Leading European VCs Speedinvest, Planet A and Norrsken VC have joined forces to produce their Climate Hardware Playbook, a guide meant to address common issues founding teams face with fundraising, management, and product development.
The success of companies such as Tesla and Carbon Engineering means that climate hardware is widely considered critical to the decarbonisation of infrastructure. As a result, nuclear tech, solar and green hydrogen startups have been steadily attracting more investors for the past decade, with €17bn invested in the European ecosystem in 2022. Sweden leads the way in overall deal volume, according to Net Zero Insights.
However, the authors acknowledge that “the relationship between traditional tech investing and hardware is fraught with challenges.” Hardware companies are considered more prone to setbacks given the slow process of building manufacturing facilities, with likely disruption in the supply chain a risk to product teams' ability to build at scale. 91% of founders surveyed in the playbook indicated that after the initial injection of funds, growth capital is hard to unlock. Series A to B is highlighted as the most difficult step.
The playbook has been based on dozens of interviews with founders and investors, a survey with 118 investor and 142 founder participants and historical data covering 3600 climate hardware funding announcements in Europe between 2015 – 2023.
Its authors told Tech.eu:
“The current landscape presents an inflection point, with tightening regulations, declining costs, and corporate climate targets levelling the playing field for climate hardware.”
Norrsken VC’s General Partner David Frykman will be speaking at Tech.eu Summit London 2024. You can check out the event details here.
Lead image: Unsplash
Would you like to write the first comment?
Login to post comments