Tech for Good is a monthly newsletter about the purpose-driven economy in Europe. I share noteworthy investments, market observations and personal experiences. If you enjoy this issue, please subscribe and share it.
Hi everyone,
I hope you had a great weekend, and you could enjoy sunny Berlin. The sun was a much-needed mood lifter since the last weeks were quite tough in terms of mental wellbeing for everyone. Many people I talked to over the last weeks said they are reaching their limits; that they feel tired, drained, and weary.
A year of lockdowns, remote working, and prolonged periods of social distancing has driven consumers' demand for healthcare at their fingertips. So it comes as no surprise that European mental health startups like Reflectly, a mental health companion, saw an increase from 2 million to 10 million users within 12 months. Surfing on the same trend, Opal, a digital well-being assistant to develop better screen time habits, recently raised $4.3 million out of stealth mode.
To improve my own mental wellbeing, I tried in the last weeks Yoga, Group Meditation, Coaching, Retreats - all virtually. I always believed a virtual class could never come close to “in-person” ones to get the full experience, but I was actually positively surprised how well most of these activities work with this new set up.
I personally believe that it is important to be able to address mental health openly which is why I applaud Monzo’s founder Tom Blomfield, who departed the challenger bank a few weeks ago and openly shared that he suffered anxiety during the pandemic. Or Sophie Chung, founder of Quonomedical, who recently shared her personal story about “the toughest week of her life” (in German only). She gave birth in March last year and two days later, she had to get back to work on a contingency plan for her company. There is currently a great initiative by VC firm Talis Capital and InsideOut, who are running a European survey to understand the mental health challenges that founders face. Feel free to share it.
Take care and happy self-care sunday 🧘🏻♀️
🌍 Climate tech will become the hottest investment topic in 2021
🇪🇺 Europe’s top climate investors
🇸🇪 Swedish impact investor Norrsken Foundation is launching an impact accelerator
🛍 We need green products that are sustainable and good
♻️ Cool circular economy brands curated by Thingtesting
🥩 What’s stopping lab meat technology from taking over the meat industry
🖥 The rise of Europe’s “clean UXers” and low-carbon impact websites
🚨 Two-thirds of the world’s population think climate change is an emergency
📚 Bill Gates is going on a virtual book tour to mark the release of his new book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster”. You can access the event in London here.
🇺🇸 US rejoined the Paris agreement and Ted Cruz just didn’t get it 🤦🏽♀️
Last month I was…
🍎 …ordering fresh and seasonal food from regional producers at Frischepost (only in Germany)
From 🇩🇪
Launched in 2015
Raised six-figure investment from business angels and Social Impact VC Bonventure
Yay: Broad selection of products, easy ordering process and a great way to support your local farmers. Prices are only slightly higher than in supermarkets.
Nay: We got the products delivered in a big carton (triple the volume of what we got) - packaging is not ideal in terms of sustainability.
They also show you on their website what you can eat each month. These are the veggies and fruits suitable for February:
💬 … chatting with some readers about carbon tracking & offsetting apps
Some of you reached out after my last newsletter issue and shared their experiences with some carbon offsetting apps. I thought it could be interesting to share this also with the wider audience. Overall, carbon offsetting still seems like a black-box for consumers (even to those, who are early adopters) and not really a good solution to the problem. Most of you were also not that happy with currently available solutions and some mentioned it is difficult to encourage your close circle (friends & family) to use these solutions. I believe most of the startups try to tackle the problem simply with carbon offsetting without focusing on another big(ger) issue: market education.
🇩🇰🗑 Too Good To Go raises $31 million to fight food waste
🇮🇹🍏 Italian e-grocery startup Cortilia raises €34M to get fresh local food to people’s homes
🇸🇪🥛 Sproud raises $6.6M for North American expansion of pea-protein milk
🇸🇪🍦 Lub Foods has invented an ice cream with fat you can’t absorb
🇬🇧🐖 Hoxton Farms raises £2.7M seed to produce animal fat without animal
🇬🇧 💵 Tickr allows retail investors to back impact companies, secures $3.4M from Ada Ventures
🇨🇭🌽 Blue Horizon Ventures launches €183 million foodtech fund to support sustainable future
🇪🇺🍔 European investment into foodtech reached a record €868m last month
🇵🇱🎓 Brainly raises $80M as its platform for crowdsourced homework help balloons to 350M users
🇫🇷🧘🏻♀️ Opal raises $4.3 million for its ‘digital well-being’ assistant
🇪🇸 🧘🏻♀️Mental healthcare startup Koa Health closes €30M Series A funding
🇪🇸🚗 Wallbox raises €33m to meet surge in demand for electric car chargers
Here are selected early-stage startups spotted last month.
🇫🇮 Carboculture. Makes functional biocarbon from waste to keep CO2 out of the atmosphere.
🇩🇪 Traceless. Circular bio-economy startup offering a sustainable alternative material to conventional (bio)plastics.
🇸🇪 Hack your closet. Online personal service for second-hand clothing.
VC has a diversity problem. Here are 2 great fellowships that try to solve this:
🎓 Future VC: Internship program for individuals from diverse communities. I helped the team with the admission process and discovered through this Applied, a recruitment software startup from London that enables blind and unbiased hiring. Pretty amazing!
🎓 Included.vc : 12-month Venture Capital fellowship for individuals from diverse communities, supported by an international consortium of VCs.
🐝 Whitney Wolfe Herd became the youngest female CEO (out of 22 women in total!) who took her company Bumble public. It’s not a European story, but seeing the attention this IPO got over the last days in the German tech ecosystem, I am sure it inspires and serves as a role model to many current and aspiring female entrepreneurs.