To mark StartGreen Capital’s 20th anniversary, we spoke with founders Laura Rooseboom and Coenraad de Vries about two decades of impact investing, how the market has evolved, and where private capital can still make a real difference today.

20 Years of StartGreen Capital: Financing Both Innovation and Implementation

Twenty years ago, you often still had to explain what ‘cleantech’ actually meant. Professional funds focused on sustainable technology were scarce, and much of the capital available to impact-driven companies came from private investors and a small group of pioneers.

It was in that environment that Laura Rooseboom and Coenraad de Vries founded StartGreen Capital in 2006, becoming one of the first cleantech venture capital investors in the Netherlands.

Twenty years later, StartGreen manages €738 million, employs around 40 people and has provided financing to 390 different companies since its founding. One lesson runs through those two decades: innovation alone is not enough. New solutions also need to be implemented and scaled.

To mark StartGreen Capital’s 20th anniversary, we spoke with Laura and Coenraad about how impact investing has evolved, the surprises of the energy transition and where private capital can still make a real difference today.

Back to 2006: why did you start StartGreen Capital?

Coenraad: “At the time, I was working at Fortis Venturing and, in my spare time, I was interested in entrepreneurship and sustainability. I enjoyed investing and helping entrepreneurs, but simply making money for the sake of making money didn’t appeal to me. The question was: can we use capital to support entrepreneurs who solve societal problems while also generating financial returns?”

Laura: “I was working at DOEN Participaties and was already involved in these kinds of investments. We were introduced through Triodos. DOEN Participaties, Fortis and Triodos became the first investors in our first fund. From the beginning, the principle was: use money to make a difference and generate a financial return. Twenty years later, that is still the same.”

What did the market for sustainable and impact investing look like at the time?

Laura: “It was much smaller. There were hardly any professional funds. A lot of the capital came from private investors and angels. Frank van Beuningen, for example, had already started Pymwymic, and DOEN Participaties was actively investing.”

Coenraad: “We also regularly had to explain what cleantech meant. Many people mainly thought of solar and wind, whereas we saw it much more broadly: energy, food, circularity, sustainable construction and smart ICT technology.”

StartGreen began with venture capital and later expanded into project finance. That combination became increasingly important: financing innovation while also making sure solutions are actually implemented.

Have the problems fundamentally changed since then?

Coenraad: “The problems are actually still the same. What has changed is that there are far more solutions available and awareness has grown enormously. We have made major progress in renewable electricity, but there is still an enormous sustainability challenge ahead.”

Laura: “The context has changed too. The energy transition is no longer only about climate. Energy independence and strategic autonomy have become much more important because of geopolitical developments.”

What has surprised you most over the past twenty years?

Coenraad: “The speed at which solar panels and batteries have become cheaper and better. Battery technology in particular has developed much faster than we expected twenty years ago.”

This has major implications for decentralised energy systems, where local generation, storage and consumption can increasingly be combined. At the same time, it illustrates a broader lesson: developing good technology is one step, but a great deal of capital is then needed to actually scale and deploy that technology.

Is it easier to find capital for impact today?

Laura: “Definitely. Impact and clean technology are now firmly on the radar of institutional investors as well. The market has shown that financial returns can be made here too.”

Coenraad: “But there is still a financing gap, particularly in early-stage deep tech and hardware. New energy technology or industrial innovation requires a lot of capital and a lot of patience. The Netherlands and Europe are good at developing new technologies, but there is often a lack of follow-on capital when it comes to scaling.”

According to StartGreen, this is exactly where long-term capital has an important role to play: not only financing the early innovation phase, but also ensuring that successful technologies can continue to grow here.

When does capital actually make a difference?

Coenraad: “Money is not always the only bottleneck. Look at energy projects: there may be enough capital available, but projects can still get stuck because of grid congestion, regulation or permitting.”

That is why StartGreen looks at both sides of the transition. Venture capital helps new companies and technologies grow; project finance enables their actual implementation.

For private investors, the relevant question is therefore not only what you invest in, but also where in the transition your capital is deployed and which problem it is solving there.

Where were you too optimistic twenty years ago?

Laura: “Circularity turned out to be much more difficult to scale than we thought at the time. Technically, a lot is possible, but circular supply chains are often difficult from a logistical and economic perspective.”

Coenraad: “And hydrogen, of course. For twenty years, we’ve been hearing that it will really take off in five years’ time. It will certainly play a role, but batteries have developed much faster than expected.”

Which new impact themes have emerged?

Laura: “Femtech is a good example. Twenty years ago, it was barely a theme, and even five years ago it was still relatively low on the agenda. That is now changing rapidly.”

“There is growing awareness that medical knowledge and solutions have historically not taken women sufficiently into account. At the same time, the economic impact of this is becoming more visible, for example when health issues related to menopause lead to absence from work. The potential market is enormous, yet historically relatively little capital has flowed into it.”

Together with Simone Brummelhuis, Laura also launched Borski Fund from within StartGreen, investing in diversity and female entrepreneurs. Diversity & inclusivity is now one of StartGreen’s three impact domains, alongside the energy transition and circularity.

What are you most proud of after twenty years?

Laura: “That we now do this with such a strong team. We have eight partners and around 40 employees. StartGreen has become much bigger than its founders, and I think that’s important, because it means you know the mission will continue.”

Coenraad: “Entrepreneurship has always been an important part of it for me: building something, raising capital in segments where a market imperfection emerges, and then successfully developing a financing instrument.

We were among the first in cleantech, the first to manage regional energy funds, pioneers in crowdfunding, and we now have a fund that enables institutional investors to invest in relatively small regional energy projects.

Setting up these kinds of funds is also largely a matter of simply keeping going. In the early years, we were sometimes asked whether StartGreen would still exist five years later. Fortis was one of our first investors, and for them too, investing in such a young organisation was quite a step.

In the end, Fortis itself had disappeared two years later, while twenty years on, we are still here. For me, that shows how important it is to keep believing in what you are doing and to stay the course.”

What still needs to change over the next ten or twenty years?

Coenraad: “Above all, more capital needs to become available for the phase after the initial innovation. We have good technology and strong entrepreneurs in Europe, but after that you need to keep investing: industrialising, building factories and scaling. Too little capital is still flowing into that stage.”

Laura: “On the implementation side, barriers also need to be removed. Energy projects still get stuck too often because of grid congestion, regulation and lengthy procedures.”

So the next phase of the transition does not simply require more capital, but the right combination of capital, entrepreneurship, infrastructure and regulation.

Finally: what advice would you give a private investor who wants to contribute to these transitions today?

Laura: “Start with a theme that you personally find important and interesting.”

Coenraad: “Follow your heart, but don’t only diversify across sectors — also diversify across financing instruments. You could, for example, invest part of your wealth in venture capital, which helps drive innovation but also involves higher risk and requires a longer time horizon.

Alongside that, you could invest a larger share in areas such as energy infrastructure and projects, where you can potentially achieve a good base return with lower risk. That combination is interesting.”

Laura: “And be patient. Especially for solutions that need to be physically built and scaled, long-term capital can make a real difference.”

After twenty years, the impact investing market is barely comparable to the one that existed in 2006. StartGreen itself is living proof of that evolution: over that period, it grew from one of the first Dutch cleantech investors into an organisation managing €738 million.

But perhaps the most important lesson from those twenty years is that transitions cannot be financed with just one type of capital.

Venture capital can make new solutions possible. Project finance can ensure those solutions are actually implemented and scaled. And that is also where private investors can play an important role: deploying capital in the places where patience, courage and a long-term horizon are needed.

Because if the past twenty years show anything, it is that major transitions take time — but also how much can change when investors are willing to get involved early, stay the course and make capital available for the long term.