Lena Thiede | Co-founding Partner Planet A Ventures
Interview given to Ms Maria Louisa Vafiadaki
-Please introduce yourself and the Planet A Ventures. What are your main investment pillars and why have you selected to focus on the environment as a sector ?
Planet A Ventures is a Hamburg-based VC fund that invests in European green tech companies at an early stage (pre-seed, seed, series A). We are looking for companies that are achieving a significant positive impact in four key environmental categories: climate mitigation ii) resources savings (e.g. water) iii) reduction in waste and iv) biodiversity protection.
We provide funding to these innovative mission-driven entrepreneurs and more importantly, a vast network of industry experts, scientists and other entrepreneurs. We stand out because we provide the scientific evidence for how much better the innovative product or service of a startup really is. We are the first European VC to have a dedicated science team on board to calculate life cycle assessments that assess the ecological footprint of a product or service.
I am heading the Science team which calculates the life cycle assessments and my background is in political science. I have worked in climate research and environmental policy since the late 90s. I advised the German government or the energy transition and climate transformation and was part of the Ministry for Economic Cooperation dealing, among others, with sustainable finance and regional development banks. In 2013, I moved to East Africa and led the German development cooperation for the region, working on wild life conservation and natural resource management.
-What type of companies are part of the Planet A Ventures family and where are they based ?
We invest quite broadly in transport, agtech/food, energy, buildings, manufacturing, waste and water. We are looking to invest in EU based startups and have invested in 12 companies so far, aiming for 30.
The companies which are part of our portfolio are producing for example sustainable fuels for the aviation sector, biobased materials or green methanol for the shipping industry. We are not only investing in software but in hardware as well, as this planet needs more than a software update.
-What is the profile of your investors ? Can you guide us into some financials so that we get an idea of the scale of investments ?
When we started, we were aiming for a 100 Mio. Euro fund. In our group of investors, we have a couple of influential family offices and some bigger institutional investors such as: BMW Foundation, a Scandinavian pension fund, a German food retailer... The minimum ticket is size 200.000 euros, but we are about to close the fund, so watch out for the next one..!
-Can you share an inspirational success story with one of your companies, which had an exit ?
We have just started our fund, so there are no exits so far, but the performance is amazing. The energy crisis really boosted the climate tech ecosystem. A success story is “Traceless”, a Hamburg-based all-female team that came up with a fully biodegradable plastic alternative made from agricultural residues. They have won many awards and are now partnering with Otto, one of the biggest retailers in Germany who will use their bags for online purchases.
-What are the main risks in the VC model in the environmental sector ?
In the last decades, we have seen VCs only looking at profitability, but we are using more resources than we have – in fact 1,7 earths. Clearly, our path is not sustainable. The climate crisis, the ecosystem crisis are telling us this is cannot go on...
For the first time, we bring the environmental perspective into investment decisions which allows us to identify those companies which have an answer to some of the biggest challenges of humankind. For example, how to decarbonize steel, cement or the transport sector, how to produce more sustainable products, how to create a circular company etc.
By taking a scientific approach, we identify those which offer the best solutions and we will partner with the winners of this huge economic transformation which has begun.
-Based on current trends, which sectors and sub-sectors do you think will have an increased investment interest in the near future ?
It is important to understand that we will need to change everything- the way we travel, the way we grow food, the way we store energy… There are obviously some sectors where decarbonization is harder to achieve.
Venture capital has an important role to play there to scale technology innovations faster e.g. hydrogen, energy storage, getting to a more regenerative agriculture, etc..
-On your website, you mention that you aim to solve the biggest environmental problem. If you could name 3 problems of the environment, which ones would you pick ?
To me, it is important to understand that we should not narrowly look at carbon dioxide only. We are facing a bigger ecosystem crisis: habitats are being destroyed, ecosystem services are being threatened. Based on a World Economic Forum’s study, more than over half of global GDP -over 42 trillion dollars- directly depend on ecosystem services.
To make our supply chains more resilient we need to invest in nature. We need to understand that we are facing a larger crisis here and work within the planetary boundaries. We are not in a safe place anymore. We need to broaden our scope. Restoring and conserving nature and climate crisis is the way to go and we need to think those together, as they tend to overlap.
Thank you.
