Sharing App Yerdle Gets Investment from Patagonia
Patagonia has announced an investment in the San Francisco-based sharing app Yerdle through it’s $20 Million & Change fund internal venture fund on Nov 11. Yerdle’s mission is to reduce new durable consumer goods bought by 25 percent. On Yerdle, you post items — from gear and clothes to toys and gadgets — that earn you credits, which you then use to shop on the app. They’ve now raised over $5.5 million in two venture capital rounds, including a $5 million Series A round in April. Investors include: Claremont Creek Ventures, The Westly Group, Greenstart and Silicon Valley angel investors.
With its motto “share, not shop” Yerdle seems truly committed to reducing the consumption of goods and generating greater resource efficiency that will benefit the environment, which separates it from other trendy sharing economy apps that are mainly designed to deliver more goods to consumers faster and from more sources (see WunWun which gives you “anything you want…on demand.”) CleanTechIQ will be exploring the discrepancy in the “resource efficiency” of sharing economy startups in a forthcoming analysis.
Yerdle was founded by former Sierra Club CEO Adam Werbach and Carl Tashia, the former chief sustainability officer of Walmart.
Big Data Clean Energy Startup Open Utility Raises $800k in Grants
UK-based Open Utility, which connects renewable energy generators to potential local customers, has received $800,000 in funding on Nov 6 from the UK Department of Energy, Climate Change’s Energy Entrepreneurs Fund scheme and the Nominet Trust.
The company’s goal is to bring greater transparency to the clean energy market and is developing a peer-to-peer data-driven marketplace that brings clean energy generators directly in contact with consumers, allowing them to get the best rates. Open Utility hopes to drive the price of clean energy down through the greater transparency it creates on its platform. The startup, which was founded in 2013, expects to launch its online marketplace in 2016.
Other online marketplaces that enable consumers to compare utility rates that include clean energy have launched in the U.S., including Kleiner Perkins-backed Choose Energy.