€700k · Other round · Cleantech · Hanover, Germany
Hanover-based WasteSide has raised €700k in funding from Campus Founders Ventures, Hannover Beteiligungs Fonds and business angels. Deutsche Startups reported the financing on 12 August, one day before the date recorded in Tech.eu Funding Explorer. The company’s founders have described Campus Founders as lead investor and said the round exceeded their original €600k target.
WasteSide runs a web app in which students complete sustainability challenges, upload evidence and collect points that can be exchanged for rewards from local partners. The company sells the other side of that interaction to employers and brands as a channel for employer branding, recruiting and product placement on university campuses.
Building a campus-by-campus engagement loop
The product ties three groups together. Students receive discounts or other rewards for actions such as using reusable cups, avoiding food waste or cycling. Local businesses gain visits when points are redeemed. Employers and consumer brands pay to reach a defined student audience through challenges, content and benefits rather than a conventional display-ad campaign.
WasteSide says an early launch at one Hanover campus attracted more than 2,000 users. Its current site describes the platform as operating through local partnerships and says businesses can use it for recurring interaction with students. Those are company-reported signals, but they show why the financing is aimed at distribution as much as product development: every new campus needs both an active student base and enough useful rewards to keep participation worthwhile.
That local density is also the model’s main execution test. A single campus can produce meaningful engagement for nearby partners, but larger employers benefit more when the same format reaches students across several cities. The founders say the round’s central goal is to make go-to-market repeatable and measure how reliably sales investment converts into revenue. Proving that relationship matters more than simply adding downloads, because employer and partner demand ultimately funds the rewards loop.
A second financing step, not the first
WasteSide’s own website describes an earlier €190k angel round after the company joined the Campus Founders Sales Accelerator. In June, VentureVilla said the startup had already secured roughly €800k of commitments for its next round. The €700k close reported in August is therefore best understood as a later seed financing rather than the company’s first outside capital.
WasteSide traces its origins to a student project at Leibniz University Hannover and says it formally incorporated in October 2024. The founding team is Julian Meckfessel, Pia Oetjen, Charlotte Robens and Paul Aumann. The company’s move from a campus experiment to a financed commercial platform now depends on whether it can reproduce participation and partner economics beyond its home market.
Explore this theme
How do you build a brand in a post-platform world? — Simon Lovick & Northzone, hosted on EUVC · 26 September 2025. The article examines why high-context local communities and participation can outperform broad, low-trust reach — the same distribution question WasteSide faces as it expands campus by campus.
Sources checked:
Deutsche Startups · WasteSide company site · WasteSide about page · VentureVilla · Tech.eu Funding Explorer
