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- October
2016
Ecosummit accelerates smart green London on 11 October 2016 at CodeNode
We believe that startups need corporates and corporates need startups. Startups need corporates as development partners, customers, distribution channels and investors to make better products and grow faster. At the same time, corporates need startups to sell new products to their customer base and survive the global competition. By connecting the companies that should be connected, Ecosummit accelerates startups, investors and corporates with a focus on smart green energy, mobility and cities. Our unique conferences are a physical marketplace enabling personal meetings and long-term relationships in a relaxed and productive atmosphere. Our next Ecosummit takes place on 11 October 2016 at CodeNode in the City of London. The agenda features 37 startup pitches and the conference will be recorded for our YouTube channel Ecosummit TV. Check out our participants, get your tickets and join us. Let’s warm up with a few innovation stories that will be elaborated at ECO16 London.
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- May
2015
Sonnenbatterie, Sunfire, Thermondo, Agrilution, Ubitricity and Bettervest win the Ecosummit Award at ECO15 Berlin
Ecosummit Berlin 2015 was our best event so far – in terms of product quality, customer feedback and revenues. 250 super happy participants came to the Radialsystem on 19-20 May 2015 and were blown away by our unique mix of smart green people, superb conference location, fresh air on the Spree terrace, long networking breaks, tasty food, delicious wine, onsite parties with funky DJs and live act as well as a packed agenda that we ran through on time – for the first time since 2010. The secret of time keeping is collective discipline fostered by a speaker clock that is also visible to the moderator and skipping questions from the audience. During our award ceremony on 19 May 2015, we announced the 6 smart green startups winning the Ecosummit Award 2015.
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- December
2014
Stephan Schulze and Konstantin Hanssen present Investitionsbank Berlin
Ecosummit TV: According to Stephan Schulze of IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft, Berlin is a smart green business location for startups that has changed tremendously during the last 25 years. In fact, we count more than 30 fundable smart green startups in Berlin of which 5 are backed by IBB: Ubitricity, Thermondo, Geo-en, ECF Farmsystems and Qinous. IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft was founded in 1997 as a 100% subsidiary of Investitionsbank Berlin, the business development bank of Berlin. Next to venture capital, IBB provides a lot of support to SMEs including grants, public loans, bank credits, guarantees and mezzanine capital. IBB is a well-connected local business partner that always keeps their door open for ambitious founders based in Berlin or planning to relocate.
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- December
2014
Knut Hechtfischer pitches Ubitricity at Ecosummit Berlin 2014
Ecosummit TV: Although he didn’t leave our sponsor dinner as the first guest the night before, Knut Hechtfischer delivered his best pitch at ECO14 Berlin so far. Ubitricity has got a great story that is acknowledged by an increasing number of VCs and industry experts. This year Ubitricity entered Cleantech Group’s 2014 Global Cleantech 100 – next to 7 more startups that pitched at Ecosummit in the past. Moreover, the Berlin-based smart green startup won EDF Germany as strategic investor and has got a product ready for market. Ubitricity wants to make smart charging affordable by enabling mobile metering in the virtual power grid. They bring together electric mobility and mobile electricity in a very simple, yet powerful way. The key idea is to put the intelligence into the charging cable. This allows for a cost reduction of 90% when installing smart sockets (thin charging stations) in street lights, garages and any other place you can imagine. In 2015, Ubitricity rolls out in Germany and we are curious to see how EV drivers, fleet operators, municipalities and utilities adopt this smart charging service.
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- October
2014
Ecosummit Berlin 2015 takes place on 19-20 May 2015 at the Radialsystem
Ecosummit TV: We are very happy to announce our 9th conference Ecosummit Berlin 2015 taking place on 19-20 May 2015 at the Radialsystem – the best event location in Europe’s leading smart green city for startups. As a warm up, we share the opening of ECO14 Berlin on Ecosummit TV. Last year, the theme of Ecosummit was Accelerating Smart Green Startups. We believe that everybody should think and act like an accelerator trying to reduce capital and time to market while growing the team and revenues faster. This is what our industry needs: Faster startups and bigger exits. While a fast and small exit that results in an aquihire for the buyer may be a good thing, what VCs and LPs really want are big exits by big startups that have big economic and ecological impact. To make big exits happen, founders and their investors have to constantly work on the 4 success factors of startups: People, capital, product and customers. Only if you have the best team, enough capital, a competitive product and lots of happy customers, you are able to become a global market leader. At ECO15 Berlin on 19-20 May 2015, we will continue to work together on accelerating smart green startups aiming at big exits.
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- August
2014
Rolf Adam of Cisco talks about new business models for public lighting by making it intelligent
Ecosummit TV: Smart green cities need intelligent lighting. At ECO13 London, Rolf Adam of Cisco talks about new business models for public lighting by making it intelligent. IP-based lighting infrastructure reduces OPEX by remotely managing and metering a large network of street lamps. When cities and utilities plan to upgrade public lighting to energy-efficient LEDs, they should also think about new business models that are enabled by the internet, sensors and smart algorithms. For example, the Dutch startup Tvilight implemented the brilliant idea of light-on-demand with the help of sensors that detect nearby users. If there aren’t any people or cars present, the street lights are dimmed and energy is saved. The street lights of the 21st century may be used for wireless internet access, location-based advertising, traffic control, street parking, measuring air quality and, last but not least, charging electric vehicles as promoted by Berlin-based Ubitricity. The more services you want to integrate, the more service providers you have to bring together to make money with smart lighting.
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- October
2013
Knut Hechtfischer pitches Ubitricity
Ecosummit TV: Knut Hechtfischer pitches Ubitricity at ECO13 Berlin. The Berlin-based cleantech startup develops a cost-efficient charging solution for electric vehicles by putting the intelligence into the charging cable. This allows mobile metering wherever the user wants to buy electricity from. Recently, they became famous for integrating their solution in street lights. Up to now, Ubitricity raised €5.4M and is backed by Earlybird, IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft and Heinz Dürr (largest shareholder of Dürr, former CEO of AEG and Deutsche Bahn). Founded in 2008, Ubitricity plans to launch Mobile Metering in 2014, just-in-time when new electric cars hit the market. Meet Knut at ECO13 London next week to get an update and learn about their high risk, high return investment opportunity. That’s what venture capital is all about, isn’t it?
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- August
2013
Bernard Scherrer fosters open innovation at EDF and invites cleantech startups to work together
Ecosummit TV: Bernard Scherrer presents the open innovation strategy of EDF at ECO13 Berlin. The French utility has got 38 million customers and annual revenues of €65B. EDF embraces open innovation because they want to work with cleantech startups that have valuable solutions for their large customer base. For example, the Berlin-based EV charging startup Ubitricity is currently being tested in EDF’s R&D labs. Bernard’s open innovation team wants to foster entrepreneurship and promote lean startup principles inside EDF. In some cases, the cooperation may lead to an investment for which the corporate VC Electranova Capital and the French seed fund ATI (Amorçage Technologique Investissement) were created. It is encouraging to see the growing number of corporate VCs and open innovation units that are active in Europe and it is even better to start working with them.
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- May
2013
Smart green dealflow: Ubitricity, Saperatec, Skeleton, Waste2Chemical, O-Flexx and Romo Wind
Financing cleantech startups is a tough game these days. You need a strong team, product market fit and, even better, customers and revenues. In this difficult market environment, it is a great pleasure to report that 6 smart green startups managed to raise new venture capital: Ubitricity (around €3.5M, Germany), Saperatec (€3.3M, Germany), Skeleton (€2.2M, Estonia), Waste2Chemical (undisclosed, Netherlands), O-Flexx (€2.4M, Germany) and Romo Wind (€4.8M, Switzerland). The active cleantech VCs include Earlybird, IBB, NRW Bank, HTGF, eCapital, Dutch Greentech Fund, Emerald, Yellow&Blue, ABB and b-to-v. Let’s take a closer look at the startups and their new investors.
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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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- November
2012
Smarter, greener, leaner – startups accelerate the Energiewende at Ecosummit Düsseldorf 2012
9 days to go until ECO12 Düsseldorf. The perfect moment to do some serious pattern recognition and talk about the cleantech startups to be featured on stage – and Ecosummit TV. Our second conference this year enjoys again a very high startup density: 26 startups present new solutions for accelerating the Energiewende (energy transformation). The Internet of things and cleantech grow together. More and more green startups develop smart hardware products that have an IP address. The startups pitching at Ecosummit control cars, helicopters, charging stations, PV systems, wind generators, batteries, street lights, homes and even entire cities over the Internet. Smarter, greener, leaner – that’s the way we want them.
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- October
2012
Knut Hechtfischer pitches EV charging startup Ubitricity
Ecosummit TV: Knut Hechtfischer pitches Ubitricity. The Berlin-based startup wants to disrupt the charging infrastructure game for electric vehicles (EV) by rolling out low-cost electric sockets. The concept is called mobile metering and is based on putting the intelligence into the charging cable rather than the charging station. Ubitricity is an ambitious Lean Cleantech Startup that develops and produces a lean and cost-efficient product together with a value web of suppliers. We look forward to enjoying Knut again on stage at ECO12 Düsseldorf.
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- October
2012
Lean cleantech startup – New Context Conference Tokyo 2012
Only successful cleantech startups have a positive impact on climate change and global resource problems. The problem is that most hardware-based cleantech startups are very capital and time intensive. Entrepreneurs and investors constantly look for new strategies to accelerate the development and marketing of smart green innovation. Applying the lean startup philosophy to cleantech could be the perfect solution. Cleantech startups also search for scalable business model, product market fit, validated learning from customers and engine of growth. In this context, it was a special honour to go to Japan – especially after Fukushima – and speak about Lean Cleantech Startup at the spectacular New Context Conference Tokyo 2012 two weeks ago.
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- December
2011
Ecosummit Lounge TV featuring Flinc, Nachbarschaftsauto, Ubitricity, Airbase and Changers
This Ecosummit TV episode was recorded at our second Ecosummit Lounge Berlin on 6 December 2011 at InnoZ, Berlin’s exciting epicentre for electric mobility and smart green city. InnoZ is located on the Euref Campus which aims at developing the smart green model city of the future. We enjoyed a high-voltage evening of intense Smart Green Business Networking with 5 smart green startup pitches, Ursprung, finger food and all that Jazz. The startups presenting were Flinc, Nachbarschaftsauto, Ubitricity, Airbase and Changers.
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- November
2011
Ecosummit Lounge Berlin 6 December 2011
Ecosummit and InnoZ, Berlin’s exciting epicentre for electric mobility and smart green city, joined forces to invite you to a high-voltage evening of intense Smart Green Business Networking. Our second Ecosummit Lounge Berlin takes place on 6 December 2011 and is co-hosted by InnoZ’s Intelligent City Salon. From 18:00-23:00, we will enjoy 5 smart green startup pitches, Ursprung, finger food and all that Jazz. The Ecosummit Lounge is free – our Santa Claus present – but invitation-only. Please ping us to request your personal invitation code.
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- April
2011
Ecosummit TV – ECO11 – Young Future Mobility Leaders – Panel
At Ecosummit 2011, Jan Michael Hess (Ecosummit) moderated the panel Young Future Mobility Leaders with (from the left) Konrad Erzberger (Tamyca), Michael Kuhn (car2gether, Daimler Business Innovation), Beres Seelbach (Lautlos), Klaus Dibbern (Flinc) and Knut Hechtfischer (Ubitricity). We all agreed that the Sharing Economy will change the automotive industry.
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