Draft:Sustainable Ventures

Sustainable Ventures launched in 2011 to use commercial innovation to tackle climate change. Experts within the team, many of whom are ex-founders, work with green businesses to help them scale.

Based in London’s iconic County Hall – it overlooks the Houses of Parliament and the River Thames – and has become the centre of the UK’s climate tech revolution.

Home to the largest climate tech hub in Europe. Sustainable Ventures has more than 500 companies in its ecosystem and is on a mission to develop 1,000 climate-tech businesses by 2025.

History
Sustainable Ventures was founded in 2011 by Andrew Wordsworth and Christopher Morris to address climate change and resource scarcity with commercial solutions, scaling early-stage climate tech businesses through investment, workspace and venture support.

Sustainable Ventures started with a focus on venture development with the co-founders employing 20+ years of sustainability sector knowledge to develop and scale their own early-stage climate tech businesses.

Their earliest ventures included E-Car Club - a low-emission car-sharing service acquired by Europcar  in 2015. As their ventures and community grew, they began to support other climate tech entrepreneurs starting their journey.

Since then, this business model has evolved to support the growth of climate tech entrepreneurs through investment, workspace, support programmes and services including design, grant writing and R&D Tax Credits. Sustainable Ventures has supported over 500 companies to date.

Sustainable Ventures launched its first workspaces in 2015 to offer a space where clusters of climate startups could collaborate, cross-pollinate and innovate together.

Due to the rapid expansion of net-zero companies over the past decade, Sustainable Ventures has renovated and occupied multiple workspace locations over the years.

Starting with Sustainable Bridges under London Bridge railway arches, the workspaces arm of Sustainable Ventures established four additional workspaces including Bankside, Bankside II, and two floors within County Hall.

Their current residence is their largest renovated project to date. Based on the fifth floor of County Hall the workspace is home to Europe's largest climate tech hub.

In total, Sustainable Ventures has developed over 80,000 sqft of space throughout four short-term leases in London (Southwark & Lambeth), with goals of developing 200k sqft by 2028 - showcasing their commitment to the UK sustainability industry and innovative green retrofitting practices.

Building out their offering, they began to run programmes in 2016 in collaboration with local government. These programmes offer free bespoke training and high-level business development support to the startups within their ecosystem.

These programmes assist climate tech startups with finance and investment, branding, product design, IP, and other areas of business development such as marketing and sales.

Their longest-standing flagship Better Futures programme, delivered in partnership with The Greater London Authority, has supported 178 companies. With an additional funding of £2.2m from UKSPF, the Better Futures+ programme has supported 54 companies as of 2023. Sustainable Ventures began raising money for its own Investment Fund in 2017. The Fund has since been used to accelerate and invest in over 45 companies, 85% of which are still trading and have an average valuation uplift of 2.8x at the next round of funding.

After 12 years of bootstrapping. The company seeks to expand. With its first location in Manchester, with the help of Barclays' £3m investment.

Ecosystem
Scaling up over 500 companies - the Sustainable Ventures ecosystem provides a deep network of sustainable businesses with a wealth of knowledge and expertise available to anyone within the community.

Sustainable Ventures' ecosystem includes companies like RovCo - the global subsea robotics and survey solutions provider, Notpla - the Earthshot-winning sustainable packaging firm and ENSO - the reduced-pollution tyre maker, a recent finalist for the Earthshot prize 2023.

Another notable company within the ecosystem is Satvu which specialises in high-resolution satellite thermal imaging.

Furthermore, the ecosystem consists of Sustainable Ventures' own spin-out companies, such as Airex who created the world’s first smart air brick that helps reduce fuel poverty and promote climate change with a simple building retrofit. 2023 also marked a visit from Prince William who visited Sustainable Ventures’ London HQ to explore climate tech innovation in the UK’s capital city.