounge London 2 May 2013
Ecosummit and Taylor Wessing, the international law firm with extensive cleantech and private equity experience, co-host the second Ecosummit Lounge London on 2 May 2013 at Taylor Wessing’s magnificent office. We will enjoy an inspiring evening of smart green business networking with a group of local and international cleantech startups, investors and corporates. Rob Wylie, Partner at WHEB Partners, gives a keynote on the current state of cleantech venture capital, followed by startup pitches of the 3 ECO13 Award Nominees Ubitricity, Tado and Loowatt. Tickets are available for £30,00. Thanks a lot to Simon Walker and his team for hosting us and sharing the super cool roof terrace.
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- 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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- April
2012
Smart Green Dealflow: Sefaira, Geo-En, Tado and WeSustain
Let’s toast to 4 smart green startups that successfully closed new funding rounds during the last months. Sefaira, Geo-En, Tado and WeSustain have all been on our Ecosummit stage and are active members of our Smart Green Business Network. Sefaira, Tado and WeSustain were also nominated for the Ecosummit Award 2012. Braemar Energy Ventures leads Sefaira’s €8.2M round with co-investors Chrysalix SET and Hermes GPE. eCapital and IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft invest €4M in Berlin-based Geo-En. Target Partners seed finances Tado while NBank, MBG, KfW and High-Tech Gründerfonds back WeSustain. Let’s take a closer look at the startups and some of their new investors.
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