Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Impact Investing in Cleantech and Internet/Software
These classic facts from science, economics and cleantech explain why more and more people get engaged in clean technology. Oil crisis, CO2 emissions, falling prices of photovoltaics .. it’s all here: 20 Powerpoint Slides That Shook the Earth
Let’s meet at this year’s EcoSummit in Berlin, March 24-25, 2011. Jan Michael Hess is organizing this Cleantech event after last year’s success (under the name Green Venture Summit). Entrepreneurs, industry players and investors meet and mingle to discuss the upcoming wave of technologies and business models. I’ll be presenting Entelios on the 23rd.
I haven’t had a lot of time to post on my blog and couldn’t tell anybody why. Now is coming out time: The truth is we have secretly collected a top-notch team and founded a startup company that combines cleantech with an Internet/software business model. As one VC said: “I only invest in companies where nothing’s dripping”.
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present: Entelios AG – Demand Response for Germany and Europe. Founded in 2010, headquartered in Munich, with another office in Berlin. Already 10 team members strong.
The founders are Oliver Stahl, Stephan Lindner and myself. Oliver has fallen in love with the Demand Response (DR) model at MIT and Harvard where he was a Sloan fellow. DR is implemented by several players in the U.S. already, and EnerNOC and Comverge are public companies. We believe it’s the ideal time to introduce DR to the European energy market, as more and more renewable, but intermittent, energy sources are added to the grid. DR is adding new reserve power and helps with peak shaving, thereby reducing the need for expensive and dirty peak power plants.
At Entelios, we believe Demand Response is the cleanest, fastest and least expensive way to address the climate change, energy security and peak oil challenges. We call it “fast green”.
I have attached a quick and readable introduction to Entelios and DR here as a PDF file. We just submitted the plan to the GE Ecomagination Challenge. Please have a look and vote for us!
More blogs will follow, if you like them…let me know. Send feedback here or via email.
Announcing the 3rd Munich Network Cleantech Conference. Curt Winnen at Munich Network is bringing together thought leaders, industry decision makers, and investors for the 3rd time. The conference is gaining significant momentum and is a regular event on my calendar. Information and registration here.
Munich Network: 3rd Cleantech Conference June 24, 2010
In the upcoming edition of CSR International you can find my article “A Call for Urgency and Action: Cleantech Venture Capital in Silicon Valley and Germany”. Fritz Lietsch asked me to write about my impressions coming to Germany from Silicon Valley. In short, Germany is a great location for cleantech, but the VC scene is horribly underdeveloped. Silicon Valley started very late in the game, but with a sense of urgency (see my posts about the Singularity and The Skoll Urgent Threat Fund) and a lot of passion (see Clean Tech Open), California claims a lot more mind share than the good gold German engineering firms. Download the article here..