Oneplanetcrowd goes beyond traditional crowdfunding; they created a platform to directly match investors to founders working on sustainable solutions and renewable energy projects. This way, investors can make a “double impact” with their money, both financially and in society. Today, we are pleased to share that our portfolio venture, Oneplanetcrowd, has merged with Invesdor Group, a leading European funding platform.
Why this matters
The merger of Oneplanetcrowd and Invesdor Group creates one of the largest crowdfunding platforms in Europe. With over 170,000 investors, the new combined company has financed more than 438 million euros in over 800 projects. The merger gives Oneplanetcrowd access to the funders network of the Invesdor Group – already active in Finland, Germany and Austria – while Invesdor can leverage the expertise and network Oneplanetcrowd has built as the most sustainable funding platform in the Benelux. Both Oneplanetcrowd and Invesdor share the ambition to bring together impact entrepreneurs and investors from across the European Union.
Moreover, joining forces paves the way for expansion, with the goal of becoming the European market leader in crowdfunding. Christopher Grätz, co-founder and CEO of Invesdor, said: “This merger paves the way to accelerate European innovation and the energy transition in the EU. Focussing on growth companies and sustainable energy projects, we are the first platform in the EU to offer this broad range of sustainable financing propositions, connecting investors, project developers and companies in different EU member states”. He adds: “We will enhance the tradability of our investment products by using state-of-the-art technology. The merger puts us in the forefront of crowdfunding – and we do not rule out acquisitions of parties in other countries in due course”.
Industry spotlight: What’s happening in crowdfunding?
The demand for direct financing of innovative growth companies and renewable energy projects has grown strongly in recent years due to the realisation that these projects often require citizen participation. Closing the further expanding funding gap for innovation and the sustainable energy transition in Europe is becoming more relevant than ever. Globally, the financing gap is 4 to 6 trillion US dollar per year to transform into a low-carbon economy. With the introduction of a pan-European licence (ECSP) and the permission to digitise securities using blockchain technology, the EU has put crowdfunding at the top of its political agenda to establish a Capital Markets Union (CMU), creating a truly single market for capital across the EU. Invesdor and Oneplantcrowd are pioneers in this fast-growing market and are now joining forces to form a strong European funding platform.
Maarten de Jong, Co-Founder of Oneplanetcrowd highlighted the growing aspiration – increasingly, requirement – of many EU member states to involve citizens in financing the energy transition, making the role of crowdfunding even larger. Under his leadership, Oneplanetcrowd was the third European funding platform to acquire the Crowdfunding Service Provider license (ECSP), which will be brought to the Invesdor Group. He adds: “This ECSP license gives us a big head start in this promising growth market, representing a market value of over 2.47 billion euro in our core markets alone. It allows us to position ourselves as one major established player, meeting strict European quality criteria. With these European laws and regulations, the market has become more mature and transparent”
How this positively impacts founders
As a combined group, Invesdor and Oneplanetcrowd enable growth companies, sustainable energy projects and impact founders to directly raise funding from private and professional investors from all over Europe at low transaction costs. Over the coming months, investors from all EU member states will be able to buy, sell or trade their bonds and shares with other investors, making crowdfunding more liquid. Moreover, promising companies with international expansion plans can raise financing not only in their home countries but also in other European countries.
Edward de Jager, Unknown Group Chairman, said: “We are so proud of how Maarten, Coenraad and Laura have grown Oneplanetcrowd in the 1,5 years since Unknown invested in them. They’ve done a great job preparing the company for this big step and we are convinced that Oneplanetcrowd’s impact will grow larger with this merger”.
Dive Deeper
We interviewed Oneplanetcrowd co-founder Maarten de Jong about Oneplanetcrowd’s impact potential. Here’s what he had to say (May 2022)
Maarten de Jong’s co-founder Coenraad de Vries was a guest on the Unknown Stories podcast. Listen to the full episode below.
Investment Announcement: Oneplanetcrowd Raises Funding from Unknown Group (May 2021)
Unknown founders Edward de Jager and Hendrik Halbe invest in Kumasi Drinks through Impact Tech Ventures. Based in Amsterdam, Kumasi Drinks has created a range of 100% natural soft drinks from cocoa juice, a waste stream from the cocoa production process.
- Unknown fuels Kumasi Drink’s seed round, having met them last year at the Get in the Ring Impact Competition finals at ImpactFest in The Hague.
- By selling their excess cocoa juice to Kumasi Drinks, farmers in Ghana and the Ivory Coast earn up to 30% extra additional income per kg sold.
- With Unknown coming on board, Kumasi’s plans for 2022 involve scaling to new markets and expanding their product line.
Key to our vision for the future of food is fueling founders that are working on bold and unconventional solutions that challenge the status quo, optimally use excess streams from production and empower producers. We’re proud to share that Unknown has completed an investment in Netherlands-based Kumasi Drinks, a company that ticks all these boxes.
Lars Gierveld, Co-founder of Kumasi Drinks said: “Investing in an early stage startup in a market dominated by major players is a bold move. Unknown believes in our ability to change the status quo of the cocoa industry. We’re thrilled to have a professional investor with a global reach and emphasis on impact measurement like Unknown join the Kumasi movement!”
We’re fueling Kumasi because they think outside the bean, in a cocoa industry that for too long has gotten away with exploiting farmers and dictating the market. With the excess cocoa juice, Kumasi Drinks creates a range of 100% natural, healthy and tasty drinks out of what was previously considered waste from the cocoa production process. The cocoa industry is solely interested in the seeds of the cocoa plant (cocoa beans), which are used to make chocolate. As it turns out, the juicy fruit pulp surrounding the cocoa bean is healthy and extraordinarily tasty. It doesn’t taste like cocoa or chocolate but like a kind of mix of lychee, mango and white peach.
With their fresh, novel approach in a cocoa market dominated by major players, Kumasi buys its juice with its technical partner in Ghana directly from farmers. This way, the cocoa farmers receive immediate additional income – up to 30% extra per kg – from selling the pulp and juice byproducts from their cocoa production process they would have typically thrown away.
Unknown Group Chairman, Edward de Jager said: “We’re proud to welcome Kumasi Drinks to the Unknown portfolio. In a short amount of time, Lars, Linda and Rogier have gotten a lot of traction with Kumasi Drinks with a bold idea – that they can empower cacao farmers by creating incredible products from excess streams – and their focus and emphasis on measuring their impact”.
The Kumasi Story
Founded in 2021 by Lars Gierveld, Linda Klunder and Rogier Power, the seed for Kumasi Drinks was sown in 2018 when Gierveld, a TV presenter, traveled to the Ashanti region of Ghana to make a documentary about the cocoa industry (watch the English version here!). Here, he was encountered by a grim reality: most farmers are totally dependent on the sale of cocoa and they live below the poverty line. The industry is dominated by a few large players, who dictate the terms of the market. Middlemen at various levels of the supply chain ensure that the farmers get only a fraction of their profits. With the goal of flipping this status quo, Kumasi Drinks was born. They started collecting cocoa fruit juice with a group of farmers near Kumasi (which incidentally, is the capital of the Ashanti region in Ghana).
First hitting the shelves in January 2021, Kumasi Drinks – in less than two years – are available in over 1000 locations in The Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. In their main base, The Netherlands, Kumasi have struck deals with the largest chain of supermarkets – Albert Heijn – and department stores – Hema to have their range of drinks on their shelves. “Retailers today are trying to make their catalog more in line with the values and mindset of their customers. Since we launched, we’ve been contacted regularly by retailers that want to put a drink that is good for you and good for the planet on their shelves”, adds Co-Founder, Rogier Power.
What’s Next
With this investment, Kumasi’s plan is to expand its audience by growing internationally and developing more products that are true to the Kumasi ethos (“We are exploding with ideas on how we can help more farmers and expand our product line”, quips Powers).
Kumasi will also set up a specialty drinks bar at Unknown Group’s new innovation hub ‘Titaan’ at the Binckhorst in The Hague. Opening in early 2023, Titaan will be a state-of-the-art 13,000 m² innovation hub to house startups and scale-ups that are creating a better world. A continuation of Unknown Group’s continual commitment to establish The Hague as Europe’s leading impact city, following the previous successes of Unknown’s global startup competition, Get in the Ring’s events in The Hague, as well as previous and upcoming editions of ImpactFest, Europe’s largest impact meetup.
Kumasi Drinks’ addition to the Unknown portfolio, follows Unknown’s 2021 investments in De Krekerij and Hargol FoodTech, both ventures in alternative proteins space and a 2016 investment in circular surplus food cargo auction platform, Saltrex.
This investment was done through Impact Tech Ventures, an investment fund that has received the Seed Capital facility of the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, de Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (“RvO”). RvO is a government agency that operates under the supervision of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy.
Unknown is thrilled to welcome Kumasi to the portfolio and is eager to work with their team to bring their incredible product and exponential impact to more markets worldwide.
Information, interview requests and rights-free images:
Kumasi Drinks | Lars Gierveld | lars@kumasi-drinks.nl
Unknown Group | Rayhaan Imam | rayhaan@unknowngroup.com
Dive deeper:
AMSTERDAM, 13 JUNE 2022 – AMSTERDAM- BASED FASHION-TECH STARTUP LALALAND HAS RAISED €2.1 MILLION IN A NEW PRE-SERIES-A FINANCING ROUND LED BY UNKNOWN GROUP, ORANGE WINGS, AND ANGEL INVESTORS. LALALAND UTILIZES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO ENABLE FASHION BRANDS AND RETAILERS TO USE HYPER-REALISTIC MODELS OF EVERY BODY TYPE, SIZE, AND SKIN TONE. WITH THESE BODY-INCLUSIVE AVATARS, THE COMPANY AIMS TO CREATE A MORE INCLUSIVE, PERSONAL, AND SUSTAINABLE SHIPPING EXPERIENCE FOR FASHION BRANDS, RETAILERS, AND CUSTOMERS.
The world of fashion e-commerce is worth $408 billion (approx. €380 billion) and is ever-expanding, with 7.5% of annual revenue being spent on photography, production, and models for product pages. Founded by Michael Musandu and Ugnius Rimša in 2019, Lalaland taps into that market with a cost-effective model-generating tool that replaces time-consuming and costly photoshoots. With their self-service platform, anyone can recreate high-quality photoshoots with great ease. Further, models can be tailored to customer profiles or customized to specific body types, allowing for hyper-personalization. This helps boost sales, reduce return rates and costs, increase conversion, cut waste, and contribute to a more inclusive shopping and brand experience.
Wings to fly: New funding for an inclusive and sustainable fashion industry
In their latest pre-Series-A financing round, Lalaland secured a total of €2.1 million to facilitate the next stage of its growth. The investment is backed by Unknown Group, Orange Wings, and angel investors, including former Nike General Manager Bart de Wilde, Google’s Amhar Ford, and Thorsten Koch, and Christina Caljé from Autheos. The company will continue its commercial expansion and attract a diverse group of talent. “Our product is centered around solving the issues of consumers who feel underrepresented in terms of ethnicity, gender identity, and body representation. So we want to work with people who can relate to these issues, in order to facilitate positive change in co-creation,” says founder and CEO Michael Musandu.
Orange Wings founder and CEO Shawn Harris were instantly inspired after seeing Lalaland’s pitch as a Dragon on Viaplay’s Dragons’ Den: “This is a unique opportunity to help retailers and brands truly create positive change in the fashion industry and to reduce returns and ultimately waste.” Angel investor Bart de Wilde also underscored the company’s urgency: “I have been at the heart of this problem in sports, footwear, and apparel, so I can’t stress enough how valuable this will be for our industry.” Unknown CEO Hendrik Halbe resonated with the company’s calling, and said: “Now is the right time for Lalaland to take the industry by storm, and with this investment, we’re excited to support their international expansion.”
Lalaland: Where fashion, tech, diversity, and sustainability meet
Creating technology that drives inclusivity and diversity within digital fashion is at the core of Lalaland’s DNA. The company’s philosophy is built on two pillars—social empowerment and sustainable impact. They have onboarded some of the largest fashion retailers, such as Zalando, Wehkamp, and Otto. Lalaland has also won several awards, including the Tommy Hilfiger Fashion Frontier Challenge, was selected by the Dutch Chamber of Commerce as one of the most innovative companies of 2021, and received a $320,000 (approx. €298,000) investment from Google’s Black Founders Fund.
Dive Deeper
Lalaland’s venture page on our website:
PIONEERING “MOVING LEARNING” IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS, WIEBLIE AND CONNECTANDPLAY HAVE ANNOUNCED THEIR LATEST CAP RAISE FROM UNKNOWN’S LEADERSHIP TEAM (VIA IMPACT TECH VENTURES) AND RVO.
The goal of Unknown Education is to provide skills, knowledge, resources, and exposure to the founders of tomorrow, giving children of the future an education that previous generations never had. To support our goal, we’re pleased to confirm that Unknown Chairman, Edward de Jager, and CEO, Hendrik Halbe has completed an investment in Wieblie and ConnectAndPlay.
The complete education platform, Wieblie, and the innovative moving learning approach of ConnectAndPlay ensure a safe playing and learning environment in childcare. Both solutions motivate children to be active at all times of the day with their products, improving their results through moving to learn on the other. Wieblie’s platform offers ready-made movement lessons, implementation processes, workshops, guidance, and much more in the field of primary school movement learning.
ConnectAndPlay aims to implement moving learning in the education system for all primary schools in the Netherlands. Together with Impact Tech Ventures and Kids Worldwide Factory, ConnectAnd Play will build an eco-system of innovations and innovative companies in order to deliver even more impact.
Mark Bijleven, Director of Wieblie & ConnectAndPlay said:” Through this collaboration, we can get even more children moving! This enables us to realize our growth ambitions to make active learning the norm in primary education and to further develop our interactive products and services. We are the playground for moving to learn.”
Edward de Jager (director of Impact Tech Ventures): “Wieblie and ConnectAndPlay are an excellent addition to our participation portfolio. Together with our sister companies Unknown Group and Kids Worldwide Factory, we work on impact innovation in the field of Edutainment and EdTech for children. Wieblie and ConnectAndPlay fit in perfectly with our motto ‘Play is the Way’.”
Unknown’s founders have invested in ConnectAndPlay and Wieblie alongside RVO through Impact Tech Ventures, an investment fund that has received the Seed Capital facility of the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, de Rijksdienst Voor Ondernemend Nederland (“RvO”). RvO is a government agency that operates under the supervision of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy.
Dive Deeper:
Wieblie and ConnectAndPlay’s venture page on our website:
THE INVESTMENT ALLOWS GASHOUDERS TO FURTHER SCALE UP THEIR PROPOSITION TO REALIZE LOCAL SUPPLY CHAINS IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY FOR SUSTAINABLE FUELS, TOGETHER WITH EXISTING BIOGAS PRODUCERS AND CONSTRUCTION SITES
We’re happy to share that our founders, Edward de Jager and Hendrik Halbe have co-invested in a Dutch energy venture, Gashouders alongside Oost NL (through the ION+ fund), The East Netherlands Development Agency.
For every sustainable energy source, Gashouders finds the right destination. Founded in 2019 by Jelmer Kalff, Pieter Mans and Jan Willem Eising, Gashouders is the world’s first venture that has the capability to store cleaned, high pressure-biogas. Their innovative solution directly competes on price with fossil fuels, while being 100% sustainable. They are the first Dutch biogas provider and offer construction sites the most sustainable fuel currently available, as well as creating a financially viable market for biogas producers.
Over 800 million liters of diesel is used at construction sites in The Netherlands every year. Gashouders ambition is that by 2025, they will replace 3 million liters of diesel per year used at these sites, with clean biogas. Gashouders’ 100% circular solution enables a sustainable fuel chain that connects both needs: from the source at the sewage treatment plant to use on the construction site.
The energy transition is a key domain where Unknown sees great potential to leverage the Venture Engine methodology to create rapid, tangible impact and bottom-line results. In the energy domain, we create a portfolio of companies committed to providing affordable, efficient and sustainable energy worldwide. Together with industry leaders, we select the best ventures from around the world; we invest and actively support them to bring their solutions into the market with our vast global network of leading corporates.
The investment in Gashouders is the third Unknown Group has made in the energy domain. In May 2021, was the investment in Europe’s largest sustainable crowdfunding platform for energy projects, Oneplanetcrowd. In September 2021, Unknown announced its shareholding in Plastic Back, who have developed a technology to break plastic down to crude oil and other valuable chemicals.
Gashouder Co-founder, Jan Willem Eising said: “We partnered up with Unknown Group for their experience in building successful ventures, their commercial outreach and their in-depth financial expertise. We believe that with this collaboration we can really make a huge impact for a sustainable future in The Netherlands and beyond!”.
Unknown Group CEO, Hendrik Halbe said: “Accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy by investing in and scaling up bold solutions like Gashouders is key to our vision for the future. We’re very excited to work with Jelmer, Pieter and Jan Willem and have big ambitions about the impact their technology will have on the energy transition, especially in making the construction industry switch from diesel to 100% sustainable biogas”.
Gashouder Co-founder, Jelmer Kalff said: “We partnered with Oost NL for their great environmental focus and wide network, logically and particularly in the East of the Netherlands. Oost NL is widely known for their investments in sustainable energy projects and financing in circular economy solutions.”
Jeroen Gierveld, investment manager Oost NL states: “Gashouders is an investment with high potential. The funding came from the ION+ fund, a fund specifically focusing on early phase companies with great sustainable solutions. As the biogas is used on construction sites it will significantly reduce the carbon footprint. We are convinced that the team can realize the great ambitions by leveraging the technology.”
Unknown’s founders have invested in Gashouders alongside Oost NL (through the ION+ fund) through Impact Tech Ventures, an investment fund that has received the Seed Capital facility of the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, de Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (“RvO”). RvO is a government agency which operates under the supervision of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy.
Dive Deeper
Gashouders’ venture page on our website:
https://unknowngroup.com/ventures/gashouders/
Gashouders announced as Top 100 most Innovative by Dutch Chamber of Commerce:
https://www.rtvconnect.nl/nieuws/7561274-gashouders-bij-honderd-meest-innovatieve-bedrijven
Gashouders nominated for the Jan Terlouw Innovation Award 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxEI19_JeEA
They’re leading the ‘Sustainable Fuel Chain’ project in Gelderland to pilot their solution. An interview about it:
https://www.gashouders.nl/news/interview-met-pieter-mans
Introducing VENGEAN – the latest venture to become part of Unknown Group. Founded by our CMO, Andy Mosmans, Bram Holzapfel and Cees-Jan de Melker, VENGEAN is a creative branding engine, working with companies ranging from Fortune 500’s to startups and scale-ups to name their game and claim their fame.
What makes VENGEAN different from other branding agencies? Andy Mosmans, their Co-Founder, says; “We have broad experience having worked at the world’s leading ad agencies, collaborating with both B2B and B2C organizations. Currently, as VENGEAN, we’re working with international ventures like The Kingfish Company, Ecorus, E-magy, Beequip, Patagonia King Salmon and sustainable consumer brands like Little Cow & Cookies ice cream and The Farm Kitchen. We want to be there for ventures and also for corporates that could use some startup spirit. We call that “Energising Enterprise”.
As a vital component of the Unknown Venture Engine, VENGEAN further strengthens our proposition to ventures and founders worldwide – leveraging their expertise to discover, define, develop and deliver brand concepts to maximise impact.
Working with brands that are “beautiful, growing and generating impact at scale”, VENGEAN is the brains behind Unknown’s bold new brand identity, which we debuted in February 2021. More recently, they masterminded the rebrand of another venture in the group, The Global School for Entrepreneurship.
Hendrik Halbe, CEO and Partner at Unknown Group; “Branding is an important factor for startups to differentiate themselves from their competition while leaving a lasting impression on their customers. With VENGEAN, we will empower hundreds of impactful ventures with effective branding and communication”.
DIVE DEEPER
VENGEAN’s venture page on unknowngroup.com
Adformatie’s article on VENGEAN’s launch
We’re excited to share that Unknown Group will be fuelling Spiral Technology, a leading US-based venture in the space of Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (XR) for industrial automation.
Technologies like AR and XR have had an accelerated adoption in the last year, especially in industrial workplaces. Factors like the increased emphasis on health and safety on the work floor, restrictions on on-site workforce interactions, adoption of remote work and have shown that industries are ready for disruption. With the investment in Spiral Technology, we’re betting on a future where AR and XR training will be leveraged to augment workforces worldwide.
Founded in 2018 by Konstantyn Shyshkin and Andrii Ieroshevych, Spiral Technology has created ‘Spector’, a mixed reality platform that aids mechanics with onboarding, retraining and troubleshooting, saving them upto 30% time on work instruction comprehension. Their customizable training modules have been proven to increase occupational safety and asset utilization, along with decreasing repair and maintenance costs. In 2019, they graduated from the Air Force Accelerator Powered by Techstars, a program that led to their solutions being adopted by the US Air Force.
Konstantyn Shyshkin, CEO and Founder of Spiral Technology said: “After getting to know Jochem and the team better, we recognized them to be a strategic partner. We share the vision for an AR-aided industry worker and how bringing knowledge and computation to his eyes will jumpstart the next wave of digitization. Soon businesses will turn to AR tools for time and cost optimization that will be followed by a demand for quality control automation. Together with Unknown Group we will be ready to equip them with powerful tools and gateway solutions”.
Following our 2017 investment in Rotterdam-based industrial exoskeleton pioneer, Skelex, the investment in Spiral Technology is our next one in the domain of Workforce Technologies.
We first met Spiral Technology in 2020, when they participated and won Get in the Ring Singapore – Workforce Augmentation. At the time, Jochem Cuppen, Director of Unknown Workforce Technologies, said: “We were most excited by the potential offered by Spiral Technology in bringing mixed reality solutions to help empower engineers working on complex aircraft maintenance and repairs for improved speed and passenger safety. It was a close competition but in the end, the promise of combining the best of human skilled workers with the power of Augmented Reality proved an irresistible combination”.
The investment in Spiral Technology is the first by us in this domain since we announced the creation of Unknown Workforce Technologies — our Venture Engine dedicated to making physical work safer and healthier — earlier this year.
Unknown Workforce Technologies – What’s That?
The health and safety of workers in physical jobs is a global challenge. One that we see space to leverage technology to create tangible impact for workforces around the world. With Unknown Workforce Technology Venture Engine, our vision is to make workers the athletes of tomorrow. To make this happen, we have brought together an ever-growing network of top leaders in a domain – industry players and innovative solutions – that can make physical work safer and healthier.
Jochem Cuppen, Partner at Unknown Group and Director of Unknown Workforce Technologies said: ”By scaling technologies like Spiral Technology that tangibly make work healthier, Unknown Workforce Technologies is realizing safer work conditions for employees, consequently improving their quality of life. Companies today have a responsibility to their workforces to invest in solutions that positively impact their health – leveraging AR and XR for employee training is one such application we see space for innovation in”.
Dive Deeper
About Unknown Group
Unknown is an early-stage venture capital and business development firm, supporting founders and industry leaders to successfully bring innovations to the market: a “Venture Engine®”. With a fresh approach delivering venture success, lining up the industry and creating a pool of solutions ready to be adopted by the market.
For Press Enquiries:
Rayhaan Imam
Meet OPT/NET, the newest solution we are fueling with our venture acceleration expertise, that makes it easy for anyone to access vast quantities of data in an analysis-ready format and to extract valuable insights from oceans of streaming data close to real-time.
Data is the “crude oil of the digital era”. Decision-makers around the world are increasingly depending on refined data to inform their choices. There is now a need – more than ever before – to demystify, transform and navigate petabytes of raw data into information and extract actionable insights from it as fast as possible.
This is where OPT/NET excels. Powered by their range of AI products, OPT/NET envisions a future where any organization can navigate oceans of data and uncover valuable insights to make intelligent decisions in real-time. OPT/NET has already realized research and development collaborations with SpaceTech giants, European Space Agency and European Commission H2020 program, alongside their technology being commercially adopted by leading Dutch corporates like KPN, VodafoneZiggo, and IBM Netherlands. Furthermore, the world’s largest Cloud and AI computing providers, including AWS Activate, Google Cloud Services and NVIDIA have selected OPT/NET for their startup support programs in anticipation of increased adoption of their existing and upcoming commercial products.
In the not-so-distant future, OPT/NET’s vision is to simplify AI-powered data analysis for everyday users and to make it an easy and affordable process for even smaller businesses to leverage the power of huge data. Their CEO and Co-Founder, Taras Matselyukh said: “Our vision at OPT/NET is that our products will enable anyone in need of rapid and intelligent analysis the affordable services of a suite of advanced AI assistants tailored to their specific domain — this will truly make us all superhumans without any genetic engineering or funky mutations required! In certain domains, this future is already being realized by OPT/NET’s products. By 2040 – as our product portfolio grows to cover new and exciting areas of data-driven human activity – we expect no area of human expertise to be outside the reach of the OptOSS AI family of products, enabling human evolution to achieve the proverbial singularity of minds, biological and artificial alike”.
Led by Taras, the Founding team of OPT/NET includes his son, Seva (CCO/CFO), Jan Stip (COO) and Mohan Rao (Marketing Director) , who combined have over 50 years of experience with building, serving and assuring the flawless performance of complex networks around the world.
Speaking on why OPT/NET chose Unknown as their venture acceleration partner, Mr. Matselyukh said: “As we cruise through to the 2nd half of 2021 with several notable commercial successes coming to light, we were looking for a partner that could aid us in spreading the good word and supercharge the business development efforts across our key verticals”.
He continues: “Not only does Unknown Group have a deep network of relevant industry contacts and the ability to communicate meaningful business cases to them, but they also intimately understand the nature of entrepreneurship in general through their extensive exposure in the startup community. As such, we really couldn’t have found a better fit and we look forward to working together closely to deliver the promise of AI to a great many new customers and sectors!”
With this partnership, we will be taking a leading role in their business development activities in the European market and work with their founding team to tailor value propositions to different customer segments while tapping into our global network to connect them with potential clients.
Speaking on Unknown’s Venture Acceleration activities, our CEO, Hendrik Halbe said: “Fueling founders to answer their calling can’t only be done with venture capital financing. To take ventures beyond their conventional horizons in a sustainable way, what’s needed is adoption by the market and the network necessary to facilitate that”.
Over the last decade, we have developed expertise in venturing with industry leaders like Shell, Rabobank, Fujitsu, Hyundai, L’oreal and Philips to arm them with the competitive advantage of bold and innovative startup solutions from around the world. With this, we have developed an acute understanding of the ingredients needed to deliver in the market.
Halbe continues: “With the Venture Acceleration arm of Unknown, we leverage our experience in venturing in 110+ countries with Get in the Ring and our understanding of go-to-market strategies from venturing with industry leaders to accelerate bold and unconventional solutions. We are excited to be able to use our expertise in bringing OPT/NET’s advanced AI data analysis products & solutions to their ideal clients. We resonate greatly with their founding team’s vision of making big data analysis easy and affordable for broad bases of the users and are excited to get to work!”.
Dive Deeper
About Unknown Group
Unknown is an early-stage venture capital and business development firm, supporting founders and industry leaders to successfully bring innovations to the market: a “Venture Engine®”. With a fresh approach delivering venture success, lining up the industry and creating a pool of solutions ready to be adopted by the market.
For Press Enquiries:
Rayhaan Imam
In the four minutes needed to read this, approximately 4 million single-use plastic bottles will have been bought worldwide. The average person ingests 5 grams – equivalent to a credit card – of microplastics every week from the air we breathe and the food we eat. The disposal of plastic waste is a global challenge – one that directly and indirectly affects each person on the planet. We believe the best way to combat this is by empowering and fueling founders of innovative technologies to scale their solutions.
Plastic Back – the newest venture in our portfolio and Rising Star Award Winner at the Get in the Ring Global Finals 2021 – uses a chemical oxidation process to break plastic down to crude oil, waxes and other valuable chemicals. The converted end products can be upcycled by the petrochemical industry, contributing to a more circular economy. As a turnkey solution, we see great potential for Plastic Back’s technology to be applied by waste handlers like landfills as well as waste manufacturers in agriculture, factories, hospitals and medical devices.
Plastic Back was founded in 2018 by Tal Cohen, previously Marine Biologist and Deep Sea Diver, who became acutely aware of the plastic disposal crisis from his daily dives for field surveys and lab work. “I truly believe that we can create change in the recycling industry”, says Cohen. “At Plastic Back, we are working to get more players, drive consumer awareness and are exploring how we can push stronger regulations on plastics within the market”.
We met Plastic Back in 2019, having scouted their innovative technology for the New Energy Challenge, where they were awarded Runners Up of the Gamechanger Track out of over 200 companies. They are working with Shell on a project designed to validate their plastic-derived oil for refinery integration. On the New Energy Challenge, Cohen said: “The New Energy Challenge was an invaluable experience in gaining recognition for our solution, a Proof of Concept from an end customer like Shell, as well as direct feedback on our process”.
When asked about why Plastic Back chose Unknown as an investor, Cohen pointed towards Unknown’s expertise in identifying and scaling CleanTech solutions and a positive connection from the New Energy Challenge. “We’ve reached a point where we want to expand our services in the European market. Unknown’s scaling network and expertise in this will help us reach the right audience and customers in the EU.”, he adds.
Plastic Back is the third Israel-based venture that we have invested in this year. In May, we announced an investment in 6Degrees, a motion-based and touch-free wearable for people with disabilities, which was followed by our investment in Grasshopper protein pioneer, Hargol FoodTech in July. Each of these solutions provides tangible, scalable and potentially game-changing technologies to global challenges, showing why Israel’s tech ecosystem was ranked #3 only behind the USA and UK in StartupBlink’s Global Startup Ecosystem Index 2021. Plastic Back, Hargol and 6Degrees are all recent winners of our Get in the Ring Global Startup Competition.
Hendrik Halbe, CEO of Unknown Group said: “We’ve been very impressed with the boldness and unconventional nature of Plastic Back’s solution. Investing in visionary and impactful founders like Tal is another great example of how Unknown is unlocking the talent of the world to combat and overcome global challenges”.
Dive Deeper
About Unknown Group
Unknown is an early-stage venture capital and business development firm, supporting founders and industry leaders to successfully bring innovations to the market: a “Venture Engine®”. With a fresh approach delivering venture success, lining up the industry and creating a pool of solutions ready to be adopted by the market.
For Press Enquiries:
Rayhaan Imam
August 10, The Hague. Unknown Group congratulates GumGum on their acquisition of our portfolio venture, JustPremium. As an investor, we are proud to have been part of JustPremium’s journey since its inception and have been proud to support their growth to a team of 150 in 8 countries. We’d like to congratulate JustPremium’s co-founders, Eric Visser and Harmen Tjaarda along with their excellent team and look forward to supporting GumGum’s future.
The acquisition of JustPremium, the market leader in rich media advertising, makes GumGum the most powerful global advertising solution for a cookieless future through contextual technology and high-impact creatives. Contextual advertising is set to be a $412 billion business by 2025 and both GumGum and JustPremium have seen significant growth as the industry has rapidly accelerated its shift to contextual technology and attention-first digital advertising solutions. In Europe alone, GumGum has achieved year-over-year revenue growth of 148% over the last year. Together they will lead the industry in offering a comprehensive solution that leverages both contextual and creative to deliver campaigns that are dynamically placed and drive consumer attention across digital environments for video, display, and CTV. Their first combined offering will include a new high impact In-Article family of products which includes In-Article Video (outstream) ad unit, as well as an In-Article Shoppable display ad unit. Both of them will be powered by Verity, GumGum’s accredited contextual data solution.
What advertisers/publishers can expect from the combined GumGum / JustPremium group:
- Ability to place larger media buys and reach consumers across the globe in a relevant, engaging, and effective way without the use of personal data.
- Better support for publisher monetization efforts through combined demand relationships and availability of accredited Verity contextual and brand safety technology.
- Greater scale across premium inventory and more robust suite of high-impact ad products.
- Elevated level of customer service to support client needs on a near 24/7 basis around the globe.
“Nine years ago we started our company with the goal to make it easy for Dutch advertisers to buy Rich Media at scale. Fuelled by our ambition to build a global company, we opened offices in London, Dusseldorf, Brussels, New York, and nine other cities without any external investor. Today we have over 140 employees, from 30 nationalities, working with leading brands and premium publishers in more than 24 countries. The acquisition of JustPremium by GumGum creates the perfect platform to drive our growth in these markets, including our home in the Netherlands. The conversation on data and creativity working hand in hand has grown ever more in recent years. By combining GumGum’s industry-leading accredited contextual data technology with our leading rich media marketplace, we are primed to offer advertisers a cookie-free, attention-grabbing solution that will drive significant benefits for their business both national and international,” said Eric Visser, Chief Executive Officer, JustPremium.
About Unknown Group
Unknown is an early-stage venture capital and business development firm, supporting founders and industry leaders to successfully bring innovations to the market: a “Venture Engine®”. With a fresh approach delivering venture success, lining up the industry and creating a pool of solutions ready to be adopted by the market.
Unknown is a merger between VenturesOne group and Unknown Group. Unknown’s experience in global startup scouting and corporate venturing, combined with the investment expertise of VenturesOne, strengthens the ambition to increase the success rate of innovations that address pressing local and global challenges.
For Press Enquiries:
GumGum: pr@gumgum.com
Unknown Group: rayhaan@unknowngroup.com
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