bettervest GmbH

Their core work

bettervest is a German crowdfunding platform built specifically for clean energy and energy efficiency projects, connecting small investors with project developers who need capital outside of traditional banking channels. Their core business is making energy projects "bankable" — structuring investment opportunities so that citizen investors and institutional funds can participate alongside public grants. In their EU project work, they contributed this financing expertise directly to urban smart city initiatives, helping urban districts scale up energy retrofits and e-mobility infrastructure by designing community investment models. They sit at the intersection of fintech and the energy transition, a niche that very few SMEs occupy in European research consortia.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

bettervest entered H2020 in 2014 with a tightly focused SME feasibility study on their core product — crowdfunding for low-carbon energy — addressing the fundamental market challenge of attracting EU-wide public and private capital to small energy projects. By 2016, their focus had broadened significantly: they joined a large Innovation Action (SMARTER TOGETHER) working on smart city integration, data platforms, district heating, and e-mobility, suggesting the market pulled them toward more complex urban energy systems where their financing expertise was needed at scale. The trajectory is from fintech-for-energy-startups toward urban infrastructure finance, with governance and citizen co-creation becoming central to their approach.

bettervest is moving from consumer-facing crowdfunding toward a B2B role as a financing architecture specialist for large urban energy transitions — a direction well-aligned with EU Green Deal and renovation wave priorities.

How they like to work

bettervest has both led a small project (as coordinator on their SME Phase 1 feasibility study) and joined as a specialist partner in a large Innovation Action consortium. The large partner count (53) is almost entirely attributable to SMARTER TOGETHER, which is a multi-city IA with many participants — this does not reflect a broad personal network built over time. They appear to join consortia as a specialist bringing a specific financial capability, not as a generalist or consortium builder.

Their 53 unique partners and 8-country reach are primarily a product of the SMARTER TOGETHER consortium, a large urban innovation project spanning multiple European cities. Their direct partner network outside that project is likely much smaller and concentrated around their Frankfurt base and the German clean energy finance ecosystem.

What sets them apart

bettervest occupies a rare position as a crowdfunding operator with direct EU research project experience — most fintech SMEs in this space have never participated in a Horizon consortium, let alone contributed a bankability protocol to a large urban smart city project. For consortium builders working on energy district renovation, citizen energy communities, or urban climate finance, they offer something that research institutes and engineering firms cannot: a live platform with real investor communities and a tested process for structuring citizen investment in energy infrastructure.

Highlights from their portfolio

• bettervest
  This SME Phase 1 project — named after the company itself — was a foundational feasibility study for scaling crowdfunding across EU energy markets, demonstrating their capacity to define and lead their own research agenda.
• SMARTER TOGETHER
  A flagship EU smart city Innovation Action (2016–2021) with a large consortium spanning multiple cities, where bettervest contributed bankability and citizen investment expertise to urban energy district and e-mobility deployments.