About

Veganaut.net is a project started by two brothers, Toby and Sebu, from Bern, Switzerland.  We wanted there to be an open-source, open-data world map on which everybody can share their vegan discoveries. Now here it is.

If  you are interested, read more about the history of veganaut.net below.  If you have questions, contact us.

Veganaut.net Team
Our team from left to right: Simon Aeberhard (writes for our blog and does outreach), Tobias Leugger (head of development) and Sebastian Leugger (project leader)

History & Thanks

The idea for Veganaut was born in October 2013, shortly after Sebu started a six-month fellowship at Impact Hub Zürich, which  WWF Switzerland had awarded him for his participation in their 2013 innovation competition.  Thanks to Holger Hoffmann-Riem and the whole WWF-jury for your trust and to Niels Rot from Impact Hub for your coaching!

Under the working title “Monkey Business FTW” Veganaut won the Innovate4Climate competition in November 2013 and was thereby accepted into the European Climate-KIC start-up program.  Thanks to Anaïs Sägesser and the whole I4C-jury for the opportunity to learn and grow in this environment!

The following months were all about doing research and developing. The name “Veganaut” was chosen in spring 2014.  We released a beta-version for testing purposes in October of the same year and were accepted into stage 2 of the Climate-KIC start-up program in November.  Thanks to Marion Verles and the whole stage-2-jury for being open to our plans and ideas, and to Beat Probst from Addvisio for your coaching!

In 2015, we added, and got rid of, a lot of new features and tried to come up with a business model for veganaut.net that is not only economically viable, but also ethically and politically inspiring. We couldn’t convince the  Climate-KIC jury to accept us into stage 3 when we pitched to them in November 2015, and have not tried again. Either way, thanks to and Jan Fülscher for your coaching, we learned a lot!

We have since continued our work on the platform on a volunteer basis.

A new and improved version of our platform went live in October 2018. This would not have been possible without the help of the companies nothing and re:thinc, who offered us “mates’ rates” for their services. Thank you, guys!

The ideas, people and story behind veganaut.net