KlimaShift: German Market Entry

The Starting Point

KlimaShift arrived in Berlin with a market-ready cooling and energy solution for retail, as part of GoGlobal Berlin 2026, the market-entry programme that nxt milestone runs together with its Polish partner organisation StartSmart CEE for startups from Central and Eastern Europe. The product was technically ready. What was missing was the German market: customers, partners, and an understanding of how decisions are actually made in German retail chains. That gap is exactly what the programme is built to close.

The Preparation Delivered by nxt milestone

From the February kickoff, nxt milestone guided KlimaShift through a structured three-month programme: a personal expectation call, a dedicated mentor pairing with a German industry practitioner under 12 contracted hours, plus weekly consultation sessions and thematic workshops on sales, market research, and brand positioning. In the market research session led by nxt milestone, the team identified concrete target customers and sharpened its pricing and positioning strategy for Germany.

The preparation phase closed with the Berlin Onsite Week organised by nxt milestone: five days including legal and compliance workshops, two exhibition days at GITEX Europe, curated networking events, and a guided tour of the Berlin startup ecosystem.

The Win: Demo Day Champion

At the close of the Berlin Onsite Week, all five teams pitched at the Polish Tech Night Demo Day in front of around 200 industry guests from Berlin’s startup and business scene. KlimaShift won the “Digital Transformation” category — one of only two category wins across the entire cohort.

“Getting a mentor who shares the same vision and is aware of the problem is really good. He wants to keep supporting us until we get a PoC.”

That result was made possible by targeted preparation throughout the programme: on-site pitch training, the market positioning developed in the nxt milestone workshop, and hands-on mentoring that helped the team tailor its offer to what German buyers actually need.

The Strategic Insight from the Mentor Match

Beyond the pitch, the mentor pairing arranged by nxt milestone helped the team reach a strategic pivot: the direct route to a retail customer is rarely the fastest one in Germany. Working with the team, the mentor identified facility-management partners already embedded with target customers as a shorter path to a first pilot installation than direct sales.

This shift in sales-model thinking is an outcome that outlasts the three programme months: the mentor is continuing to support KlimaShift on his own initiative, beyond the programme, until the team reaches its first proof of concept.

The Result

Thanks to nxt milestone’s guidance, KlimaShift leaves the programme with three concrete outcomes: a category award won in front of German industry professionals, a resilient sales strategy built on facility-management partners rather than direct sales, and a mentor relationship that continues beyond the programme’s end.