First day of our European Venture Builder
80 climate tech founders start our venture builder journey
A lot has happened since we announced the launch of our first venture builder for Europe from Berlin late last summer. In the meantime, we have received more than 800 applications, conducted more than 400 interviews and finally decided – with a lot of headaches – on 79 participants from the fields of science, technology and business who, over the next few months, will shape ideas and create ventures that show the potential to reduce 10 million tonnes of CO2e per year, when at scale. 21 have a strong background in soft and hard ware engineering, 19 are scientists from climate-relevant research fields, 29 are successful commercial founders and 10 bring a lot of experience as venture catalysts.
To say we are filled with, entirely professional, excitement would be an understatement—we expect to do great things together and to help cut, by a significant factor, the time it takes to build something which genuinely contributes to the climate crisis we’re facing. Let’s get going.
Michael Langguth
What will they achieve in the next few months?
In a few months from now, participants will have formed teams, fleshed out ideas, developed a carbon case and a business case, founded companies and pitched to the Investment Committee. We support, together with our Entrepreneurs in Residence and more than 300 domain experts at all levels, so that grandiose ideas take off quickly.
Here are more figures on the cohort:
– 35% female founders
– 39% have founded a startup before
– 22% hold a PhD
– The participants have 954 years of experience combined.
– 65 is the average number of people they have managed in a team in startup or corporate environment
– 70 of 80 named different universities when asked which they were most proud of their association with