Expansion into Germany: Oneplanetcrowd - NL

EXPANSION: Netherlands > Germany

Customer: Oneplanetcrowd B.V./ Start Green Venture Capital -NL

Key topics:
alternative finance, crowdfunding, dealflow management,business development;

Tasks:crowdfunding platform launch;
Business environment analysis, competitors analysis; searching,comissioning and
supervising a German law office for setting up terms & conditions for a German 
crowdfunding platform; platform launch, dealflow management; online advertising and
facebook campaigning, representing customer on events,networking and connecting
the customer in associations and business communities;

Customer feedback:

C. de Vries, Managing Director, Founder start green venture capital, Oneplanetcrowd, Amsterdam, NL

GBD was our first choice to launch our Dutch crowdfunding platform Oneplanetcrowd  (OPC) in Germany. Egbert is an extremely professional and reliable partner. During our launch and in the structuring process of the start-up, he always stayed on top of the big picture and the international effects. At the same time, his team has done an excellent business development work for OPC. Also due to Egbert’ s excellent contacts in the area of ​​green economy and start-ups, we became known within very short time in the German business community. Clear strategic analysis and efficient business development are the characteristics that we most value in GBD and Egbert in particular. We are glad that we were able to have Egbert as a shareholding partner of Oneplanetcrowd International.

Background:

The Netherlands is one of the frontrunners in the crowdfunding industry in Europe, according to a report by Crowdfundinghub. The industry annually doubled its volume over the past few years. Crowdfunding is an alternative way to raise monetary contributions from a large number of people. Thanks to the popularity of crowdfunding in the Netherlands, sustainable projects managed to accumulate more money than ever. According to Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO.nl) € 11.5 million was raised for sustainable energy projects through Dutch crowdfunding platforms last year, 10% of the total market. RVO.nl
predicts further growth of the industry in the coming years. Dutch crowdsourcing website Oneplanetcrowd, specialized in sustainable projects, received a € 1 million boost giving the company the
opportunity to extend its services. Dutch company Peerby managed to raisemore than € 2 million through Oneplanetcrowd. (find more information )

Mission:

Expansion into Germany; Building up european brand for sustainable crowdfunding;

Resume:

The challenge was that legal regulations for this model of alternative finance of start-ups had not been clarified on a European level. The legal developments at European and German level had therefore to be kept in mind in order to adapt the strategy for expansion to the legal development. It was also necessary to evaluate the segmentation and structure of the market and the competitors in Europe and in Germany in order to draw conclusions for the allocation of the expansion budget. We opted for a multi-level market entry strategy. When it became apparent that there will be no European legislation for crowdfunding, but that each country would partially adopt different directives and laws, we changed the strategy. The goal was no longer to build up an European brand, but to set up the German OPC platform focused on crowdfunding and to develop in parallel a European cooperation model for crowdinvesting. Today Oneplanetcrowd is one of the largest European Crowdfunding platforms with a focus on sustainable projects and has a reliable network of partners around Europe.

Head: Who will win the new mobility race?

Research: B2B survey; European expert survey on New Mobility

Key topics: new mobility, carsharing, ridesharing, e-hailing, parking 
services, intermodal mobility, logictics services; legislation, market 
development, market trends, start-up community, start-up cooperations, 
merger & acqusition;

Task: Europe-wide expert survey

Methodology: We relied on a mix of different, mutually building methodologies:
1.Analysis of third party research
2.Phone interviews with experts in the area of new mobility
3.Online survey to mobility experts from nine business sectors
The research was carried out as an independent Europe-wide expert survey between April and October 2016. More than 200 experts
from more than 8 countries and more than 9 business sectors participated in this survey

Target group: experts/ automotive industry, start-ups,
public transport agencies, accelerators and incubators, investors, consultancies,
governments and public sector, research institutes and universities;

Expert feedback:

Lior Zeno Zamanski - Executive Director - EcoMotion - Israel Innovation Institute:

"The new GBD European mobility survey makes it abundantly clear that the world of transportation is changing now, not in 2020. The major “established” companies will need to collaborate with innovative start-ups to maintain their leadership in this rapidly changing industry. Everyone is searching for the next game changer. EcoMotion is connected to more than 450 Israeli smart mobility start-ups across the sector. Who will win?…the nimble and versatile."

Max Gimpel-Henning - Director Western Regions - Cleantech Open - San Francisco, USA:

"From a US-based accelerator’s perspective, we are seeing a strong trend towards open innovation activity in the Silicon Valley and are working closely with corporate partners. The country origin of new technologies or services is often irrelevant."

Alexander Schilff - Senior Consultant - Marketing , Toyota Deutschland GmbH, Cologne, Germany:

"Cross-functional exchange within the European start-up scene is very important for the sustainable development of visions and ideas, as is the promotion of creative thinking and the attention paid to these developments. Without start-ups there will be slower development in Europe."

Laura Brimont, Research Fellow New Prosperity , IDDRI/ Science Po -Paris, France:

"This survey provides thoughtful insights into the future trends of mobility at the European level. We were glad to see that most experts consider that start-ups should cooperate with Public Transport Agencies, as it is in line with our own proposal." 

Resume:

Find resume here:

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT: electric carsharing, Berlin, Germany;

Customer: PSA Groupe Paris - France/ Citroen Deutschland/ Multicity Carsharing

Key topics: e-carsharing, free-float carsharing, elelctric vehicles, 
corporate carsharing, fleet management, electric charging infrastructure;

Tasks: planning and implementing the business development of one of the first 
worldwide electric carsharing fleets in Berlin; 
Business environment analysis, competitors analysis; developing and implementing a
business development system for e-carsharing; b2b marketing & sales;
developing and connecting political and business affaires especially for the introduction of french headquarter when overhandling the pilot phase; 

Resume:

Berlin is the world capital of carsharing. There is no other city in the world where competition for carsharing would be higher. Further more nearly o experiences could be refered  to concerning electric carsharing. The Multicity project therefore stands out through its absolute precedent character. It quickly succeeded in developing a niche position in the Berlin car-sharing market alongside the two German market leaders. An impressive number of business customers and cooperations could be won. The pilot project has been successfully completed. The project was considered to be one of the most significant projects for the French headquarter of PSA and therefore was directly handled over to the headquarter.

According to GBD, an electric free-float carsharing system can be regarded as  economically suboptimal as a result of the considerably higher effort to keep the electric fleet running. A purely electric car-sharing system based on renewable energies is a significant contribution to environmental protection for cities. This concerns both the pollutant emissions and the noise emissions. Furthermore, such a system requires sufficient loading infrastructure inside its lines of business. In particular, grid integration of fast charging points. According to GBD a station-based electric car-sharing system with municipal support for parking spaces and loading infrastructure ( supported in the beginnimng by the state or the city) could be developed into an outstanding, economically and environmentally sustainable system of new mobility.

Customer: Toyota Deutschland –Toyota Mirai fuel-cell car

Key topics: fuel cell car; fleetmanagement, H2 economics, pilot project, b2b business development

Tasks: planning and implementing the business development of one of the first worldwide
fuel cell cars in Germany; analyse, research and contact of  b2b target groups for
an innovative product, a little bit ahead of its large area market entry time; 
challenge is to evaluate and build up target groups and distribution alongside the
government-assisted expansion of a fuel cell infrastructure;

GBD CEO Egbert Hünewaldt is mentor and jury member of Climate KIC accelerator, Berlin.

Climate-KIC is the first place to go for game-changing climate innovation in Germany. The German office drives the development of scalable high impact climate change solutions with its programmes and its community of the most innovative companies, researchers, start-ups and students. All German programmes are supervised by Climate-KIC’s head office in Berlin. Climate-KIC operates its own start-up incubator in Berlin – the Green Garage is the only permanent cleantech incubator in Germany.

GBD CEO Egbert Hünewaldt is member of the Advisory Board of the new bachelor study course "mobility management" at Rhein-Main University Wiesbaden.

Award: Mission Sustainability 2009 

Project: GreenVenture.Net

A. v. Humboldt Foundation | New Business Models for a Sustainable Lifestyle

E. Hünewaldt is member of the study advisory board "mobility management" Rhein-Main University  Wiesbaden

GBD is member of the TUMI network by GIZ.