Happy 2024 dear Green Techpreneur readers!
Thank you for being a part of our network of climate tech founders, investors, and sustainability warriors.
The Green Techpreneur (GT) is a springboard platform for climate tech startups: we offer an investor/startup marketplace to help you raise funds and a magazine/podcast. In this newsletter, you’ll receive climate investment opportunities as well as exclusive, original interviews to help you build your business and make a mark on the planet: real insight from climate leaders who are in the trenches for fellow founders.
Before we delve into all that’s ahead, here’s a recap of 2023
2023 was a breakout year for The Green Techpreneur (GT), we went all in!
Some amazing things happened:
We established new, valuable business partnerships with an investor marketplace and climate investors.
GT won a finalist Content Entrepreneur of the Year 2023 award by The Tilt
GT won an Environmental News Platform of the Year award by Corporate LiveWire
We helped climate tech startups get investment ready and secure funding, including getting $10 million in funding for a startup.
We helped amazing, innovative climate startups share their mission/vision and founding story.
I was listed on the D-list, the directory for exceptional business leaders from diverse backgrounds.
The GT platform subscriber list grew by over 30%
We upgraded and revamped the GT website.
And on a personal note, I recently moved to beautiful Wiltshire, near Bath. It’s amazing to be surrounded by outstanding history, architecture, trees and a river after a long stretch of life in London.
2023 brought a lot of highlights, including a couple week stretch of working from beautiful Madeira in a remote mountain village last spring, but I also experienced some difficult personal circumstances and overwhelm which culminated in health issues and burnout. I learnt to take more seriously feeling overwhelmed and reduce the amount of plates I’m spinning simultaneously. If you’re building a business, this is your reminder to put yourself and your wellbeing first in 2024; watch your stress levels and delay projects to take stuff off your plate if you need to.
So what’s ahead for 2024?
I’m super excited to announce that we have purchased the Climate Marketplace, after one year as partners.
The Climate Marketplace has a quality climate investor network of 2,000 climate investors covering the full range of seed to VC funding. It gives climate startups the opportunity to list their pitch and fundraising round and have it sent out to a large investor network and directly receive leads.
Since 2020, the marketplace has helped over 150 startups raise €200 million.
You can now list your pitch for just £250. Get in touch! And if you need some boots on the ground support with preparing to receive investment before you start pitching, we're here to help, drop us a line.
In other news, I’ve got a great opportunity for collaboration with the right partner….
Sponsorship opportunity
Would you like to become a sponsor of The Green Techpreneur platform and podcast?You’ll get not only regular promotion but also a number of deep dive articles and podcasts. We only have one sponsorship slot going, so get in touch if of interest!
To help you launch into a successful 2024, I’ve picked out some of the most popular GT reads, podcasts and incredible progress in climate tech innovation which you’ll find below:
GlassPoint is the only industrial solar thermal solution proven at scale critical to help the massive and underserved $444 billion industrial heat market meet net-zero goals. It recently closed an 8 million Series A round which it will use to develop the world’s largest solar thermal project with Saudi Arabia’s national mining champion, Ma’aden.
“We deliver heat in the formula that industrial players currently use, normally that’s steam. Today, they’ll get that steam from a boiler. So we provide them with a flow of steam that is identical in temperature, pressure and quality to the steam they would have gotten from the boiler. In many cases, they keep the boiler in place and plug the solar field alongside. It’s one of the keys to adoption; they don’t have to completely abandon all the investment they’ve made so far, and change the way they do everything.”
Colombia’s Largest Coffee Company is Disrupting Supply Chains to Put Fairness First
In six short years since it’s founding in 2017, Columbia-based Green Coffee Company has not just grown into one of the largest coffee producers in the world, it has been on a fast-track growth journey to cut out intermediaries, disrupt, reshape, own and green every aspect of its supply chain. It implements cost-saving, cutting-edge technologies to green its supply chain and is a circular economy pioneer, adding new product lines by repurposing coffee cherry waste to produce ethanol (used in gin/vodka) and cascava flour.
“We’re thinking completely outside of the box: we are being disruptive at every step of the chain, from the nursery to the dry and wet milling to the roasting. We’re reducing our operating costs all across the chain….we’re attacking all the old parts of the chain that normally are not tackled by growers.”
Pluri’s Technology is Making Sustainable Meat a Reality
For the first time, the science behind cell cultivation has progressed to the point where mass production and consumption of meat from cultivated cells is possible at a price point that’s on par with traditionally farmed meat. An Israel-based biotechnology company Pluri, is at the heart of this transformation. In 2022, Pluri established a joint venture with Tnuva, Israel’s largest food producer, Ever After Foods, to utilize Pluri’s technology to create a pathway to bringing cultivated meat to the consumer market:
“Our technology requires lower capital expenditures and provides a 700% increase in productivity compared to other cultivated meat technology platforms. Using the current scale and technology Ever After can produce more than 10 kilos of cultivated meat mass with just a 35-liter production bioreactor and have a proven path to scale and reach price parity,” says Pluri CEO Yaky Yanay.
Harmony is Finally Coming to the Carbon Markets: How this Marketplace Platform Delivers Clarity
German-based startup CEEZER has built a buyer/seller marketplace platform to cut through the confusion and noise around carbon quality and buying decisions; 3.5 million data points, AI, and a scientific peer reviewed process make carbon projects easily comparable.
When Magnus started building CEEZER along with co-founders Dr. Carla Woydt and Hannes Nutzmann in early 2022, market pull was so strong that they were onboarding large customers within just a few months: “That was a good validation point,” says Magnus, “because these companies can work with anyone – there’s no reason for them to go with an early startup.”
How Amazon’s Sustainability Accelerator Selected its 2023 Cohort
Discover the startups in Amazon’s Cohort and how they’re being supported.
2023’s cohort has been selected around two key areas: more sustainable products, and technologies that can help the recycling industry leap forward, this includes innovative tech that tackles yet-to-be-solved recycling challenges or significantly improves on existing tools, like advanced sortation machinery and waste management data systems.
We launched the programme alongside Climate-KIC with a call for applications. It’s a huge team effort to get from 1,400 companies to the final 16 that were chosen. We conduct interviews with the start-ups, due diligence and a climate impact assessment hypothesis so we can really understand the potential impact. We have a selection committee meeting with a team of experts including Phoebe Wang from the Amazon Climate Pledge Fund, Ben Honan who is the Investment Lead at Climate-KIC, and Kristy Macdonald from Jam Jar VC – they make the final decision on which companies to take through.
Pitch Me: What Europe’s Largest Climate tech VC Fund is Looking For
Co-Founder of the World Fund, Danijel Visevic, offers climate investment insights
We also help startups to get several funding rounds through our network of investors and this is very important. We have deeper pockets than other VCs.
If you need a follow-up round, we can reserve up to 30 million Euros per investment per company to make sure it gets to the point of generating revenue.
How to Fund & Launch Your Renewable Energy Project
Sustainable energy developer, investor and finance broker Anthony Agnew shares tips and insight from his bird's eyeview of the energy sector
“It's not a case of investor sentiment is quiet, renewables have been one of the highest performing sectors globally and it's a part of the super cycle. All of the government policy points that are coming out are increasingly helping that.”
How Ecosia Became the World’s Biggest Non For Profit Search Engine
Ecosia Founder Christian Kroll shares the strategies that led to Ecosia's growth – and planted over 128 million trees
“We focused on the right audience and having a message that is compelling to everybody. Helping projects in Nepal may have been interesting to a few people, but helping solve climate change is interesting to everyone. It was that, and tweaking the idea until it really worked.”
How ReNature Sells Regenerative Agriculture to Corporates
reNature co-founder Felipe Villela aims to regenerate 1 million hectares of land through Agroforestry by 2030
“We have two main messages: we show the inspirational side of the things – why this is good for the farmers and the planet so – looking from the perspective of impact and future generations. We make a clear business case; we're focused on communicating the economic benefits, so companies can see this is not a romantic concept but there's economics behind transitioning towards regenerative agriculture.”
You can learn more about the intersection of climate tech and entrepreneurship in my Forbes climate tech column.
Thank you, I look forward to continuing to bring you insight, inspiration and the network you need to succeed in 2024. 🥂
#SparkTheTransition,
Marianne