Dreaming of Zebras: 4 things we’re proud of on our 4th birthday

It’s our 4th birthday! As the prosecco corks (beer caps) pop in the ecoligo office, here are 4 things we are proud of having achieved in the last years.  

Realising our dream!

Four years ago, ecoligo’s founders, Martin Baart and Markus Schwaninger, knew three things:

• Businesses in emerging markets needed solar energy to grow sustainably
• A finance gap was stopping solar projects from being realised
• There was a lack of sustainable, transparent investment opportunities

For Martin and Markus, this was an opportunity. They had the ambitious goal to use crowdinvesting to channel that finance to the right place and to manage the development, implementation and maintenance of the projects, to make sure that the money was used correctly and that the customers got exactly what they needed.

Their dream was bigger than the projects themselves: emerging economies need an increasing amount of power and unless renewables are the cheapest, easiest option, more fossil fuels will be burned. ecoligo was founded to make this a reality and we’re very proud of achieving this! For our customers, solar energy is the most affordable option, and with our solar-as-a-service solution, we make it as easy as possible to go solar.

We’ve financed 37 projects so far and are seeing a domino effect: every day, more businesses who have seen our solution contact us about getting their own system. We’ve got enough traction to be able to say that we’ve realised our dream, but we feel like we’re only at the beginning of a huge change in the global energy landscape.

“Unless renewables are the cheapest, easiest option, more fossil fuels will be burned. ecoligo was founded to make this a reality.”

Growing our team

We’ve grown our team to 20 and have entered a new market with the recent opening of our office in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The passion, experience and drive of the ecoligo gang is key to our success and we’re really grateful to have found a team that works so well together – despite being located on 4 different continents!

Being a Zebra

No, we’re not horsing around: being a zebra is serious business. It’s a new movement of startups, for whom making positive impact – represented by the white stripes – is as important as generating profit – represented by the black. Our world doesn’t need more ‘unicorn’ startups, whose goal is to be valued at 1 billion USD. We need zebras: startups whose business model is not only financially sustainable, but creates environmental and social impact, too.

Like other purpose-driven companies such as Mozilla, FolkDays and Tomorrow (read more about Zebras on their blog), to name just a few, we are proud to say that #wearezebras. Join us!

P.S. Unlike mythical unicorns, zebras are grounded in reality: we’ve seen them with our own eyes on our trips to Kenya. Here is proof:

Lightning-fast financing

Yesterday, we launched another project and in less than three hours, it was funded. The one before was financed in just two. We’re addicted to the refresh button during these times, with shouts of numbers going up around the office as the investment amount grows. Seeing that so many people are eager to invest in our projects always makes us happy.

Financing is one of the biggest obstacles in tackling the climate crisis, but it shouldn’t be. The finance is there, the solutions are there, and our business model shows that it’s possible to bring the two together, without large institutions and years of decision-making. To save the planet, we need to move fast. Thanks to the impact-driven crowdinvestors who finance our projects, we believe we can. We are so thankful to the crowd and are working hard to bring more and more projects to the platform.

“Financing is one of the biggest obstacles in tackling the climate crisis, but it shouldn’t be.”

As always, thanks to our network and supporters for helping us to get this far and to our team for making our ideas a reality. To the next 4 years!