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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
Josef Brunner tells the growth story of JouleX and his successful exit to Cisco
Ecosummit TV: Serial entrepreneur Josef Brunner tells the growth story of JouleX and his successful $107M cash exit to Cisco in 2013. Josef founded JouleX in Munich in 2009 and was backed by Target Partners from early on. Being a 100% energy management software startup that helps companies save OPEX by switching off unused IP devices, Josef and Olaf Jacobi, his board member at Target Partners, quickly decided that the headquarter should be transferred to the US while keeping the software development team in Germany. As a US company it is easier to sell to American customers, raise more money for faster startup development and ultimately sell to an American buyer. Tom Noonan, Co-Founder of Internet Security Systems that he sold to IBM in 2006, invested in JouleX and joined as CEO in 2010. From there it was all about managing fast growth and winning new customers that enjoy instant savings without setup fees while JouleX enjoys a 30% share of the money saved. Josef appreciates the professional integration processes at Cisco who are very experienced buyers due to a long history of successful acquisitions – JouleX was Cisco’s acquisition number 166. Now you may talk to Josef if you need a smart green software business angel.
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- 27
- 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
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.
Read more- 11
- 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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- July
2011
Smart Green Dealflow – Recent Deals in our Ecosummit Network
It’s about time to honour some recent deals that have been closed by Cleantech VCs and startups that belong to our Ecosummit community. We take a look at the portfolios of the leading VCs in Europe and share some selected news with you. Our first Smart Green Dealflow article features: JouleX, pvXchange, Entelios, Inge, Neura, Schnell Motoren and Pyrum. Let us know if you have more smart green deals we should cover.
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