Contrarian Ventures

TEAM ANNOUNCEMENT: We are excited to share that Patrikas Feiferas has been promoted to Principal! 👏 🎉 Since joining us in 2020, Patrikas has been an integral part of our journey as the team grew from 3 to 10 people – wearing multiple hats and contributing across different areas along the way. Recently, he moved to London to further build out Contrarian Ventures’ presence – while also staying closer to portfolio founders. Patrikas is actively working with a range of portfolio companies, including Beebop.ai, Metafuels, and Jumptech – while always keeping an eye out for founders who truly want to solve the climate problem. One of his biases is towards distributed energy resources (DERs) – spanning financing, deployment, connectivity, optimisation, and everything in between – alongside other areas within climate tech. If you're building in this space, don’t hesitate to connect with him! When he’s not scouting for new deals or working with the existing portfolio, Patrikas is contributing to initiatives like Climate50 or helping shape the Energy Tech Summit – all while growing Contrarian Ventures into a full-stack climate platform – one that creates value for the Contrarian Ventures family and the broader climate tech ecosystem. We are thrilled to have him as part of our journey and can’t wait to see what we’ll achieve together in the years ahead! 👊💚

2024 WRAPPED: In 2024, we continued our journey of turning big ideas into tangible impact. With new investments, fresh initiatives, and a growing community, Contrarian Ventures has never been more committed to scaling solutions for the climate crisis. Here are some of the highlights from our year: 🚀 Welcomed 4 new portfolio companies - Beebop.ai, altrove, Decade Energy and Jumptech - bringing the Contrarian family to 25 active companies. Across Fund I and Fund II, we’ve now backed 71 founders who are building teams of over 1,500 employees. 🚀 Our portfolio companies raised 12 funding rounds, attracting €65M in fresh capital from leading investors and growing our co-investor network to over 140 partners. 🚀 Launched The Climate Brick, the missing manual for scaling climate tech, crafted from insights gathered by analyzing 300+ companies, modeling 12,000+ data points, and conducting 200+ interviews. With 7 Bricks unveiled, 1,000+ signatures, and 140 participants at its launch, this initiative is equipping the climate tech ecosystem with essential tools to scale solutions effectively. 🚀 Introduced Growth Meets Capital, a matchmaking side event at the Energy Tech Summit, connecting 50+ late-stage founders with 40+ top-tier investors to accelerate collaboration. 🚀 Published the 2023 Climate50 Investors Ranking, recognizing leadership in sustainable innovation. 🚀Welcomed three new team members: Alessandro Bertino, Jonas Kavaliauskas, and Rūta Apanavičius. We’re energized by the challenges and opportunities that 2025 will bring, determined to keep pushing boundaries and scaling impactful solutions for a sustainable future. From all of us at Contrarian Ventures, we wish you a carbon-neutral festive season and a New Year filled with green opportunities! 💚🎄

CLIMATE COFFEE: A big thank you to everyone who joined us at the ☕ Climate Coffee in London last week! Also, a special shoutout to Earth and Greenworkx for co-hosting and helping make this event a success. 👊 💚 We hope this marks the beginning of a new tradition in building a stronger climate tech community in London. 🌱 Stay tuned for the next meet-up coming your way in January – we can't wait to see you there! 🚀 cc: Patrikas Feiferas, Alessandro Bertino, Max Bray, Richard Ng

CLIMATE COFFEE LONDON: ☕🌍 Last chance to register! Don’t miss the opportunity to join us for the first-ever ☕ Climate Coffee in London, where passionate climate enthusiasts, innovators, and investors come together to connect and share ideas over a cup of coffee. Our own Patrikas Feiferas and Alessandro Bertino will be there to share insights and connect with like-minded innovators. Event details as follows: 📍 London 📅 28th November ⏰ 8:30 AM 📌 Vermuteria - 38/39 Stable St, London N1C 4DQ Sign up via the link below – we only have a couple of spots left. See you all tomorrow! https://lnkd.in/dSc8j4un cc: Max Bray, Richard Ng, Tomas Kemtys, Earth, Greenworkx

CLIMATE COFFEE: ☕🌍 We’re thrilled to announce that we’re joining ☕ Climate Coffee, a monthly event series designed to bring together climate tech founders, investors, and enthusiasts. Taking place on the last Thursday of every month, we’re excited to kick off the London edition on November 28th, together with Earth and Greenworkx! Climate Coffee is an open community initiative founded in 2023 by Max Bray and Miguel de Ros to foster meaningful connections and collaboration within the climate tech space. With monthly meetups across Europe, including Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin and Paris, it has quickly become a go-to for sparking ideas and driving innovation to tackle the climate crisis. A huge thank you to Max Bray for having us on board and to Richard Ng from Greenworkx – we’re excited to team up and make this event happen together! ☕ Climate Coffee events are free to attend and open to all - for anyone interested in the space, from students to exited founders, to connect, share ideas and meet new people. Event details as follows: 📍 London 📅 28th November ⏰ 8:30 AM 📌 Vermuteria - 38/39 Stable St, London N1C 4DQ Sign up via the link below – we’d love to see you there! https://lnkd.in/dkj5xJBm

IMPACT WEEK: Our partners Rokas P. and Tomas Kemtys are headed to Barcelona for Norrsken VC Impact Week, where global innovators, investors, and leaders are gathering to address today’s most critical challenges. If you’re also in town and share our passion for climate tech, let’s connect and talk about the future of sustainable innovation. 🤝 🌍

WE ARE HIRING🚀: Contrarian Ventures is looking for a talented Data Scientist/Developer to help us shape the future of data-driven venture capital. We'd love to hear from you if you have 3-5 years of experience in full-stack development, data scraping, machine learning, and more! 💡 What you’ll do: - Build automations to streamline workflows across our team - Create integrations between our tools - Analyze and leverage our data to guide smarter investment decisions - Create dashboards for real-time monitoring of our portfolio companies - Scrape and analyze data to deepen our market insights 📍 Join our team across Vilnius, Munich, and London and work with leading minds in early-stage climate tech investing. Interested? Apply in the comments below! 🤝

PODCAST: Great chat on The Pursuit of Scrappiness Podcast! 🎙️ Rokas P. discussed what it takes to build resilient, impactful ventures in today’s landscape. Big thanks to the team for having us! 🤝 Full conversation in the comments 👇

INVESTOR CAMP: Tomorrow, we’re headed to #InvestorCamp 2024, where Lithuania’s VC and Angel Investor community will gather in one place. 🚀 Our Founder and Managing Partner, Rokas P., will be moderating a panel discussion on “Impact Investing: Why the Time is Now” alongside Juho Aminoff from the European Investment Fund (EIF) and Kristina Söderberg from SEB Greentech VC. If you haven’t secured your ticket yet, there’s still time. Don’t miss out on Lithuania’s biggest investment event—find the link in the comments. 🎟️ Startup Lithuania, Lithuanian Business Angel Network LitBAN, Lithuanian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, thanks for organizing and having us! 🙌

LONDON RECAP: Last week, our team had the opportunity to participate in two important gatherings focused on the future of ESG and climate tech. 🌱 Our Head of ESG and Impact Rūta Skarulskė attended "The Frame" conference hosted by VentureESG in London. It was an insightful event, bringing together GPs, LPs, and service providers, all working to integrate ESG into investment strategies. As a first-of-its-kind event, it offered valuable takeaways and sparked conversations around responsible and impact investing. We’re excited to carry these insights forward and are already looking ahead to next year! 🔥 Also, Rūta Skarulskė, Alessandro Bertino, and Tomas Kemtys were at 🔥THE HEAT, Climate Tech Festival at Harwell Innovation Center, hosted by VOYAGERS.io (kudos to Hugo Paquin, David Rowan 🙌). At this inaugural #ClimateTech Festival, our team led a discussion on the myths and realities of raising capital from impact climate tech funds. They tackled key questions from founders, shared experiences, and highlighted the unique value such funding brings to startups. It was a fantastic opportunity to connect with forward-thinking founders and investors who are shaping the future of climate tech. Visiting the UK’s climate tech ecosystem is always energizing, and we can’t wait to see the positive impact these collaborations will bring! 🌎