Vireo Insider - January Edition

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Have you also been wondering for how long it is officially okay to wish people a “Happy New Year”? According to a survey taken in the UK, 61% of participants think: Mid-January, i.e. now. Interestingly, a grumpy minority of 3% answered: “I don’t ever wish anyone a Happy New Year”. 

Now that we got that settled, we would like to wish you the happiest of years! May it bring you happiness, health, and peace.

We are excited for 2024! With this newsletter, we hope to provide you with an idea of why that is, and what’s on our roadmap.

Portfolio Love

George A. Miller, in one of the classics of psychological research, postulated that the human short-term memory can hold seven objects (plus/minus one or two). With a portfolio of nine companies, seven of which are disclosed, our Vireo Electrification Fund has now reached the limit of what we can store in our short-term memory.  

We have taken care of this for you. Please find below an overview of the seven companies that we can already discuss publicly. Hope this helps! Also, we hope that this compilation adds some color and illustrates our investment thesis, covering the electrification value chain from start to finish (from generation to usage of renewable energy).

Since our last newsletter, three following three new deals have been announced:

Atmen (Germany)

Atmen runs an IoT and SaaS platform that enables energy-intensive goods manufacturers to easily and continuously have their production certified as green. The solution makes it easy for their customers to prove the renewable origin of the energy source, quantify carbon emissions based on highly granular continuous operational data, to obtain government-approved certificates and to earn the highest green premiums. Atmen has deliberately chosen to start with hydrogen certification - a core part of industrial decarbonization, and also where the pain around certification and willingness to outsource is most acute. We participated in their seed round together with impact VC Revent, UnternehmerTUM, and several angel investors.

FLEXeCHARGE (Denmark)

Our first portfolio company in Denmark! Copenhagen-based FLEXeCHARGE provides an open platform that makes it easy to manage the flow of energy to electric vehicles. From intelligent load management, data aggregation and analytics to integration of third-party services, the company provides a vendor-independent turnkey solution for commercial charging infrastructure. The goal is to build the dominant open platform for intelligent and grid-connected electric vehicle charging in Europe and beyond. We have invested in this seed round together with Greencode Ventures from Finland and Link Capital from Norway.

ECO2GROW (Germany)

The renewable energy market needs innovative solutions. Enter ECO2GROW, a platform that gives SMEs access to electricity directly from solar/wind farms at long-term fixed prices and volumes. Through innovative Virtual Power Purchase Agreements (vPPAs), these businesses can mitigate electricity price risks and reduce CO2 emissions. ECO2GROW have already concluded more than 8 'pooled' PPAs with German “Mittelstand” companies, creating a direct link between energy producers and consumers. Vireo Ventures is the first institutional investor supporting the team, together with several high-profile angel investors.

Add to these the four portfolio companies we had previously disclosed:

Meet us at E-world!

Once again, we have partnered with E-world energy & water, Europe’s leading trade fair for the energy industry, taking place February 20th – 22nd in Essen, Germany.

We will host a session featuring exciting startup pitches as part of the Change Forum program:

”Together for a New Energy System: Startups & Corporates Shaping the Energy Transition in a Collaborative Effort”, February 20th, 11:30 – 13:30.

We are also still accepting submissions from startups interested in pitching their solution at this session. Here is the application form, open until the end of this week.

Please let us know if you’re visiting E-world so that we can use the opportunity for a coffee at the con|energy booth that we are co-hosting. Most of the Vireo team will be there.

Other events we will be attending:

Super Impact Days, Lübeck – 24-26 January

CEE VC Summit, Warsaw – 19-20 March

Energy Tech Summit, Bilbao – 10-11 April

…and many smaller/regional meetups and conferences.

We appreciate you!

All the best,

Felix, Matthias, Mischa, Sandro, Sven, and Thomas