Dutch solar startup Soly files for bankruptcy a year after €30M funding round

Groningen, Netherlands-based Soly, an international solar energy company, has been declared bankrupt.

The announcement was made by the co-founder, Milan van der Meulen, through a LinkedIn post. The announcement comes over a year after raising €30M in funding led by ArcTern Ventures.

The bankruptcy petitions for Soly Holding B.V. and Soly NL SSC B.V. were filed by the company and officially approved this week by the District Court of Groningen.

“We are deeply saddened and disappointed by this outcome. It is difficult for us to accept that loyal employees, partners, and other stakeholders are now facing uncertainty,” says van der Meulen.

Although the founders and shareholders are no longer operationally active within Soly, they have spent the past few days exploring alternatives to their current situation.

According to van der Meulen, the decision was made despite efforts in recent days to propose alternatives that could have prevented insolvency.

“Although we were no longer operationally active within Soly, as founders and shareholders, we have spent the past few days doing everything we could to find alternatives to this situation. These alternatives were also presented. In the end, a different decision was made by management and the other shareholders. Even in this new situation, we remain willing to actively explore possibilities for a (partial) restart,” adds van der Meulen.

Founded to make solar energy accessible

Soly was founded in 2013 by brothers Patrick and Milan van der Meulen to make solar energy available to everyone. 

The founding duo was inspired at a young age by Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” and has since decided to use their entrepreneurship as a force for good.’