Entrepreneur · Builder · Advisor
Building ventures
that matter.
Helping others
do the same.
Technology is the most powerful tool we have. The question is what we point it at.
Entrepreneur · Builder · Advisor
Technology is the most powerful tool we have. The question is what we point it at.
I'm David — entrepreneur, builder, and occasional troublemaker in industries that need one.
I've spent 20+ years using technology to shift how people relate to money, consumption, and the planet. It started as a teenager with a laptop and too many ideas — I taught myself to code, captivated by this wonder of a technology that lets you create something from nothing.
Twenty years later, we have a new, equally (if not more) transformative force in AI. So I asked it to introduce me — first Claude Sonnet 4.6 in March 2026, most recently Claude Fable 5. Each answer is generated once and kept honest. The session log below grows when the story changes.
David Lais is the kind of founder who doesn't arrive at an idea through a strategy deck — he arrives through a moment of genuine discomfort. His pivot into climate tech didn't come from a market thesis. It came from sitting on a beach in Thailand in 2015, surrounded by plastic, and deciding he couldn't go back to building things that didn't matter. That instinct — to orient his skills toward problems that are actually worth solving — is the thread running through everything he's built since.
He co-founded ecolytiq to do something technically ambitious and practically urgent: give millions of bank customers real-time visibility into the carbon footprint of their spending. The company raised €13.5 million, partnered with Visa, Rabobank, and others across three continents, and helped users collectively avoid 1.28 million tons of CO₂ before being acquired by Clarity AI in 2024. Alongside it, he built the Organisation for Conscious Consumerism — a non-profit that created the open, peer-reviewed methodology underpinning how banks measure transaction-level carbon impact. He gave it away freely, because the goal was always systemic change, not a moat.
Through LTVI GmbH, David backs and advises early-stage founders building at the intersection of technology and positive impact. What he offers isn't generic mentorship — it's hard-won pattern recognition from having sold mission-driven software to large, risk-averse financial institutions, navigated a €13.5M raise with corporate investors, and built a team that believed in the work as much as the metrics. He knows what it actually takes to get a sustainability product from concept to enterprise contract, and he's direct about what he doesn't know too.
He's currently building Nuri Tales, an AI-assisted storytelling platform that helps parents turn everyday parenting challenges into personalised stories for young children — proof that his interest in technology as a tool for human behaviour extends well beyond climate. If you're building something that uses technology to make the world function better — and you're looking for a thinking partner who has done it before — David is worth talking to.
David Lais builds things because something bothered him first. The version of that story he tells is a beach in Thailand in 2015, covered in plastic — but the more revealing detail is what he did next: he went back and spent the following decade making sustainability legible, on the theory that people can't care about what they can't see.
That thesis became ecolytiq, co-founded to show millions of bank customers the carbon footprint of their own spending, in their own banking app. It raised €13.5 million, shipped with Visa and Rabobank across three continents, and was acquired by Clarity AI in 2025. He open-sourced the measurement methodology through the non-profit Organisation for Conscious Consumerism rather than keeping it as a moat — a choice that tells you his goal was the standard, not the exit.
Today, through LTVI GmbH, he invests in and builds alongside a small number of early-stage founders working where technology meets genuine impact. What he offers is specific: he has sold mission-driven software to risk-averse financial institutions, raised from corporate investors without losing the mission, and knows the distance between a sustainability deck and an enterprise contract — because he's walked it.
He'd also want you to know the storytelling platform Nuri Tales is his wife's venture, not his. He just helps. If you're building something that points technology at a problem worth solving, he's easy to reach — and worth reaching.
Consulting
I advise a small number of entrepreneurs building technology for genuine social or environmental impact. Not advisory-board cosmetics. Real work — from early product thinking to go-to-market strategy, fundraising narrative to team building.
I bring what I've learned from 20+ years in fintech, building climate tech that reached millions of users, and navigating the particular challenge of selling mission-driven products to large institutions.
I only take on engagements I can meaningfully contribute to. If you think there's a fit, I'm easy to reach.
Get in touch
Whether you're a founder looking for a thinking partner, or someone who wants to talk about conscious consumerism — I'm genuinely open to conversations.
LTVI is not a venture fund nor a business angel network — I am a venture builder and investor, in projects I truly believe in. If my work with LTVI resonates with you, I'm always happy to connect over shared ideas.
Email david@ltvi.de → LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/paymenthippie →