Frontier Growth Capital company is the early stage angel investment company of Mikko Silventola, focusing on pre-seed or seed stage tech companies. The earlier the stage the better, and software is preferred.
Mikko has invested into three unicorns and many companies that are valued at over €100M. He can help opening doors, fundraising (incl. attracting strategic angels) and other crucial growth company tasks.
SET Ventures focuses on early growth stage companies furthering the transition of the energy sector. Their customer and investor network and expertise in growing companies helps you be ready for scaling your business.
SET Ventures invests into companies doing smart energy solutions, mainly software and services. Hardware is ok as well, as long as the solution has a software or service component.
Companies have to have an impact on the energy system, furthering its transition. For example electric mobility solutions are relevant, but old-fashioned energy solutions would not be.
SET Ventures has excellent expertise in energy sector. “Many companies can skip through the first half of their presentation as we are already familiar with the basic problems and very well embedded in the whole European energy system.”
They’re looking at companies below €25M valuation pre-money (€30M post-money). The companies have to have the potential to be worth over €200M on exit.
SET Ventures seeks to hold a significant minority stake of typically 20% or more. typically takes an active board position but never sit on the management team. Fund lifetime is 10+2 years, they’re in it for the long haul (typically 4-7 years), not seeking to exit in a short time frame.
Contact to info@setventures.com goes to three people and they go through and respond to each case.
Northbound Startups is a cross-border accelerator program between Finland (Turku), Sweden (Västerås) and Estonia (Tallinn). They help startups build their business and get an investment from local and international investors. They connect startups to investors, mentors, buyers etc. from all three areas, boosting the startups’ ability to work across the Baltic sea. The program is free for startups.
The two-year project offers two comprehensive acceleration programs. one per year. Application period for autumn 2020 program is open from 15.6.2020 until mid-August and the program begins in September 2020 and ends in March 2021. The dates for the second batch are approx a month earlier in 2021.
The program collaborates with institutional investors, investor networks and other accelerator and incubator programs, such as Turku BusinessUp.
Previous similar programs, like Springboard, ignited multiple startups that got a great international start in 2 or 3 countries and cities through the program.
Elisa seeks startups to purchase innovations from as an early customer. They’re also seeking mature startups to acquire.
Their focus is on solutions that help them sell more connectivity solutions or additional services to their current customers. E.g. automation, industry 4.0, health care, entertainment, smart homes etc.
They’re happy to connect with startups that are interested in Finnish or Nordic-Baltic market.
Jätkäsaari Mobility Lab offers ways to pilot solutions in real-life city context in Helsinki, Finland. Their sweet spot is solutions that are ready to be tested, but they’re happy to discuss also with idea stage projects to see about future collaboration potential. The solutions should be related to safe and sustainable smart mobility.
They have 1-2 agile piloting calls per year, but also ongoing applications, so feel free to contact them any time.
The most recent call is open until 18.8.2020 with a maximum cost of one agile pilot being €15 000.
Redstone has six funds and 50 CVC partners. Their funds and sectors are listed in https://www.redstone.vc/sector-funds/. They are especially interested in industry 4.0, fintech, proptech, mobility, bio materials & agrotech.
One of the largest business angel networks in the world with 650 members.
Ticket range of most angels is €5-100k, median ticket size is €20k. Syndicates may invest up to €1M. Median syndicate size is €200k.
Smart Chemistry Park is the bio and circular economy startup and innovation hub of Turku Science Park. They offer premises and infrastructure for chemistry-related startups and a network of innovators. They’re a part of the wider Clean Turku network.
Their infrastructure helps mostly startups with a a need for laboratory facilities and physical piloting, but digital-only solutions are also welcome to the network. The premises are suitable also for many pharmaceutical development projects.
Forum Virium’s UIA Hope competition offers piloting opportunities for air quality related startups. The competition has over €200k budgeted for helping small companies pilot their air quality solutions. Piloting budgets are €5k – €40k per company depending on the track (available on their website).
Even the smallest companies can participate and offer their pilot projects for experimentation, but there needs to be a company registered in Finland by the time the pilot starts.
The solutions can be virtual or practical; hardware, software or other solutions. It has to be implementable, not completely abstract. Solution has to relate to digitality, but does not need to be completely digital.
The pilot offer can be sent in English and can be done as a PowerPoint or similar. The information on the competition itself is currently available only in Finnish, but can be translated to English upon first request. General information of the UIA Hope program is in English.