Client: Hygrid Energy 

Industry: Deep Tech Research & Innovation, Clean Energy, Hydrogen. 

Services: Investor Readiness Check, Founder mentoring, Idea Incubation & Acceleration, Market Research, Consultancy, Go to Market Strategy 

Challenge: 

Hygrid Energy is an innovative hydrogen start-up seeking to disrupt the energy market and offer more sustainable solutions across global industry and infrastructure. 

Challenge Quote: “Whenever anyone hears the words hydrogen technology they instantly think of complexity. Super deep technologies, massive global market applications, huge investment and a highly complex and sophisticated stakeholder network to navigate. There are barriers to commercialisation everywhere. Success lies in both a real precision of understanding where to add value within the energy chain and then building partnerships that accelerate development and adoption of that technology. It’s a tough challenge for a small founder team.” 

Solution: 

Investment Ready Health Check: Using industry proven due diligence frameworks, Colab-8 presented the founding team with an assessment of their current position from an investment perspective. This included looking at technology applications, business models and market segmentation. It also included a deep dive into the financial modelling required to understand the unit economics of commercialising the technology and building long term resilience. 

Next Steps: Colab-8 provided a clear roadmap on what actions Hygrid could take in the short term to accelerate their route to market. 

Market Research: Colab-8s approach to market research takes global thought leadership on the sector and applies a commercial critique to identify which trends and gaps in the market offer the best opportunity for new innovation to penetrate and disrupt. In this instance, splitting out both hardware and software applications to the innovation and applying differing GTM models to maximise the adoption of each. 

Acceleration & Incubation: Through Colab-8’s extensive European network, Hygrid was able to access the IECT Hermann Hauser Summer School of Entrepreneurship, a weeklong accelerator in Austria, at the heart of European deep tech innovation. Hygrid was able to work with over 100 experts, serial entrepreneurs, investors and mentors alongside 30 international start-ups. 

The Colab-8 Effect: 

Colab-8’s pioneering work around early-stage collaboration with both deep tech innovators, and investors allows them to bring early alignment to complex value propositions and provide focus and insight for founders seeking to accelerate their ideas.  Entrepreneurship is a team sport and Colab-8’s open network can allow founders to access partners and international opportunities usually out of reach for many. 

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Discover more about how Colab-8 is pioneering the future of deep-tech innovation one partnership at a time.