Patrick and Milan van der Meulen, the brothers who built Groningen solar company Soly to about €70m in annual revenue, say in a new book that the firm once received a €200m takeover bid from Ikea before it went bankrupt in November 2025.
Credit: this report is based on a story first published by MenA.nl. Read the original at mena.nl.
As reported by MenA.nl, the founders of Soly are telling their full story for the first time in a book titled Ondernemers onder hoogspanning. The book covers both the growth the outside world saw and what happened behind the scenes.
Soly started at a kitchen table and grew into a provider of solar energy with 180 employees at its peak and annual revenue of about €70m, according to MenA.nl.
The funding history
At the end of 2023 the company raised 30 million from nine investors. Climate venture capital firm ArcTern Ventures led the round together with US firm Fifth Wall, and existing investors Shell Ventures and pension fund ABP also took part.
Soly was declared bankrupt on 25 November 2025. In December, Norwegian energy company Otovo took over the estate, acquiring customers and assets. The company itself was not taken over.
A bid, a merger plan and a buyback attempt
In the book the brothers argue the bankruptcy could have been avoided. They describe a €200m takeover offer from Ikea, a merger proposal and a final attempt by the founders to buy the business back from its investors to keep it going.
Patrick van der Meulen said investors' interests came to weigh more and more heavily on the decisions that were made. Six weeks before the bankruptcy the brothers were replaced by a new director, who filed for bankruptcy with the investors' consent, MenA.nl reported.
Lessons for founders and backers
The book sets out how the interests of entrepreneurs, shareholders and investors can drift apart when a company is under pressure. According to MenA.nl, the authors also look critically at their own role.
Patrick van der Meulen said the founders are proud of what they built and that the investors took the company further than it might have gone alone. His brother Milan said they became caught in a dynamic in which the entrepreneurial drive was lost, at a time when the changing market called for it.
"There are also good lessons in this bankruptcy," Milan van der Meulen said (translated from Dutch).
Original source: MenA.nl, "70 miljoen omzet, een bijna-deal van 200 miljoen en toch failliet: oprichters Soly doen boekje open over faillissement"
