We build companies
with a positive impact on society…

… and the environment.

MISSION

We scale our profitable businesses and create sustainable change.

We build impactful and profitable companies, different in their business models but all similar in their inherent potential to tackle significant social or environmental challenges. We start, incubate, advise and scale these companies or acquire significant stakes in young enterprises, steering and supporting them in accordance with our vision.

PEOPLE

We are passionate and multilingual. We speak social, environmental and business English.

We are a company builder, a green business catalyst and social innovator with decades of financial sector experience. The fluency of our people across sectors is the basis of our successful intermediation between the social, green and finance worlds and allows us to scale and mainstream impact investments. We have worked across Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. Our passion to create positive impact for societies around the globe unites us.

TEAM

Michael Schneider

Co-CEO and Co-Founder

»New business models, unlikely partners and systemic change needs to be organized to fight climate change, ensure food security or to provide basic infrastructure, health care and education for all. econnext aspires to be that organizer.«

Dr. Sabrina Schulz

Co-CEO

»The solutions that econnext and its subsidiaries offer can actively shape the net zero economy. At econnext, engineering and project development go hand in hand with creativity, a can-do attitude and a deep commitment to climate action and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).«

Dr. Jobst von Hoyningen-Huene

Co-CEO and Co-Founder

»Making profitable, scalable, social and green businesses investable for traditional capital markets players is key to tackle the enormous global challenges we face. econnext is company builder, intermediary and investor.«

ANGELS

Dr. Brigitte Mohn

Investor

»Impact Investing is the most promising way for investors of all backgrounds to get involved. It allows channeling much needed capital to the social sector that remains underfunded in most regions of the world. econnext builds companies eligible for impact investment.«

Martijn Bödeker

Investor (CATALPA)

»CATALPA invests in and with young and aspiring entrepreneurs. econnext has a vision we fully share and an ambition to build successful while impactful enterprises around the globe. We look forward to supporting econnext in reaching its goals.«

Stephen Brenninkmeijer

Investor

»Impact Investing will become powerful and mainstream. A company builder with focus on impact as well as profitability is the right concept at the right time.«

Dr. Nathalie von Siemens

Investor

»Many societal challenges of our time can be addressed with responsible business models that create economic opportunities for all parties involved. It is important that econnext grows these business models and helps build the market to maximize positive impact at scale.«

Florian Seubert

Investor

»Professionalism, dedicated entrepreneurial teams, relevant expertise plus convincing business models are key to attract traditional institutional capital. Combining these elements will create solutions.«

Jeroen M. van Agtmael

Investor (CATALPA)

WHAT

We build profitable businesses that benefit climate and society at large.

Current areas of activity include cleantech and circular economy businesses (e.g. renewable storage, building integrated photovoltaics), project development and contracting services for green power, heat and cooling and financial technology with a focus on the UN Sustainable Development Goals in the liquid capital markets. Once a business is successful, we seek to integrate our learnings into existing systems and public policy to enable sustainable change.

HOW

We responsibly pursue our mission with perseverance. We work in diverse teams and partnerships.

Our social and environmental mission is locked into our articles of association. We strive to create well diversified, largely uncorrelated sources of income. This is necessary to attract the more than 5,000 Billion USD per year estimated to be necessary to reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals. We focus on long term value creation, typically picking dividends over exits. We finance our activities conservatively, generally preferring equity over debt financing. Our teams and partners are diverse, well incentivized and treated fairly wherever we work.

PORTFOLIO

We work across sectors and geographies. Because social and environmental innovation does not happen in isolation.

Having established econnext in the summer of 2016, we hold a portfolio of promising young companies currently active from Europe to Africa and Asia. We take ownership seriously and typically build our own startups or acquire majority stakes in young ventures we believe in.

The solar roof tiles from Autarq GmbH with their plug-and-play installation, easily combine perfect aesthetics with renewable energy from your own roof.

Circular Carbon GmbH produces both process heat and steam for industrial customers and high-quality biochar, which in turn generates CO₂ certificates, from sorted organic residue – making a unique contribution to the circular economy.

The FinTech company ESG Screen17 enables asset managers and institutional investors to screen and align their portfolios with the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals

The innovative, cost-efficient and pollutant-free recycling process for photovoltaic modules and composites from FLAXRES GmbH, can return silicon, silver and glass to the material cycle and enables reuse in a high-quality.

GRIPS GmbH offers Energy as a Service (EaaS) for commercial and industrial (C&I) applications in developing and emerging countries. Among other services, GRIPS develops, finances, builds and operates renewable energy systems for commercial customers on a pay-per-use basis.

LUMENION’s high-temperature storage system reliably provides CO₂-free process heat generated from renewable energies to industrial customers on a 24/7 basis.