Sunly is a hardware-led startup that is building a renewable energy platform, developing new solutions, and investing in fresh technologies that can boost our region’s energy transition. Their investment radar includes young startups whose clever ideas need a boost. In 2023, Sunly’s team is also boosting the success of the Estonian Startup Awards!
Rasmus Udde, the Innovation Lead at Sunly sums up the movements in the energy and hardware sector in the past few years, and shares what makes them excited about the decade ahead.
At the Estonian Startup Awards 2022, Estonian startup Sunly presented the Wise Wallet of the Year award. Rasmus Udde, the Innovation Lead at Sunly explains why.
Before we dive into the past, present, and future - how are you doing? How was 2022 for Sunly?
We’ve been growing fast YoY for the past 4 years, but 2022 took us to new heights! We transitioned from a small up-and-comer to a proper startup that people outside our immediate industry recognize, and is known even beyond Estonia.
We acquired a Polish company Alseva to boost our growth, expanded from 20ish people to 150ish people, and closed a €200M funding round (trailing only Bolt!) - all within 2022. It was an amazing year, and it will be hard to top, but we will certainly try.
What was the most impactful startup-related move for Sunly in 2022? How was it significant?
Besides our own major funding round, we were glad to witness that one of our first investments, Solarstone also raised a large A-round. This is signaling that the market now understands what we saw already in early 2019 – residential solar energy is a thing that makes your house pop!
Join the Sunly team - they are hiring! Sunly is growing from the current 153 people to a team of 400 in the upcoming years!
Tell us about an interesting trend that you see coming up in 2023. What kind of change could it bring along for our startup sector?
Valuations start to matter less, and company operations matter more. 2023 will be the year when potential profitability is popular again. Growth for the sake of growth will be challenged and growth will matter based on unit metrics.
This is where we see the real impact-players being born. Furthermore, impact-startups will become even more popular. Doing something without a sustainable business angle will fortunately become increasingly more difficult.
Name a challenge that you see the Estonian startup ecosystem struggling with currently. What could be a solution?
Patience. The last 2-3 years have been great for startups. Hectic, fast, and great. Now, when we move towards optimizing the businesses it might take a steadier hand and some patience to lead some hypergrowth startups.
Fortunately, Estonia is full of talents who have been through this before, and there are already moves of ex-C-level executives taking on roles in early-stage startups to lead them to success (e.g. Tuum).
If you could pick any Estonian startup to become a major global success overnight, who would it be and why?
Pactum AI. They are solving a massive problem in a boring market in a way that is easy to digest and quantify. That is usually a recipe for success. They did raise a large round just recently, so it seems like we are not alone in thinking this.
At The Estonian Startup Awards 2022, you are giving over the award for The Wise Wallet of 2022. How does this category resonate with you? Can you drop a little teaser on how you will sum up the movements in this category in the past year?
Wise Wallet resonates with us because it’s making bets in the future. How do we see the future? Investing in startups is not about what you can see today and tomorrow. It’s a world you can imagine in a decade.
It resonates with us in Sunly, because this is exactly the type of investors we needed and got when starting out in 2019 - there was no energy crisis, energy prices were low, no deficit of materials, and climate change was a real problem. Nobody in the region was really taking any action. But fast forward 4 years and look at where we are now. The world has gone upside down but thanks to some Wise Wallets of 2019 we are able to react, respond and resolve.
About Sunly
Sunly’s focus is on developing and building solar, wind, and storage power plants. They invest in technologies that can boost our region’s energy transition. As investors, they understand that patience and capital are needed when trying to generate real and lasting change.
“This is what we offer to startups in our field. We are the understanding investor who sticks around and has likely gone very recently through the same pains as fresh startups. Overall, we are trying to make investing in hardware-led/enabled startups and working in this field popular. You know - let’s build a few apples here in Estonia and not only concentrate on the spotifys,” says Rasmus Udde, the Innovation Lead at Sunly.
PS. Sunly is hiring and planning to grow from the current 153 people to 400 in the upcoming years! Check out the perks and available positions on Sunly’s web page.
Estonian Startup Awards 2022 is taking place at 19:00 on January 27, 2023. Make sure you catch the live broadcast to cheer for the wisest wallets and biggest success stories of the Estonian startup scene.
Rasmus Udde, the Innovation Lead at Sunly.