Reonic raises €13m to help small installers of green technologies such as heat pumps and solar panels

European regulators are pressing hard for greener energy. The REPowerEU plan calls for 10 million additional heat pumps to be added by 2027, and solar panels are also on the rise.

But most installations are by small businesses that could be more productive with better business processes.

Here is the German entrepreneur Rheonic “We provide renewable energy installers with the tools to be extremely efficient, and we do this primarily by providing them with planning and workflow software,” says co-founder Tristan Menzinger (seated on the right in the image above).

Menzinger, Lars-Manuel Schneider (seated center in the image above), and their university friend and third co-founder Udo Sill worked at a research institute studying renewable energy deployment. That sparked their interest in starting Reonic, but they had to listen to real customers to bridge the gap between theory and knowledge. They concluded that installers needed end-to-end software rather than separate tools.

Startups in other industries have found a similar result, but it can be a tough sell if the target audience already has established habits. Reonic’s promise is to make it worthwhile by helping installers sell faster and more. “Being able to combine heat pumps with solar systems, for example, doubles the volume you sell,” Schneider says.

Unlike some competitors with narrower niches, such as solar, Reonic’s focus is on renewable energy as a whole, whether it’s photovoltaics, energy storage systems, wall boxes or heat pumps. Beyond a specific type of installation, the larger goal they see is energy self-consumption for every household or business, Schneider said. “And that’s something that’s at the core of our product, that works the same way all the time, no matter where we are.”

The promise of accelerating the use of renewable energy appears to be resonating with investors, with Reonic raising a €13 million Series A round led by Northzone, with participation from existing investors Point Nine and Puzzle Ventures, with the aim of expanding across Europe.

This matches the preference shown by VCs climate-focused initiatives facing market risk They stand out with their marketing strategies against the scientific risk of inventing a new technology.

Yet market risk is still real. Aurora Solar, a U.S. company that provides software to help solar installers manage their sales, laid off 20% of its staff of around 500 following $523 million earlier this year.

But with 21 team members and €16 million in investments so far, Reonic is more like a small company like: Belt, Energyflo, Sunday And Bucket Sun.

The company also says it’s seeing the growth typical of early-stage companies that find product-market fit, tripling its recurring revenue in the last six months alone. “While we’ve had real momentum since we started three years ago, it really feels like we’re just getting started,” Schneider said.

While subsidies and other legal frameworks vary from country to country, Reonic’s internationalization stems from its founders’ belief that it can enter new markets without too much customization. After the DACH region, it launched in France and conducted a soft launch in Italy, said Menzinger, who oversaw much of the process.

Augsburg, Bavaria, is still the company’s headquarters, but nearly half of its staff now work in Berlin, where it opened a second office earlier this year to make it easier to recruit international talent. That’s another key part of the expansion that will be funded by the new round.