Sparkmind

Sparkmind.vc is the first Nordic venture capital company focused on the learning sector. They invest in teams transforming early childhood, K12, higher, secondary and vocational education as well as corporate and lifelong learning. Their geographical home field is Europe, especially North Europe, but they also selectively do investments outside the region.

They often join the boards of their portfolio companies.

Open Circle Capital

Open Circle is based in Lithuania and they have partners in Finland and Denmark. Most of their investments are in Lithuania, but they can invest anywhere in the European Economic Area.

Their ideal case is to co-invest or lead a round into a software company. This is the 3/5 year of their investment period and they look forward to making a couple more new investments. They’re stake size agnostic.

Their usual minimum ticket is 100ke. In exceptional cases they have done 50ke, and in very exceptional cases can consider even smaller tickets.

They prefer applying startups to contact the partner whose experience best matches their area.

Norrsken VC

Impact fund. Focuses on continental Nordics: Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, with some emphasis also on Baltics. Prefers co-investing outside Sweden, but has also led rounds outside their home market.

Invests €0.5-1M on early stage companies. They exceptionally invest up to €2M initial tickets on later stage companies. Looking for a 5-10x return.

Trind Ventures

€23M fund focusing on software technology in Finland and Baltics. Can invest also elsewhere in Europe. Hardware can be a minor component of an invested company’s offering, but software has to be the main part. Commonly co-invests with other funds. Can lead rounds in their focus geography.

Prefer B2B and B2C. B2G investments would require significant indications that the sales cycle is much faster than average in that area.

They look for traction before investing. In B2B there has to be revenue, in B2C traction can be proven in other ways as well.

They prefer to participate in companies at the board level.

Karma Ventures

Karma Ventures invest into early-stage deep tech software in Baltics, Nordics, and in especially strong cases also elsewhere in Europe.

They’re looking for companies with technological advantage. Doesn’t have to be IPR, but something valuable and very hard to imitate. They look for companies with traction, first clients validating the demand, but in exceptional cases pre-revenue can also be considered.

In terms of sectors, life sciences are not their focus, but deep tech B2B health software can be interesting.

They prefer to lead, co-lead or invest solo.

Contrarian Ventures

Contrarian Ventures is a European fund investing into companies transforming the energy sector, including where and how it is used, with an emphasis on sustainability. They are also interested all energy tech, e-mobility, automation, AI, hydrogen, energy grids, and energy storage. They have an especial liking for software and hardware-enabled software.

They focus on B2B, but are interested in especially strong B2C and B2G cases as well.

The partners have extensive expertise and networks in energy and its associated sectors in addition to startups and venture capital. They have a singular focus on helping the best energy-related startups succeed.

They prefer to lead or co-lead in deals. They’re an active investor, seeking to add value through their network, expertise and services for all portfolio companies. They often look for a place on the board, at least as an observer. Their HQ is in Vilnius with partners based in London and other key European cities.

Helen Ventures

Helen Ventures is the €50M energy CVC fund of Helsinki energy company Helen. Their investments are connected to energy: production, storage, transmission, usage, saving, carbon neutrality, digital and other operational solutions for a large energy company, and related solution areas like mobility and circular economy.

SpeedUp Venture Capital

SpeedUp invests in companies that have a connection with Poland. This can come in many forms within 5 years after the investment, for example R&D or sales.

Most of their investments are in B2B, B2B2C and SaaS companies. B2G is possible in cases with strong indications of ability to sell and scale.

It’s common for them to be the only investor in the round, but they’ll be happy to lead or co-invest as well.

SpeedUp has two funds with different investment criteria.

Larger fund

Ticket size €600k – 1M, sweet spot 750k, maximum total allocation per company 5M.

Product type: Any tech except pharma, very rarely also Marketplaces (connection with e.g. energy, IoT, industry, smart manufacturing, cleantech)

Revenue: €100k/y or more.

Product readiness level: Product or Scaling

Valuation: Max €10M

Smaller fund

Ticket size €200k-250k, sweet spot 250k, maximum total allocation per company 250k (no follow-on).

Product type: Any tech that has an R&D component. No marketplaces. Pharma is possible.

Revenue: None or any.

Product stage: Proof of Concept, Prototype or Product.

Valuation: Max €4M

The company’s requirements for a connection with Poland are more strict.

General information

The information below is generated automatically from the investor’s overall information in our database, which doesn’t separate between different funds of the same investor.

Apex Ventures

Apex Ventures is a deep tech fund headquartered in Vienna. Their home markets are the German-speaking DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). They’re happy to lead investment rounds into companies from these countries and co-invest in companies from elsewhere in Europe.

OpenOcean

OpenOcean invests into digital data-intensive solutions with significant indications of ability to sell and scale. B2B is a big plus, other business models are possible with very strong traction.

They have invested in open source solutions such as MySQL, MariaDB and RapidMiner. Other areas of especial interest include AI/ML, application-driven infrastructure and development tools, marketing technology, and automation and recommendation engines.

They look for cases that have a ready product + early revenue, a proven product-market fit. Typically they like to see companies already have €50k MRR (€500k/year recurring revenue).

They require a board seat as a condition of investing.  They’re often the lead investor of a round.