Vyld completed a significant seed funding round to launch the world’s first tampon made from seaweed and advance its mission of developing sustainable, ocean-friendly products.
WHO: Vyld is a Berlin-based profit-for-purpose company founded by ecopreneurs Ines Schiller and Melanie Schichan in 2021. Their vision was to create an Algaeverse using seaweed as a raw material for absorbent circular products. Kelpon, the world’s first tampon made from seaweed, and Dyper, a compostable diaper with an algae core, are set to redefine the market.
As a non-exit-oriented company, Vyld is an alternative to the typical VC start-up. It is a company in steward ownership that focuses on long-term economic sustainability. The company is making its financing model available as an open-source case study, encouraging others to adopt similar sustainable and regenerative approaches.
WHY: The current financing round will enable the launch of the Kelpon, the world’s first tampon made from seaweed, this year, as well as the development of the Algaeverse portfolio for B2B and B2C.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: "Tackling questions of ownership, power and financing is crucial to me as an entrepreneur. Business models create realities and extractive models do not only threaten the environment and health, but also reproduce exploitative standards and anti-democratic tendencies. We want to counter this with a model that promotes creation instead of consumption, quality instead of quantity and triple top line instead of hypergrowth,” explained Vyld CEO Ines Schiller.
Investor Kai Viehof commented, “Vyld shows that neither shareholder value-driven venture capital nor unbridled growth is needed to successfully implement sustainable ideas that really make a difference for our planet and our society. However, change can only become possible on a broad scale if investors also rethink and provide the necessary capital fairly and with reasonable return expectations.”
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