Founded to accelerate the transition to a circular economy
Our team
Elisa Achterberg
As our financial modelling wizard, Elisa helps circular entrepreneurs, like you, build a solid business case and convince financiers to take the plunge. With her diverse background in econometrics, finance and 10+ years experience in the field of circular finance, she combines a solid quantitative background with active social engagement. When she’s not generating models, she’s with her family or tending her regenerative food forest.
Werner Runge
With a background as a partner at Allen & Overy, Werner delivers top-notch legal expertise with a funny, no-nonsense approach. He’d rather be working on his boat than behind a desk, but his passion for optimizing the use of scarce resources drives his work.
Cees van Ginneken
Cees brings his sharp wit and legal-financial expertise to help mold the vision of CiSe. Outside of his full-time role as a Senior Associate at A&O Shearman, he’s making his expertise available to circular entrepreneurs through CiSe. Cees is a master at connecting the dots, driving us toward a future where products are circular, and businesses can take responsibility over their materials.
Bas Slootman
Bas combines business savvy and passion for social impact to turn circular ideas into reality. Social and organized, he’s helping the team bring their visions to life. When he’s not busy making the world a better place, you’ll find him kitesurfing, dancing or mastering calisthenics.
Our partners
Our approach
From linear to circular
Setting up a circular business model requires designing your product or service to retain the value of your materials for as long as possible.
- The function of a product is sold rather than the product itself
- Paid is for use rather than ownership
- Material remains the responsibility of the one with largest influence on it
Collaboration is key
All partners in the value chain must collaborate as a whole, as the circular chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Whether a product is suitable for maximum use – a long life of intensive use – depends largely on the quality and replaceability of its parts and thus on the entire chain.
Ideally, all parties are aligned to share responsibility for the functioning of the product and are compensated for their part in it.
Overcoming barriers
We guide businesses in setting up their circular value chain. With our tested approach we remove common barriers that circular entrepreneurs face:
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A lack of access to the right capital
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High startup costs to set up appropriate finance structures and service contracts
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Difficulties achieving supply chain participation with shared responsibilities
New revenue opportunities
By overcoming these barriers, new opportunities open up. We help circular businesses to lock in a long-term collaborative revenue model with their value chain partners.
By making products that last longer, its earnings potential is increased. That means more revenue with the same materials. Win-win!
How we do it
Yes, there will be no thriving business without a solid business model.
Setting up a circular service business has its challenges, but opens new possibilities too.
For example, by intensifying the use of a product, you can earn more with the same resources. That way you improve circularity and increase earning potential. Win-win!
Let us help you with setting the foundations of your circular service proposition.
A circular service model requires you having good, long-term relationships with you customers.
All the more important to have a clear agreement on everyone’s rights and responsibilities.
Our standardized Circular Service Contract is designed to do just that. And it’s free for all circular entrepreneurs to use!
We have mentioned it before, collaboration is key to circular succes.
When setting up your circular service proposition, it is important to get commitment from your value chain partners to collaborate with you in forming a circular value chain.
Just like your own business, your value chain partners must adjust their business model to fit a circular service proposition.
We can help them in setting up a circular service proposition with the Fit4CircularFinance training!
The spider in the web of our structure is the CiSe Participation Agreement.
This agreement is designed to lock-in the collaborative revenue model of the circular value chain and its financiers. It outlines all parties’ right and obligations, making sure that responsibility over the materials are placed at the one with most influence on it.
We have a free template available here and offer guided projects to help you set up your circular value chain collaboration.
When setting up a circular service chain, it is crucial to have a collaborative business model that reflects the cashflow generating capacity of your product or service.
This requires a different model than you might be used to. Luckily, our experts worked it all out for you! You can either purchase our template model or have it set up for you by our in-house business model wizard.
One of the main obstacles for scaling circular solutions is a lack of access funding.
Using the CiSe legal-financial structure, we make project finance techniques available to all circular entrepreneurs.
In our guided value chain project we walk you through all the steps to set up a solid proposition that you can present to financiers.
Rather do it yourself? Have a look at the Fit 4 Circular Finance training.
Your next step
Assess what step you need to take to move forward with your circular service model. It’s free!