Simmons & Simmons has today announced the launch of a new GreenTech fund, which will support start-ups that are focused on using technology to mitigate the climate and biodiversity emergencies. The fund will award £100,000 of legal advice from across Simmons’ network to four businesses that are innovating in order to try and avoid or limit the worst effects of the climate crisis.
The GreenTech fund is now open to applications from businesses who seek to utilise technology to restore environmental balance and biodiversity, and to tackle climate change. Applicants are invited to share their entries via video from today, up until the 31 December deadline. Eligibility criteria and the application process can be found on the Simmons website.
The initiative is being led by members of the firm’s environmental sustainability network (the green room), and involves a collaboration with a number of investors, accelerators and incubators who have a particular focus on sustainability, including: Techstars, Entrepreneur First, Plug & Play and Illuminate Financial.
Commenting on the GreenTech fund, co-lead of the green room, Ali Crosthwaite said: “In common with many organisations, Simmons is looking for ways to maximise its positive impact and the GreenTech fund is an attempt to achieve that by sharing our skills with businesses that are actively seeking solutions to the crisis in which we find ourselves – we will need multiple solutions and we firmly believe that collaboration is our best hope.”
Rezso Szabo, partner at Illuminate, commented: “We are seeing early stage climate and sustainability technology companies starting to catalyse real change. As a VC fund backing several of such start-ups, we are delighted to be collaborating with Simmons on the GeenTech Fund initiative, aiming to support businesses in this critical space.”
The GreenTech fund is an evolution of the FinTech fund that Simmons launched in 2016, which was created to support early stage FinTech businesses navigate the legal problems faced by many fast growth companies in their early years. The initiative was very successful, with the firm supporting Marshmallow in becoming one of the UK’s most recent FinTech unicorns.