A different kind of online dating: This website matches inventors and entrepreneurs to create low carbon businesses

Climate-KIC is today (12 November) launching a new web platform in the UK. “The Exchange” matches entrepreneurs and inventors to help take forward new climate-related technologies and launch tomorrow’s low carbon businesses.

Intellectual property for climate-related inventions is spread across multiple institutions and can be hard to find. The Exchange provides entrepreneurs with access to the best pool of inventions in the UK, enabling them to easily find climate technologies and ideas to turn into commercially successful businesses.

The Exchange works by listing inventions on one central web platform where entrepreneurs can search by subject areas relevant to their expertise. If they find an invention they like, they can use the platform to start a dialogue with the inventor.

After making a match on the Exchange platform, the new start-up can submit a priority application to join the Climate-KIC Accelerator, a unique business incubator programme that includes coaching office space, masterclasses and up to €95,000 of seed funding. The Accelerator develops a young start-up into an investable business.

New technologies

Aled Thomas

Aled Thomas, Director at Climate-KIC UK, says: “Matching the right entrepreneur or business person to the right inventor can be a crucial part of the process for a new technology. Greater collaboration between inventors and entrepreneurs will ultimately stimulate more business interest in climate innovation, leading to new revenue, jobs and economic growth in Europe.”

Inventors on the Exchange come from the UK’s best research institutes, including University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Imperial College London, Newcastle University and the University of Edinburgh. The platform provides these academics with the opportunity to transform their ideas into commercial success and gives them a better chance of winning funding by matching with the right entrepreneur.

Nafici Environmental Research Ltd (NER) is a new low carbon start-up that successfully built its business with support from the Climate-KIC Accelerator, which provided grants, workshops and help with their launch preparation. NER uses waste straw from farms to produce paper pulp on-site. It’s a competitive alternative to using hardwood pulp in paper manufacture that reduces the market pull for deforestation, leaving more rainforest trees in place to hoover up and store atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Shahriair Nafici, co-founder, Nafici Environmental Research, says: “To start a business in the UK, I needed a business-minded partner. Luckily Florence, whom I have known for a number of years, had the right profile to make the start-up work and so became the co-founder. However, others aren’t often so fortunate. Climate-KIC’s Exchange platform can now drastically improve the process of matchmaking teams, enabling entrepreneurs to meet inventors quickly and easily.”

For more information, and to join: exchange.climate-kic.org.