Joan Tarragó
I’m Joan, co-founder and COO of Infinite Fingers GmbH. We offer solutions for monitoring and control of off-grid power systems. Off-grid power systems are mostly based on renewable energy systems. Normally these systems are complex because they include components like solar panels, batteries and converters. Often they tend to fail, expecially, when they are far away and not connected to the grid. Our solution is a cloud-based system. The data of the system get collected and sent to the web, where the customer can have access to all energy relevant data.
We have five people now in our international team: I am from Barcelona, Roy comes from South-Africa, Mate is from Hungary and Patrick is English, although he lives in Germany now for many, many years . I am happy and grateful for the opportunity to start the entrepreneurship project with EXIST! Creating this team, with people who get along together very well is a very good experience.
Our clients are off-grid power systems integrators. Companies that are building the systems and deploy them in the field renting them out. Another group of customers are companies who build a grid in other countries. There are millions of off-grid systems all over the world and there will be build more in the future because of the transition from fossil energies to renewable energies and the international goal to reduce CO² emission. Comparing to other competitors we are more focused in the energy generation and storage, while the others focus more on how the power is consumed. Among all members of the team we have lots of years of experience in this field and lots of passion! This expertise is allowing us solving the problems of the customers efficiently.
In August 2016 we acquired the EXIST-Business Startup Grant for a year. The grant is really helpful to develop our business model and to design the first prototypes. During the EXIST-year we had an office in the incubator of the Uni Kassel. There we met the other startups and shared knowledge to help each other. It was also good to participate in the “Unternehmer Rat Evening”. We had a pitch and met businesspeople from Kassel, who were very helpful for us. Especially with one of them, we have a good relationship and plan to collaborate. He has lots of experience in financial planning, monitoring and pricing.
We also joined the CLIMATE-KIC incubation program. Climate-KIC is a program focussed on cleantech ideas. We run through the first and second stage and plan to apply for the third stage.
We are looking for further funding at the end of the year. Tobias Hasenjäger, is an important contact for us. Tobias has a good network and knows some of the people we want to meet. I share our pitch deck and our slides with him and when we talk to investors, Tobias gives us advice.
You really have to get the right funding that fits your company!
If you need a lot of capital to multiply your business then you have to look for venture capital. But if you are a sort of company with a moderate capital requirement then you might better talk to business angels or crowdfunding / crowdinvesting platforms. The financing has to fit your company! When you know your capital requirement, look, what kind of investor fits and then try to talk to as many people as you find in this field!
Aufgezeichnet von Gabriele Hennemuth