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- June
2023
Ecosummit Berlin 14-15 June 2023
Ecosummit accelerates smart green startups in energy, mobility and cities to save our climate, decarbonise our economy and electrify our planet. Our events are startup markets enabling fundraising, lead and co-investing, portfolio development, corporate venturing, open innovation and M&A. Ecosummit Berlin 14-15 June 2023 is supported by 46 sponsors and takes place at Spindler & Klatt, Köpenicker Strasse 16-17, 10997 Berlin, the perfect location for sunshine and outdoor networking. The agenda features 116 speakers including 79 startups. Get your tickets and start arranging your meetings with our 329 participants using Linkedin. We look forward to hosting you.
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- 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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- May
2017
Perfect pitch: How to raise money for your startup
Startups not only got to pitch to and network with potential investors at Ecosummit Berlin 2017, they also got some valuable lessons on how to do it right. Leonie Baneke from Eneco Smart Energy gets sent lots of startup pitch decks, asking her for capital. This is the second year in a row Eneco has sponsored Ecosummit and Baneke says, they were part of the event since the beginning of their corporate venturing activities to look for cool and challenging ideas to invest in. The Dutch have money to spend, allocating 10 to 30 million euros per year to invest in external startups, follow-on investments and internal startups.
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- October
2016
SET Ventures announces investment in Energyworx at Ecosummit London 2016
Our smart green innovation community is making more deals and sharing breaking news at Ecosummit. During today’s ECO16 London presentation, Rene Savelsberg announces the new investment of SET Ventures in Energyworx, the Dutch software provider for energy data analytics and management for utilities. SET Ventures joins the existing investor HenQ to complete Energyworx’ Series A in which both VCs co-invested a couple of million Euros and made additional capital reserves for follow-on investments. Energyworx is the first investment since the Amsterdam-based smart energy VC reached the first closing of SET Fund II at €60M in February 2016. With the software skills of HenQ and the energy experience and network of SET Ventures Energyworx is now poised to accelerate its growth and win new utility customers in Europe and America.
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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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- 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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- September
2013
Maximilian Erb presents the cleantech investment strategy of NRW Bank
Ecosummit TV: Maximilian Erb presents NRW Bank at ECO13 Berlin. The regional development bank of North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW) is pretty active in cleantech venture capital. Smart green startups in their direct portfolio inlude Direvo, Greenpocket, Evocatal and O-Flexx. The cool thing is that Max of NRW Bank met Holger of O-Flexx at ECO12 Berlin for the first time. This is a wonderful testimonial that the Ecosummit platform really works and matchmakes cleantech startups and VCs. We are proud of it. And we also appreciate the great work that NRW Bank is doing for Germany’s cleantech startups.
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- February
2013
Alois Flatz, Zouk Capital, talks about cleantech venture capital 2.0
Ecosummit TV: Alois Flatz, Partner at Zouk Capital, talks about Cleantech Venture Capital 2.0 at Ecosummit Düsseldorf 2012 and explains how investment strategies are changing in the current market. On the one hand, Alois thinks positive as cleantech becomes ubiquitous and affects all aspects of life. On the other hand, he has learned from 20 years of experience that VC investors (general partners) depend on fast exits to be able to raise new funds from their investors (limited partners). Thus, investment horizons are shortening and startups need to generate cash and prove their business models as quickly as possible. Zouk Capital is a late stage investor that accelerates cleantech startups that already have at least €5M revenues, multiplying the value of the company and then selling it again after a couple of years. Don’t approach Zouk without revenues and rather try to get there fast.
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- May
2012
Kurt Kaltenegger of ABB proposes sustainable art of corporate venturing
Ecosummit TV: Kurt Kaltenegger is CTO of ABB Technology Ventures which did 11 cleantech investments since it was founded 2.5 years ago. ABB’s corporate VC (CVC) approach combines strategic and financial goals when investing in startups that have innovative technologies ABB can use for new business. Now Kurt challenges his fellow VCs to reconsider their current investment strategies by implementing a new symbiosis between VCs and CVCs. Kurt believes that corporates like ABB bring so much expertise and added value to the table that valuations should be lower for them. That’s a cool way to start a negotiation with the startup CEO and her existing investors.
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- May
2012
Bart Markus Of Wellington Talks About The Art Of Investing In Cleantech Startups
Ecosummit TV: Bart Markus, General Partner of Wellington Partners, gives an outstanding talk about the Art of Investing in Cleantech Startups at Ecosummit Berlin 2012. Bart admits that being a successful Cleantech VC is a big challenge as Cleantech startups usually are very capital intensive and need a long time to develop until investors can exit. However, there are a number of success factors that Bart manages when advising his portfolio. One of them is having the best management team in place in every phase of the startup process. Another one is being 100% customer-centric because without solving real problems of customers revenue growth isn’t possible. Bart is a very smart and funny investor ready to share his experience and investment strategy.
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- August
2011
Robert Seiter of Ernst & Young presents Global Cleantech Venture Insights
Robert Seiter, Head of Cleantech EMEIA at accounting firm Ernst & Young, presents Global Cleantech Venture Insights at ECO11. In 2010, the Cleantech industry received 15% of global VC investments and proves that it is a huge business opportunity. As of Q3/2010, there are 1.434 private VC-backed Cleantech companies with €22.16B in equity raised. US companies are funded at a 4 times higher level than European companies while the Energy Efficiency sector turns out to be especially popular among VCs. Now you can watch Robert’s ECO11 talk on Ecosummit TV.
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- July
2011
5th Munich Cleantech Conference on 14 July 2011 – Interview with Curt Winnen
On Thursday next week, 14 July 2011, the Munich Network, headed by Curt Winnen, produces the 5th Munich Cleantech Conference (MCC11). That’s rather sustainable and proves a lot of experience in bringing together smart green startups, investors and corporates. Below you find our interview with Curt about the MCC11. Myself, I joined the investor-heavy congress last year and will attend the upcoming MCC11, too, as Ecosummit is one of the media partners.
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- April
2011
Ecosummit TV – ECO11 – Denis Lucquin – Sofinnova Partners
“You need to master the industry in which you invest,” says the French VC with a plan to help the big chemistry corporates overcome their oil dependence through external innovation commercialised by innovative startups. His name is Denis Lucquin, Managing Partner of Sofinnova Partners, one of the most successful VCs in Europe. I was totally impressed by the strategy of his new VC fund focused within Cleantech on the specific sector called Green Chemistry.
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- April
2011
Ecosummit TV – ECO11 – Gina Domanig – Emerald Technology Ventures
Gina Domanig, Managing Partner, Emerald Technology Ventures, is a real pioneer in the Cleantech Venture Capital scene. 10 years ago she raised her first Cleantech fund and can now tell very interesting stories about the lessons she learned during the past decade. At Ecosummit 2011, Gina gave a wonderful slide-free speech sharing her VC experience. Gina points out the significance of managing close relationships with the corporates in the various Cleantech sectors, i.e. the big companies that often buy the products of the startups or, even better, the entire startup company. In my eyes, a real highlight of our agenda and definitely a must-watch episode of Ecosummit TV for investors, startups and corporates.
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