About us

The implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offers 60 new market hotspots with a market potential of $12 trillion. The race to tap into these opportunities will be won by the most innovative regions of the world, offering the best innovation ecosystems, support services, and framework conditions. Supported by the Rhein-Kreis-Neuss, the State of North Rhine Westphalia and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, the Global Entrepreneurship Centre is the ﬁrst structure of its kind to address the scaling challenges of promising SusTechs – deep-tech startups with a clear sustainability focus. It is a one-stop shop for access to lab capacity, pilot facilities and hands-on investment, legal, HR, ﬁnance, IT, business development services and sustainability advice to enable exponential growth.

Our Concept

The GEC implements its own tech-pull principle with a thematic technology focus. It will prioritize its investments in deep-tech startups with a high potential to scale in the areas of Nutrition and Agriculture, Textiles, Mobility and Transportation, as well as Building and Living. It will also consider investments in key supporting technologies, including sustainable materials, sustainable chemistry, artiﬁcial intelligence and robotics, and sustainable energy. The GEC particularly creates opportunities for open and collaborative innovation along new value chains.

Values

The GEC is a value driven organization. It is rooted in the commitment to sustainability, climate protection and circularity, in the transparency of its operations, and in the principles of neutrality among stakeholders. Given that innovation may be disruptive in nature, the GEC needs to preserve its space and its freedom for its investment choices. The GEC takes more than one sustainability indicator into consideration

when looking at its portfolio and continuously measures and asseses the impact and possible trade-offs of the technologies under management. Furthermore, the funding of the GEC relies on a generational contract between companies. Using the proceeds coming from successful alumni, the GEC will ﬁnance the support of the following generations of scale-ups.

THE GLOBAL ENTERPRENEURSHIP CENTRE STANDS FOR

circularity
sustainability and climate protection
partnership of generations
transparency
neutrality and value based acting

Our Motivation

The GEC wants to be instrumental in driving structural change in the Rhineland region in alignment with the sustainable development goals and the objectives of the Paris Climate Accords. We fundamentally believe that the required transformation can only be achieved through innovation. However, there are many obstacles for SusTechs to reach the required scale and produce the desired impact. Today, only 1.8% of all start-ups reach the Series C investment stage. The GEC helps its portfolio companies bridge this second “valley of death”.