Product readiness: 4. Product

Kiuas

Kiuas is a completely free and possibly the most well-known student-led accelerator in Finland. It’s completely free. In addition to the program itself, participating startups will get a toolbox of startup goodies, including free cloud platform credits etc.

Application period for the summer 2020 program is until Wed 20.5.2020. Autumn batch will likely be held in October-November, with application period in September.

The program is usually held onsite in Espoo, Finland, but the summer 2020 program is held as a remote, virtual one. The program is focused for helping startups integrate with their alumni and mentor community in Finland, so any non-Finnish startups that apply should be ready to move to Finland.

Their spring and autumn batches are three-week pre-acceleration programs called Kiuas Start, for which idea stage startups are welcome. The main program in the summer requires the team to have a working solution already. The nine-week main program focuses on developing product-market fit, customer relationships, team and culture building for growth, and preparing for funding rounds.

Accelerace

Accelerace’s acceleration programs are based in Denmark, but most can be participated in remotely. All their programs are free of charge, no equity taken. They have an extensive network of corporate partners internationally, especially in Europe.

Most of their programs can be participated in remotely, but some may require either physical presence or a registered in Denmark.

Their focus areas are life science, sound, energy, food and beverage, entertainment, IoT. They run more than one program per year per average in each of their focus areas, and typically at least one program’s application period is open on any given time.

They have a fund to invest in the best of their participating startups. The investment tickets are 500k DKK, which is approximately €65k. These investments are done as a convertible note, and are completely optional for the startup to accept or not. It’s done as a co-investment, so the startup has to have another investor investing a minimum of 125k DKK (approx €17k) at the same time. Accelerace is happy to help find suitable investors.

Their life science tech startup mentorship program is highly rated in the Nordics. Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland. It’s funded by the Novo Nordic foundation.

They also partner with Overkill Ventures in Riga, Latvia.

Turku Science Park LevelUp

Incubation service in Turku, Finland, that has been running already for six years. Participating startups should have graduated from an acceleration program or be otherwise ready to sell their product to early customers.

They offer a network of mentors and industry contacts in addition to a working space for 12 months. The program is completely free of charge.

Their program for the autumn 2020 is being designed and its detailed information is expected to be released in the summer. You can ask more from marko.puhtila@turkubusinessregion.com.

Turku Science Park BusinessUp

Acceleration program in Turku, Finland, that has been running already for four years. Participating startups can be of any type and do not need to have any working prototype or proof-of-concept yet, but should be ready to start turning their idea into reality.

They offer a mentoring program for 10 weeks. The program is completely free of charge.

Their autumn 2020 applications are open 1.6.-1.9.2020. You can ask more from johanna.puhtila@turkubusinessregion.com.

Expon Capital

Expon Capital invests in tech for good, things that help develop the society as a whole while doing a good business. They do not invest in gaming, esports, marketing, advertising tech. They’re not an impact investor, but they do value UN sustainable development goals in framing the investment impact.

Their investments include Spire, Glovo, Catalyte, companies that are taking on the world’s biggest challenges.

They typically co-invest. They prefer to have a board seat but are flexible.

Tera Ventures

Tera Ventures specializes in early stage deep tech software companies. They’re often the first institutional investor, helping to get other professional investors in for bigger funding rounds.

They prefer B2B companies, but are willing to consider B2B2C ones as well. They can consider investing into hardware-software companies if the value is mainly in the software side. They’re fine with health tech.

They look to have a board seat in the companies they invest in. They commonly syndicate so that they’re the lead investor.

They can be reached at tera@tera.vc.

AP Ventures

AP Ventures invests into energy-related innovations, especially hydrogen. They are headquartered in London and invest globally.

They do follow on their investments.

You can contact them at info@apventuresllp.com.

Notion Capital

Notion Capital is a B2B SaaS & cloud fund. They also invest into B2B2C and B2G IT solutions. Hardware is ok as a distribution method, but value has to be focused in the software.

They often invest when MRR is 50k – 200k, but revenue is not as relevant as evidence of demand (significant pain it addresses), knowing the ideal customer profile, having a distribution channel that works. They then come in to help open new distribution channels, hire talent and scale the operations. 20 people team, 10 investing and 10 in the “platform team” working closely with the founders. Helping decide who to hire, how to price, best ways to enter market and measure success.

Most of their tickets are 3-7M. They’re interested in talking already a bit outside this range, and occasionally make exceptions to the ticket size. They may also invite founders to events even if they’re a bit outside their ticket range, especially cases that are a bit earlier stage.

They’re looking to follow on at least once, more for good performers, all the way through to exit (IPO or acquisition). They often lead rounds and are ideally looking for 12.5% or more.

ValueTech

ValueTech seed fund is focused on transformative technologies that benefit multiple types of industries, such as solutions in energy, cybersecurity and manufacturing.

Investment companies have to have a Polish legal entity, but don’t need to move entirely to Poland. They’re often the lead investor.

They’re happy to serve on a supervisory board, but not get actively involved with company management.

Revo Capital

Revo Capital invests into developing East-European markets. Traction is required and B2B is preferred, but B2C is also ok.

They often look for a board seat. Their home market is in Turkey.

They consider themselves active helpers of their companies, especially in expanding beyond the home market. Founders of the fund have C-level background in the largest Turkish telecom.