The most sustainable thing you can buy is often the one you can walk to. This is not a moral argument, but a simple matter of logistics. The energy required to move a jar of pickles from a local producer to your kitchen is measured in footsteps, not in diesel liters or kilowatt-hours for refrigeration across a continent. In Munich, a startup called Nachhaltigkeitshelden GmbH is building a digital map on that premise, trying to make those local, low-carbon transactions not just possible, but easy [LinkedIn].
Their Android app plots a city's sustainable businesses,from zero-waste shops to repair cafes,on a single interface, aiming to be the directory for a conscious consumer's daily life [Google Play Store]. The founders, Fabienne Horlaville, Kevin Tscholitsch, and Thomas Klir, are betting that this consumer-facing tool is the wedge into a more substantial business: selling digital marketing and IT services back to those very same local shops [LinkedIn, Wandelpunkt-Podcast]. It is a quiet, bootstrapped play on the unit economics of neighborhood commerce, where success is measured not in gigatons averted, but in storefronts kept alive.
The two-sided map
The bet is classic platform strategy, applied to a fragmented and values-driven market. On one side, you attract users with a free, useful product,a map that answers the question "where can I find a refill station or a bike mechanic near me?" On the other side, you monetize the businesses that appear on that map by helping them get found. Nachhaltigkeitshelden positions itself as an IT and digital marketing service provider for these small, often technically unsophisticated operations [LinkedIn]. The value proposition is clear: we bring you customers who already care about sustainability, and we help you run the digital side of your shop so you can focus on making pickles or fixing bikes. It turns the app from a mere directory into a lead generation engine, with services as the revenue layer.
Founders from Darmstadt to Munich
The team behind this localist vision brings a blend of technical grounding and operational pragmatism. Co-founders Fabienne Horlaville and Thomas Klir both studied computer science at the Technical University of Darmstadt, a pedigree that suggests they can build the platform themselves [TuneIn, Mobile Media Forum]. Horlaville balances her startup role with a position in IT platform services at Lufthansa, a juxtaposition that hints at an understanding of both large-scale systems and the need for a side hustle [RocketReach]. Kevin Tscholitsch is listed as a managing director, bringing a formal business structure to the endeavor [North Data]. Together, they form a compact, technically capable unit of 2-10 employees, operating with the lean efficiency their target customers would appreciate [LinkedIn].
The scale of local
The ambition here is inherently constrained, which is not necessarily a flaw. This is not software destined for a billion users; it is a tool for a specific geography and a specific mindset. The primary competitive pressure isn't from other tech startups,no direct competitors are named in the public record,but from the inertia of habit and the omnipresent gravity of large e-commerce platforms. The risk is that the total addressable market of sustainability-focused consumers in any given German city, while growing, might still be too thin to support a dedicated discovery platform and its attendant service business. Furthermore, the business model relies on convincing small shop owners, who often operate on razor-thin margins, to pay for digital marketing services. This is a famously tough sell.
The founders seem aware of this, focusing their stated areas on "sustainability in daily life" and "sustainable economy" rather than planetary-scale disruption [LinkedIn]. Their traction will be measured in merchant density on their map and the conversion rate of those merchants into paying clients for their services. The lack of disclosed funding suggests either bootstrapping or very small, local angel backing, a capital structure that demands immediate, tangible utility over speculative growth.
What success looks like on the map
For Nachhaltigkeitshelden, the path forward is a street-by-street grind. The next twelve months will be about proving their wedge works in Munich. Key signals to watch would be a formal announcement of a pilot cohort of paying business customers, or a partnership with the city's economic development office to promote local sustainable commerce. Geographic expansion to a second German city would be a strong vote of confidence, but only if the Munich model shows it can pay for itself.
Doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation: if a typical neighborhood sustainable business spends 500 euros a month on various digital marketing efforts, and Nachhaltigkeitshelden can capture even 10% of that spend from 50 such businesses in Munich, that's 30,000 euros in annual recurring revenue. It's not venture scale, but it could be a healthy, impactful small business. To get there, they must beat the incumbent that currently owns the "find a local shop" slot: a messy combination of Google Maps, Instagram hashtags, and word-of-mouth. Their advantage is curation and intent,their map only shows what their users specifically want to find, filtering out the noise of the conventional economy. It is a bet on the value of a focused, purpose-built tool over a general-purpose one.
Sources
- [LinkedIn] Nachhaltigkeitshelden GmbH Company Profile | https://de.linkedin.com/company/nachhaltigkeitshelden
- [Google Play Store] Nachhaltigkeitshelden Android App Listing | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.nachhaltigkeitshelden.app&hl=en
- [Wandelpunkt-Podcast, 2021] Interview with Fabienne Horlaville & Thomas Klir | https://wandelpunkt-podcast.de/2021/04/29/nachhaltigkeitshelden/
- [TuneIn] Wandelpunkt Podcast Profile | https://tunein.com/podcasts/Arts--Culture-Podcasts/Wandelpunkt-Podcast-p1294861/
- [Mobile Media Forum] Thomas Klir Profile | https://mobilemediaforum.de/speaker/thomas-klir/
- [RocketReach] Fabienne Horlaville Profile | https://rocketreach.co/fabienne-horlaville-email_288021413
- [North Data] Kevin Tscholitsch Profile | https://www.northdata.com/Tscholitsch,%20Kevin,%20Hanau/w0j