Founded in 2021, Berlin-based green tech startup Ostrom has just raised a €4.4 million pre-seed round and will begin to scale its energy product portfolio and super app within Germany, Europe and beyond.
The fresh funding is coming from 468 Capital, J12 Ventures, Global Founders Capital and Übermorgen Ventures, together with key angel investors, including Gorillas co-founder Jörg Kattner.
Founded by young entrepreneurs Matthias Martensen and Karl Villanueva, Ostrom is built on the ethos that transitioning to green energy should not come at the cost of convenience or affordability.
In 2022 we can predict (and sincerely hope) that across the world energy suppliers will be making the switch to green energy, increasing sustainability and helping our planet become more healthy. After the stark warnings that came out of COP26 in 2021, it’s really a now-or-never moment for the energy transition.
Matthias Martensen, co-founder and CEO at Ostrom, said: “Closing our seed round in the middle of an energy crisis – where unscrupulous discounters and sluggish traditional suppliers are going bankrupt left and right – really shows the contrarian thinking and trust our investors have in the future of energy and Ostrom as a major player going forward. We have built Ostrom to be very lean and automation-first from the start to give us the lowest cost-to-serve in the market.”
As argued by Ostrom, and many other thinkers in the field, existing energy suppliers are largely stuck in the past. Many still use physical mail for customer communications, rely on manual work for internal processes, offer misleading tariff tiers with long minimum contract periods, and hard-to-reach customer support. These result in a high cost-to-serve and poor customer experience.
Ostrom is on a mission to disrupt the market to facilitate energy transitions that are much more user-friendly.
Ostrom makes switching to green energy accessible and affordable and is building the energy service platform of the future — one flexible monthly tariff, no lock-ins, and an all-digital experience. In addition, it offers end-to-end multilingual support, responsive live customer chat, and 100% green energy sourced via direct power purchasing agreements (PPAs).
Karl Villanueva, co-founder and CMO/CPO at Ostrom commented: “The energy incumbents never had to work for their customers. Meanwhile, our tech and marketing stack at Ostrom would make any B2C startup jealous. Moreover, instead of the prevailing discount-led or green-shaming negative messaging, we want to make energy approachable, intuitive and even exciting. For example, we just released our new app with carbon tracking and improved referrals – already our second release in just 7 months.”
Since its May 2021 launch, Ostrom has already exceeded a 7-digit ARR run rate after just six months, growing on average more than 100% month-over-month with negligible churn. Ostrom is available all over Germany, with customers in over 400 cities & towns and growing – which already places Ostrom in the top 25% of energy providers in the country. The startup has also already switched clients from over 150 energy suppliers.
