Sustainable Startups in Europe: a VC perspective
Recognizing the pioneers at the forefront of a new breed of companies
It is our core belief at Acton — and even our tagline — to invest in growth driven by reason facilitated by sustainable business models. The core meaning of this is financial sustainability — startups that create true economic value for the long run instead of a short-lived hype. However, in recent years, another dimension of sustainability has finally and rightfully entered the stage of the tech industry: climate action. We are now seeing a new generation of founders who are naturally motivated to marry the ecological with the economic benefit. It is great to see that many teams are not only talking the talk but walking the walk and that a wealth of great initiatives has emerged in the DACH region and everybody involved is working tirelessly on creating a better future.
To show our appreciation for these pioneers and to increase collaboration in the industry, we decided to create a comprehensive overview of sustainable organizations operating in this market to foster the dialogue around ecological sustainability in the startup ecosystem. We believe that everyone in and around the sustainability ecosystem — startups, VCs, networks, accelerators, sustainability enthusiasts, and many more — could benefit greatly from this increased visibility.
The Sustainability Landscape 2021
In cooperation with HV Capital, Ananda, CDTM and Plug & Play, we thus created a (non-exhaustive) overview on the sustainable organizations headquartered in the DACH region structured by industries. Out of a pre-selection of over 300 sustainable startups and 50 VCs, networks, accelerators and event formats (which we grouped under the term “ecosystem”) in the sustainability space, we curated the following landscape based on the impact and potential of organizations.
Industries and sectors were chosen based on their leverage and crowdedness. Although some startups would fit into more than one category, compared to other approaches such as dividing by SDGs, this appeared to yield the most intuitive visualization.
While this landscape surely represents our perspective on the scene and is by no means an exhaustive list, we aimed for a balanced view and also included organizations we would not consider as investment targets. We believe climate change and sustainability are the most relevant topics of our time and we should all come together to create awareness and support solutions in this space — be it through becoming a paying customer, choosing one of the startups as an employer or investing in them. The sustainability landscape 2021 is intended to help us do so!
You can find a digital and downloadable version of the landscape here.
What’s next?
So, feel free to reach out to organizations on the map and to us. This overview is the first of its kind and we want it to be a source of inspiration for future projects and collaborations and an overview for anyone interested in the local sustainability ecosystem.
We plan to keep updating it regularly, so if you’re building a company that you think should be included, add it here!
Let us know what you think about the landscape! In the upcoming weeks, every contributor will present a segment. Stay tuned! Let this be a starting point for conversations and collaborations to push sustainability initiatives around DACH even further.
