Startup News: Essential Steps, Tips, and Lessons for Building Resilient Infrastructure in 2025

Sustainable finance may sound like just another buzzword, but the recent Sustainable Finance Live event in London proved otherwise. As someone who spends her time untangling complicated systems, whether in deeptech, education, or blockchain, I found this gathering to be an eye-opener. This wasn’t a conference focused on talking. It was about making financial systems work better, not only for economies but for the ecosystems supporting those economies.

The event revealed a simple truth: infrastructure, both digital and physical, needs to be resilient. It’s not optional anymore. Think of it as future-proofing your startup or business, because climate change and economic shocks do not pause for you to build a plan. If you’re not embedding resilience into your infrastructure decisions today, you may not have a business tomorrow.

The Essentials: What Happened at the Event?

This meetup brought together entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers to address a pressing question: how can resilient infrastructure be built when financing models themselves are fragile? It wasn’t just talk. Workshops, hackathons, and expert panels focused on creating actionable strategies. A few standout topics included:

Why nature-based solutions are worth your investor pitches.
Instead of pouring resources into concrete-heavy projects, many are turning to natural infrastructure (think protected wetlands or urban forests). These systems can dampen floods and reduce heat islands while saving businesses millions in repair costs later.
How data and AI can turn climate risk into measurable financial risk.
By using tools like climate analytics and advanced modeling, financial decision-makers are spotting risks before they hit the balance sheets. The workshop showed how startups could add these tools without breaking their budget.
Rethinking value in supply chains.
Discussions highlighted that supply chain resilience doesn’t mean redundancy. It means smarter, more localized hubs that also have a lighter environmental footprint.

Numbers to Keep in Mind

One thing stood out during the presentations: businesses that ignore resilience may end up paying triple. Here are some figures shared:

$86 billion was invested globally in sustainable infrastructure in 2023, but that’s just scratching the surface of what’s needed.
Every $1 spent on disaster preparedness reduces recovery investments by $4-7.
The World Bank showed that 95% of the costliest natural disasters are happening in regions where infrastructure hasn’t adapted to climate risks.

If these numbers don’t hit home, consider the recent heatwaves in Europe or the devastating floods in South Asia. Without resilient systems in place, events like these not only disrupt business operations, they shatter them.

The Entrepreneur’s Guide: Building for Resilience

After attending this, I walked away with actionable steps every business, big or small, can adopt. Ready for the checklist? Here’s how to bring resilience into your business right now:

Evaluate your digital infrastructure.
Is your data stored in eco-friendly, secure data centers? Simple question, but you’d be surprised how many startups overlook the energy drain from poorly set up systems.
Include climate risk in your financial model.
If your product relies on harvesting a resource or shipping internationally, understand where interruptions could arise. Tools like real-time analytics for climate effects are cheaper now than ever before.
Consider natural alternatives for local operations.
Starting a co-working space or building a café? Look into green roofs and vertical gardens. These aren’t just trendy, they cut cooling needs and improve air quality.
Prioritize partnerships.
No one builds resilience alone. Events like these thrive on one key fact: working with others who understand your challenges accelerates your growth and protection. Connect with fintech platforms, local eco-projects, and technology experts in your area.

Most Common Missteps I See Entrepreneurs Making

During the panels, experts kept returning to recurring mistakes businesses make about resilience. Here’s what to avoid:

Treating sustainability as a side project.
Slapping on "green practices" after growth doesn’t solve underlying inefficiencies. Your framework for resilience needs to come early, ideally in draft one of your business plan.
Assuming insurance is enough.
Business insurance can only repair the financial hole. It won't rebuild the infrastructure you failed to consider.
Ignoring scalability issues.
Some businesses adopt small sustainable processes but fail to prepare for scaling them. Start local, but always think global.
Overlooking employee engagement.
If your team doesn’t understand how resilience impacts their daily work, they’ll lack the motivation to adapt when a crisis hits.

Why This Matters and What’s Next

As a serial entrepreneur, I understand the temptation to focus solely on growth. But scalability dies in the face of fragility. This year’s Sustainable Finance Live emphasized that resilient infrastructure speaks not only to long-term profitability but also to survival. Guests left the event with a clear mandate: you don’t have to choose between profitability and resilience, you combine them.

Want to dig deeper into implementing these practices? Platforms like SustainableFinance.Live provide actionable tools and events. Or take a look at the World Bank’s Sustainable Infrastructure Finance page for global frameworks.

Creating resilience isn’t a trend. It’s an opportunity to build smarter, leaner, and more durable systems. Whether you’re a fintech startup, an eco-minded cafe owner, or a SaaS business navigating global supply chains, resilience needs to be your north star. Ready to get started? Let’s talk. Reach out and let's exchange some ideas.

FAQ

1. What is the focus of Sustainable Finance Live 2025?
The event centered on building resilient infrastructure by leveraging nature-based solutions, advanced technology, and sustainable finance. It emphasized actionable strategies and collaboration between financial institutions and innovators. Read the 2025 Event Overview

2. How does climate data influence financial decision-making?
Climate data and AI tools allow decision-makers to transform climate risks into measurable financial risks. These tools make it possible to anticipate impacts and embed resilience in investment choices.

3. Why are nature-based solutions critical in today’s financing models?
Nature-based solutions, such as urban forests and protected wetlands, provide cost-effective resilience against climate shocks. They also support ecosystems while reducing long-term repair and recovery costs.

4. What are the financial benefits of disaster preparedness?
Every $1 invested in disaster preparedness reduces recovery investment by $4-7, underscoring the importance of preventive resilience measures.

5. How much investment was made in sustainable infrastructure in 2023?
Global investment in sustainable infrastructure reached $86 billion, highlighting a growing shift towards resilient economic systems. Learn more at World Bank's Sustainable Infrastructure Finance page

6. What challenges do businesses face in embedding resilience?
Key challenges include treating sustainability as an afterthought, relying heavily on insurance instead of preventative measures, and failing to scale sustainable practices effectively.

7. How can startups incorporate resilience into their business plans?
Startups can prioritize secure, eco-friendly digital infrastructure, analyze climate risks for their financial models, explore natural alternatives for operations, and establish strong partnerships with eco-projects and fintech platforms.

8. What is the role of supply chains in resilient infrastructure?
Rethinking supply chains for resilience involves creating smarter, localized hubs with reduced environmental footprints, rather than simply building redundant systems.

9. What actions can financial institutions take to support resilient infrastructure?
Institutions can integrate sustainability into primary investment decisions, finance nature-based solutions, and utilize tools like AI and climate analytics to guide funding strategies.

10. Where can I find more resources on sustainable finance?
Visit platforms like Sustainable Finance Live or World Bank's Sustainable Infrastructure Projects for more tools and frameworks related to resilient infrastructure.

About the Author

Violetta Bonenkamp, also known as MeanCEO, is an experienced startup founder with an impressive educational background including an MBA and four other higher education degrees. She has over 20 years of work experience across multiple countries, including 5 years as a solopreneur and serial entrepreneur. Throughout her startup experience she has applied for multiple startup grants at the EU level, in the Netherlands and Malta, and her startups received quite a few of those. She’s been living, studying and working in many countries around the globe and her extensive multicultural experience has influenced her immensely.

Violetta Bonenkamp's expertise in CAD sector, IP protection and blockchain

Violetta Bonenkamp is recognized as a multidisciplinary expert with significant achievements in the CAD sector, intellectual property (IP) protection, and blockchain technology.

CAD Sector:

Violetta is the CEO and co-founder of CADChain, a deep tech startup focused on developing IP management software specifically for CAD (Computer-Aided Design) data. CADChain addresses the lack of industry standards for CAD data protection and sharing, using innovative technology to secure and manage design data.
She has led the company since its inception in 2018, overseeing R&D, PR, and business development, and driving the creation of products for platforms such as Autodesk Inventor, Blender, and SolidWorks.
Her leadership has been instrumental in scaling CADChain from a small team to a significant player in the deeptech space, with a diverse, international team.

IP Protection:

Violetta has built deep expertise in intellectual property, combining academic training with practical startup experience. She has taken specialized courses in IP from institutions like WIPO and the EU IPO.
She is known for sharing actionable strategies for startup IP protection, leveraging both legal and technological approaches, and has published guides and content on this topic for the entrepreneurial community.
Her work at CADChain directly addresses the need for robust IP protection in the engineering and design industries, integrating cybersecurity and compliance measures to safeguard digital assets.

Blockchain:

Violetta’s entry into the blockchain sector began with the founding of CADChain, which uses blockchain as a core technology for securing and managing CAD data.
She holds several certifications in blockchain and has participated in major hackathons and policy forums, such as the OECD Global Blockchain Policy Forum.
Her expertise extends to applying blockchain for IP management, ensuring data integrity, traceability, and secure sharing in the CAD industry.

Violetta is a true multiple specialist who has built expertise in Linguistics, Education, Business Management, Blockchain, Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property, Game Design, AI, SEO, Digital Marketing, cyber security and zero code automations. Her extensive educational journey includes a Master of Arts in Linguistics and Education, an Advanced Master in Linguistics from Belgium (2006-2007), an MBA from Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden (2006-2008), and an Erasmus Mundus joint program European Master of Higher Education from universities in Norway, Finland, and Portugal (2009).

She is the founder of Fe/male Switch, a startup game that encourages women to enter STEM fields, and also leads CADChain, and multiple other projects like the Directory of 1,000 Startup Cities with a proprietary MeanCEO Index that ranks cities for female entrepreneurs. Violetta created the "gamepreneurship" methodology, which forms the scientific basis of her startup game. She also builds a lot of SEO tools for startups. Her achievements include being named one of the top 100 women in Europe by EU Startups in 2022 and being nominated for Impact Person of the year at the Dutch Blockchain Week. She is an author with Sifted and a speaker at different Universities. Recently she published a book on Startup Idea Validation the right way: from zero to first customers and beyond, launched a Directory of 1,500+ websites for startups to list themselves in order to gain traction and build backlinks and is building MELA AI to help local restaurants in Malta get more visibility online.

For the past several years Violetta has been living between the Netherlands and Malta, while also regularly traveling to different destinations around the globe, usually due to her entrepreneurial activities. This has led her to start writing about different locations and amenities from the POV of an entrepreneur. Here’s her recent article about the best hotels in Italy to work from.

About the Publication

Fe/male Switch is an innovative startup platform designed to empower women entrepreneurs through an immersive, game-like experience. Founded in 2020 during the pandemic "without any funding and without any code," this non-profit initiative has evolved into a comprehensive educational tool for aspiring female entrepreneurs.The platform was co-founded by Violetta Shishkina-Bonenkamp, who serves as CEO and one of the lead authors of the Startup News branch.

Mission and Purpose

Fe/male Switch Foundation was created to address the gender gap in the tech and entrepreneurship space. The platform aims to skill-up future female tech leaders and empower them to create resilient and innovative tech startups through what they call "gamepreneurship". By putting players in a virtual startup village where they must survive and thrive, the startup game allows women to test their entrepreneurial abilities without financial risk.

Key Features

The platform offers a unique blend of news, resources,learning, networking, and practical application within a supportive, female-focused environment:

Skill Lab: Micro-modules covering essential startup skills
Virtual Startup Building: Create or join startups and tackle real-world challenges
AI Co-founder (PlayPal): Guides users through the startup process
SANDBOX: A testing environment for idea validation before launch
Wellness Integration: Virtual activities to balance work and self-care
Marketplace: Buy or sell expert sessions and tutorials

Impact and Growth

Since its inception, Fe/male Switch has shown impressive growth:

5,000+ female entrepreneurs in the community
100+ startup tools built
5,000+ pieces of articles and news written
1,000 unique business ideas for women created

Partnerships

Fe/male Switch has formed strategic partnerships to enhance its offerings. In January 2022, it teamed up with global website builder Tilda to provide free access to website building tools and mentorship services for Fe/male Switch participants.

Recognition

Fe/male Switch has received media attention for its innovative approach to closing the gender gap in tech entrepreneurship. The platform has been featured in various publications highlighting its unique "play to learn and earn" model.