Dear Vanagon Community,

Hello from sunny Munich! We hope all of you are able to enjoy the summer.

An exciting first half of 2024 has passed. In our summer briefing, we would like to look back and reflect on the past few months, full of gratitude for all the support we received along the way.

Today's Briefing

• Vanagon Fund News

  • SFDR 8+ & Impact Reporting

  • LP Summer Community Day

  • Summer Closing

• Vanagon Portfolio

  • LoopID: AI-powered circularity

  • Other Portfolio Highlights

• Vanagon Platform Events

  • Vanagon Rooftop Events

  • Vanagon Open Doors

• Vanagon on Stage

  • Recognitions & Features

  • Speaker engagements

• What else we have been up to

  • EU Nature Restoration Law

  • 2nd cohort of ReFi Talents

Vanagon Fund News

At the end of last year, we created a review of our founding year 2023, which was well received. 2024 has been equally eventful as we have continued to build our fund, our platform, our investor base and our portfolio. Here are some important milestones.

SFDR Article 8+ Fund & Impact Reporting

Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) is a EU regulation aimed at increasing transparency in the financial services sector regarding sustainability. Our goal was to maintain a balance between new standards, reporting effort, and relevance given the early stage of our startups. In collaboration with our fund administrator ACE, we chose the SFDR classification “Article 8+ fund” (which goes beyond merely promoting environmental and/or social characteristics and aims to have a significant positive impact on sustainability issues) and conducted our first SFDR reporting.

Furthermore, together with a chair at the University of Applied Sciences Munich and as part of a master thesis by Beate Fleps, we have developed an impact reporting logic consisting of custom impact KPIs per startup as well as primary and secondary SDGs.

LP Summer Community Day

Two weeks ago, we celebrated our Vanagon journey with our wonderful circle of LPs and founders during our Vanagon LP Summer Community Day. After a review on the past months in the moon capsule of the Deutsche Museum and a rooftop lunch, we listened to Nadine Wilke sharing her journey founding our portfolio company Particula and conquering the US market. Afterwards, we took a stroll through Munich’s city center and received a surprise tour of the epicenter of Munich and secret public places, where even the true Münchner Kindl among us had never gone before.

The day was then concluded with a wonderful get-together, including a pub quiz, and mingling with fellow LPs and Vanagon portfolio founders, cocktails & dinner at the Sommerquartier next to Marienhof.

Summer Closing

We are currently conducting our summer closing and are delighted to welcome new investors on board with our Vanagon Speedboat. With the new investors joining we not only get new funds to deploy to our promising pipeline but also expand the invaluable network and expertise of our close-knit circle of LPs.

Vanagon Portfolio

In June 2024, we announced the investment in LoopID and will soon announce further additions to our portfolio - all next gen-software pioneers helping companies to navigate and drive the green transition of our economy.

LoopID: AI-powered solution for the circular economy

LoopID develops cutting-edge digital solutions that help maintain resources within the economy, encouraging sustainable product use. Specifically, LoopID enables brands to adopt profitable circular business models, improve cost efficiency, and enhance customer engagement throughout the product lifecycle. Their platform also ensures compliance with new sustainability regulations, particularly the upcoming EU Digital Product Passport regulation.

Core features include

• AI-Powered Digital Twins: Semantic digital twins of physical products

• Secure Take-Back Systems: Facilitating product returns and recycling

• Recommerce Platforms: Supporting resale and reuse

• End-to-End Traceability: Tracking products from creation to end-of-life.

Focus Sectors include Electronics/ICT, Textiles/Fashion as well as Real Estate. LoopID collaborates with industry leaders like Infineon Technologies to create tailored solutions for these sectors. The company was founded by Christian Adler, former AI and digital transformation expert at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), with degrees from LMU Munich, UC Berkeley, and Leuphana University, as well as by Alexis Gamboa, a Costa Rican expert in digital twins, with a background from EY, the Technical University of Munich. Both founders met at CDTM in Munich and participated in accelerators at UnternehmerTUM (Xpreneurs) and UC Berkeley.

Apart from Vanagon’s investment, LoopID benefits from significant funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK) and has joined the Silicon Valley-based B2B Alchemist Accelerator, which has also invested in the company. Furthermore, Joerg Walden, a circularity veteran and founder of iPoint Systems, co-invests with Vanagon. Our investment in LoopID has been featured in VC Magazin.

Other Portfolio Highlights

🌿 Senken.io was able to conclude a major financing round in the US last year raising USD 7.5m from top notch US tech VCs such as Obvious Ventures. Meanwhile, Senken has managed to become the second largest marketplace for removal carbon credits worldwide helping hundreds of companies to invest in high quality carbon credits. The startup has recently launched Senken Academy, an all-in-one practical guide for sustainability managers and corporate leaders containing useful information from climate state overview and the net zero strategy specifics, to AI-powered advice and actionable steps for companies’ sustainable journeys. A few months ago, Senken had prepared for a major DAX company the largest bio-char transaction ever, which was then dethroned by an even bigger biochar transaction conducted by Microsoft. Anyhow, Senken gladly accepted the silver medal and welcomed it as a strong signal in this rapidly growing market.

🐙 Learn.xyz is an AI-powered learning app designed to create a fun, gamified learning experience. Having started as a B2C app, whose community created tens of thousands of courses, the startup manages to attract more and more B2B customers seeking to train their employees. Making corporate learning fun has never been more important than it is now, at the dawn of the Twin Transition, which requires massive digital and ecological transformation from companies. One of our co-investors in the startup is Ryan Roslansky, the CEO of LinkedIn, the largest business network and one of the largest suppliers of online learning content globally. Learn.xyz founder Christian Byza used to work for LinkedIn and is also one of the co-founders of OMR, an online marketing conference with 70 000 participants. The team’s marketing skills have not only resulted in the rapid user growth but also in media coverage by ARD, Handelsblatt, WiWo etc. as well as the opening of the “House of AI”, an AI-hub in San Francisco, powered by Learn.xyz. Their new app Learn.xyz at Work has recently been launched and their ads can be spotted at New York Times Square.

🛰️ Renoster.co is an eMRV company bringing deep transparency into the still largely low-tech voluntary carbon markets - by rating carbon projects with the latest technology and publishing the results. With remote sensing and machine learning, Renoster determines the carbon sequestration value for nature-based carbon projects at scale. Renoster's business model represents a flywheel of transparency and awareness and creates incentives for more honesty and accuracy in the market. The company received international media coverage for exposing low quality delivered by legacy carbon projects and registries and created a profitable business model while helping improve the market for nature-based carbon credits. They are covered by media such as The New Yorker, the Guardian or DIE ZEIT for their publications repeatedly triggering global media attention. Renoster continues to win more and more global brands as customers such as LUSH and has recently launched a new product being the eyes and ears for investors in carbon projects.

📊 Particula.io started as a "Moody's for digital environmental assets" and has meanwhile established itself as the premier rating & analytics platform for digital assets in general. The platform provides investors with instant security, clarity, and market access via quality ratings and in-depth analysis reports, focusing primarily on technical, economic, environmental and compliance aspects and leveraging AI tools for sentiment analysis, risk analysis as well as price prediction. Particula is currently launching a joint digital assets rating with a US rating giant, for which the startup covers the token side. Customers include Liechtenstein Banking Association and a DAX company. Vanagon was Particula’s first investor after they completed the Blockchain Founders Group incubator. Meanwhile the company has raised an up-round and is currently preparing another financing round. Lead investor will be a large US investor, which Vanagon introduced to Particula.

🗺 The Landbanking Group is creating the end to end infrastructure for nature as an asset class and enables nature and biodiversity conservation and regeneration at scale. The company is combining the latest technologies to assess nature along dimensions such as carbon, water, soil and biodiversity, and creates individual natural capital accounts. They serve as an underlying for landbanking claims that can be assetized and traded. Our co-Investors include BonVenture, Planet A Ventures and notable investors such as André Hoffmann. The company was founded by serial founder Dr. Sonja Stuchtey and ex McKinsey director and founder of Systemiq Ltd., Prof. Martin R. Stuchtey. With various customers such as Weleda and global agri-food companies and projects across the globe, the Landbanking Group has managed to generate high six-digit revenues and is attracting strong customer interest also from other sectors such as real estate, renewable energy or insurance. Other recognitions include the selection for the prestigious Global Innovation Finance Lab and Sonja’s inclusion into “Trailblazing Women in Climate” by Reuters. Also Martin held a TEDx Talk, which is very worth watching:

Vanagon Platform Events

Vanagon Rooftop Events

Our own Vanagon Rooftop event series has been established as place to be for Munich’s investors and startups.

We held several editions this year already, such as

• Vanagon Winter Rooftop Lunch

• Vanagon x Launch Africa Rooftop Circle: The next frontier of regenerative investing

• Vanagon x ECN Rooftop Family Office Edition

• Vanagon x Capacura Rooftop

During the events, we were able to learn about various topics and founder experiences from our portfolio such as Senken, Particula, The Landbanking Group, LoopID as well as from other experts and startups from the Munich ecosystem. There are already several new events planned and we cannot wait to see Vanagon family & friends there.

Vanagon Open Doors

Furthermore, we continued our Vanagon Open Door Online Learning Sessions in which we jointly explored several startups and topics such as AI-enabled Materials R&D and ESG Reporting with our circle of LPs.

Vanagon on Stage

In H1 2024 we were delighted to receive various invitations to events and recognitions. Here are some highlights of the past months. Click on the blue font to access the underlying links and to read more.

Recognitions & Features

• We were invited by the 0100, a large European LP-GP conference series, to be a guest in their 0100 ESG & Impact Podcast and to talk about our Investments in NatureTech.

• The head of SuperReturn featured Vanagon in her “Upcoming Fund Manager Interview” series.

• Susanne received the LinkedIn TopVoice status for LinkedIn Influencers. Top Voices is a prestigious invitation-only program with a global group of experts on LinkedIn.

  

• We had the honor to attend the inaugural The Earthshot Prize Launchpad event in London hosted by HRH Prince William and were invited to join the launchpad.

• Andrew Beebe, Managing Director of leading US climate fund Obvious invited us and our founders for a get-together during his stop-over in Munich

• Our investment in LoopID was featured in the Venture Capital Magazin

Speaker engagements

• We were invited to host a NatureTech gondula at the BaystartUp’s VentureCon conference and introduced the concept to various business angels from Bavaria and beyond.

• Axel was part of the Table Talk at ESG Masters.

• Sandro hosted a panel on Frontier Tech at the SuperVenture conference in Berlin with guests from the European Investment Fund, as well as from renowned VC from the US and the UK.

• We were invited to speak on a panel on biodiversity at the Adapt Your World conference.

• Susanne organized a session on the nature crisis & building the regenerative economy at INSEAD and argued that the planetary boundaries framework should be part of every MBA’s core curriculum.

• We held a presentation on How AI can enable regenerative and circular economy use cases at the German INSEAD Alumni Entrepreneurship Forum

• Vanagon joined the ZOHO Summer Pitch by ZOLLHOF – Tech Incubator and co-hosted the investor's meetup together with caesar.

• Vanagon was selected to pitch in the fund pitch night of the German Encourage Ventures Female Business Angel Network. Furthermore, we were invited to host a Lunch & Learn Lecture on the Twin Transition.

• Vanagon was invited to the Paloneo Summit, a next gen think tank from the Cambridge ecosystem, to hold a NatureCircle there.

  

  www.vanagon.vc/blog/paloneo

  Furthermore, we attended various conferences such as Davos WEF side events, DLD, 0100 in Vienna and Amsterdam, SuperVenture, WVC:E, SuperAngel Summit to re-connect and make new contacts.

What else we have been up to

Campaign to save the EU nature restoration law

At the end of February, the European Parliament passed the EU Nature Restoration Act, an important step towards saving Europe's ecosystems, 80% of which are in poor ecological condition. More than 6000 scientists have called the law one of the most important of our generation. But the law was in limbo for months. After the law was fully negotiated, a small group of EU member states suddenly withdrew their support for the law. Hardly any media reported on this. Inspired by Martin Stuchtey from The Landbanking Group, we launched an international social media grass roots campaign together with Anna Lerner from the Climate Collective and supported by Omri Preis from Alliance4Europe, so that entrepreneurs, investors and start-ups, especially in key countries such as Austria and Poland, could publicly show their support for the law and its importance for Europe.

This enabled us to generate seven-figure views. We don't know what this actually achieved. But in the end, we were delighted that the law was adopted throughout the EU (mainly due to Austria's last minute change of heart).

2nd cohort of our ReFi Talents online program

We kicked off the 2nd cohort of our ReFi Talents global online education program in July and held the key note speech of the first session. 200 talents were admitted to the cohort - mostly professionals from the finance, sustainability, and technology space and from all over the world and all eager to learn about how to change the world for the better with technology.

We are looking forward to seeing the power of this amazing group of participants and mentors unfold. Several of our portfolio companies such as Particula, LoopId and Renoster will hold keynote speeches in the upcoming sessions.

Furthermore, we will offer an opportunity to understand climate change in record time in an open climate pitch online session on Monday, August 12 at 5:30pm CET. You are warmly invited to attend.

📚 About ReFi Talents:

Together with the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management and movers & shakers in the NatureFintech space, we have co-initiated and co-designed this global online education program. The 18-week long program has 3 phases that help professionals from various backgrounds and career stages to quickly get onboarded to regenerative finance and the regenerative economy. The goal of the program is to guide the way for talents to get active and become entrepreneurs, technologists, regulators, investors, or influencers in the space and to drive the transition to a regenerative economy via next gen technology. Participation is free of charge.

Lastly and most importantly we would like to express our gratitude to all our portfolio companies, investors, partners, friends and our readers for your ongoing support. We highly appreciate it!

We hope you enjoyed reading this review. If there is anyone you think should also read our briefing? Kindly forward. If you have feedback or questions, please let us know via [email protected]. We are looking forward to hearing from you.

Have a great rest of the summer and all the best!

Sandro, Susanne and Axel