Finnish venture capital firm led the €4M round of Dutch startup

Helen Ventures, Solar Monkey

Helsinki-headquartered VC firm Helen Ventures co-led the Dutch startup Solar Monkey‘s round with Eneco Ventures, who joined the journey to empower their sustainability mission together with the current investors, including 4impact capital and InnovationQuarter. Founded in 2015 by Jan Pieter Versluijs (CEO), Tino de Bruijn (CTO) and Mels van Hoolwerff (former CFO), Solar Monkey develops software that enables designing, selling, and maintaining solar systems for its users to accurately calculate the placement of these systems. The growth capital allows the startup to fuel up its international expansion and strengthen the product offering.

Helen Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Helen Ltd., invests €50 million in the most innovative and transformative European startups in the energy, e-mobility, circular economy, decarbonisation and digital solutions sectors.

Helen Ventures, Solar Monkey, Terhi VapolaTerhi Vapola, Vice President, Head & Founder of Helen Ventures, explains the investor perspective. “We are very happy to invest in Solar Monkey. The company’s past growth speaks for itself. With rising energy costs and more awareness of climate change, the timing is excellent for accelerated scaling of solar solutions across new markets.”


Helen Ventures, Solar Monkey, Eneco Ventures, Hans CoolHans Cool, Investment Director of Eneco Ventures, sees Solar Monkey as a valuable addition to the portfolio. “We are enthusiastic about the innovative software that Solar Monkey has developed, and see a lot of synergies with other companies in our portfolio that are active in the energy market with solar panels and heat pumps.”


Helen Ventures, Solar Monkey, Jan Pieter Versluijs“We see that the Netherlands is leading solartech innovation in terms of software. We use our knowledge to generate impact in the rest of Europe. Thanks to this investment, we are able to pursue this ambition in the highest gear. Over the past five years, the Dutch market has grown explosively from 0.3 GWp to a staggering 2GWp (~>200,000 installations) per year. We hope to achieve the same in other countries, where the potential is still huge!” says Jan Pieter Versluijs.

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