The most sustainable thing you can buy is often the one you can walk to. In Munich, a startup called Nachhaltigkeitshelden GmbH is building a digital map on that premise, trying to make local, low-carbon transactions easy [LinkedIn].
Their Android app plots a city's sustainable businesses on a single interface [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].
The two-sided map
On one side, the company attracts users with a free map that answers the question "where can I find a refill station or a bike mechanic near me?" On the other side, it monetizes 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 operations [LinkedIn].
Founders from Darmstadt to Munich
Co-founders Fabienne Horlaville and Thomas Klir both studied computer science at the Technical University of Darmstadt [TuneIn, Mobile Media Forum]. Horlaville balances her startup role with a position in IT platform services at Lufthansa [RocketReach]. Kevin Tscholitsch is listed as a managing director [North Data]. Together, they form a unit of 2-10 employees [LinkedIn].
The scale of local
The primary competitive pressure is the inertia of habit and the gravity of large e-commerce platforms. The business model relies on convincing small shop owners to pay for digital marketing services. The founders focus their areas on "sustainability in daily life" and "sustainable economy" [LinkedIn]. Their traction will be measured in merchant density on their map and the conversion rate of those merchants into paying clients.
What success looks like on the map
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. Their advantage is curation and intent, filtering out the noise of the conventional economy.