We are very proud to present the top 25 Nordic Cleantech start-ups.

This third edition of the Nordic Cleantech Open competition saw a record breaking 107 cleantech companies applying. An international jury of more than 50 influential representatives from multinational companies and venture capital have been involved in selecting this year’s top 25. Among the jury members are representatives from International Finance Corporation IFC (Int), IdInvest Partners (France), Evonik Corporate Venturing (Germany), General Electric, Veolia (France), Tsing Capital (China), Dow Chemicals (Switzerland), Fortum (Finland), Grundfos (Denmark), The Swedish Energy Agency and others.

“The Nordic Cleantech Open is always a great opportunity to discover new and innovative  companies from Scandinavia. This year’s cohort is diverse and promising, we are very much looking forward to meeting with the entrepreneurs.” Says Julien Mialaret, Investment Manager at Idinvest Partners, France.

This year Estonia was invited to participate in the competition and what a first year they had! With 11 companies entering, two of them made it to the top 25. Sweden, as previous years, had the most entrants and the biggest share of the top 25 as well. Norway had the best results in terms of share of entrants that made it to the top 25.

”We see an ever increasing flow of brilliant, innovative companies coming out of the Nordic and Estonian innovation systems. This is what’s next! It is a great display of what the future holds. Trends that we see is that they are increasingly innovative, solves real industry problems and are driven by younger and more hungry teams. This bodes well for the future”, says Magnus Agerström, Managing Director of Cleantech Scandinavia organisers of the Nordic Cleantech Open.

The selection of the top 25 is just the beginning for these companies. An intensive program lies ahead. 8-9th March the international jury and the companies will meet for a weekend at Nordic Camp at Trolleholm Castle. In April a group of the companies will go to Paris to meet with European investors and industrials at the Nordic Cleantech Showcase. The winners will be announced at the finals in Stockholm, May 19th.

Read the full press release here. Read more about the top 25 companies here.

All jury votes have now been collected. In total there were 1318 assessments of companies done by the jury members. This is a substansial increase since last batch where we “only” recived 1124 votes. This means that although the number of applicants have increased, each company has still been assessed by at least 11 different jury members. As each assessment consists of grades in 3 cathegorys this meens no less that 3954 individual votes! And the results… Well you have to wait until 25 February to know becase that will be the date we go public with the 2013/14 top 25 Nordic Cleantech Open companies.

All the top 25 Nordic Cleantech Open companies 2013/14 will be receiving a free subscription package to the Cleantech Venture Guide. This guide is a brand new online subscription tool for cleantech companies seeking venture financing. The package consists of three main parts. Firstly a guide on how it all works, an ABC on venture financing. How do you write a one pager, how do you pitch successfully, how do you approach valuation of your company, what should be in a shareholder agreement. Practical stuff you will need to know gathered in one easily accessible place. Second part is a search function where you can search for appropriate investors. The register contains almost 100 investors active within Nordic cleantech and is fully searchable. Third part is a test of investability. We have developed the The KeyStone Compact Lightâ„¢ test together with Professor of Engineering and Entrepreneurship at University of Michigan Peter Adraens. The test will be a good help not only to see whether your company is a relevant venture case or not but also to see what changes is needed in order for it to be so and to determine whether it should be. The top 25 companies will be asked to do the test as preparation for the Nordic Camp at Trolleholm castle. At the castle Peter will hold a session together with them, discussing the results.

It was a great joy coming to work this sunny Monday morning as the weekend have seen an incredible inflow of applications to the Nordic Cleantech Open. Already last week applications were pouring in but the weekend by far surpassed our highest expectations. We have not yet come up with the final number but we know for a fact that there are more than 100 applicants. This is more than any previous editions of the competition. Also the quality of the applicants looks very high at a first glance. More updates later on.

We are just home from Corporate Cleantech Venture Day in Lahti. This was a truly great event and no less than 7 applicants to the Nordic Cleantech Open pitched their companies to the investors in the audience. Participating NCO companies were SootTech, Knycer, Ecofective and Optistring from Sweden, Resen Waves and Alpha-E from Denmark and IoT Technologies from Estonia. In addition there were also two alumni finalists from previous editions of the Nordic Cleantech Open on stage, these were Finnish companies Zenrobotics and Enevo.

We rounded of the week with a Nordic Cleantech Open country event in Tallinn. At both events we met up with plenty of Finnish and Estonian companies all eager to join the Nordic Cleantech Open challenge. What can we say, the more the merrier!

In cooperation with Pivotal Innovations and Level39 we will be able to accessorize one of the top 25 companies in the Nordic Cleantech Open competition with a free, one year drop-in membership at the strategically located top-class accelerator Level39.

We have been to quite a few start-up environments, accelerators and incubators all around the globe. Level39 stands out among them. Occupying the entire 39th floor of the iconic One Canada Square building, and established by Canary Wharf Group plc, it was opened in March 2013 by Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, and has quickly become an important part of London

As a participant in Nordic Cleantech Open, you will not only have a chance of entering the Autodesk Clean Tech Partner Programme and gain access to a collection of industry-leading software applications. You will also have a chance to be handpicked by Autodesk to participate in a design-programme to develop your product design and to become one of Autodesk