Product readiness: 2. Proof of concept

Specialist VC

Specialist VC invests into companies based in, or founders from the Baltics, Finland and Ukraine. They focus on B2B software companies, marketplaces, and software-enabled hardware companies. They have also invested in some B2C and hardware companies through their previous fund, United Angels VC.

The fund’s partners have built companies like Civitta and Fortumo, followed by a decade of angel investing. Their network also includes many advisors, including a scientific advisor in biotech.

For SaaS companies they seek initial traction, e.g. €10k MRR. For deep tech companies this is not as much of a requirement.

They often co-invest, occasionally also lead. They haven’t done any solo investments so far.

They have supported some portfolio companies through participating in their boards, but this has not been a requirement to invest.

They also do secondary investments, where early employees and investors sell some of their shares and receive the money to themselves, as opposed to the company issuing new shares.

Superangel

Superangel is a Nordic-Baltic fund investing in tech startups that are changing the world. They are able to invest around the globe, but focus on their home region.

All the partners are founders, making this a founders-to-founders fund. Their backgrounds are in building and growing tech startups.

They have a long-term support program to help startups get to the next level. It includes expert coaches, team culture development to be ready for scaling, basecamps, helping set up company management structure (which aspects to focus on and follow monthly) and so on.

Crowberry Capital

Crowberry Capital is a Nordic-Baltic early-stage tech investor. Most of their team is based in Iceland and Denmark.

They prefer software. They don’t mind hardware, as long as it’s scalable and has a significant software component. They’re very interested in deep tech software.

Geographically they focus on the Nordics and Baltics. In exceptional cases invest into startups from elsewhere Europe as well, if the company has a strong enough link to the Nordics and Baltics.

They’re not interested in life sciences (mainly due to long development cycles), fast-moving consumer goods or gambling.

Their advisors include David Helgason, founder of Unity Technologies.

 

Highrise Ventures

Highrise Ventures focuses on European startups in proptech, smart buildings and adjacent fields. The team was experience both as investors and founders in ecommerce, IoT, real estate, proptech and construction tech startups. Urban tech, greentech, sustainability, urban mobility and energy sources and energy infrastructure are also interesting for them.

They invest mostly in B2B and B2B2C tech companies, especially deep tech. They’re generally not that interested proptech transaction or asset valuation companies. They are very welcoming for diverse teams as well as first-time founders.

They’re also interested in company building and company replication opportunities, and they have a team that is able to support these endeavours. Around a quarter of their portfolio fits these models.

They’re often either the only investor or a co-investor of a round, with leading a round being rare for them.

Honey Badger Capital

Honey Badger is angel syndicate of three founders of PipeDrive, a successful SaaS company from Estonia. They are especially happy to help SaaS companies and cleantech ones, but are also looking for other founders they could help succeed.

They’re most often a co-investor instead of a lead one.

Angular Ventures

Angular Ventures invests into early-stage B2B companies, especially those aiming to sell to big companies. They invest into European and Israeli founders globally, as well as teams based in Europe or Israel.

They prefer software companies, with hardware being ok as long as the main value is in the software side. Marketplaces are also interesting to them, especially if they value-add services to users. They’re interested in both deep and regular tech as long as they’re sellable to enterprise customers and the capital needs are reasonable.

They have an extensive venture partner program of senior experts in companies like Google to help portfolio companies get their offering and processes right for enterprise customers.

They often lead initial rounds but not the follow-on ones.

Indie Investments

Indie Investments is the angel investment company of Heikki Nakari. He has a long corporate background in the financial sector and asset management. As an angel investor he’s very selective. Environmental technologies are close to his heart, but the business fundamentals have to always be strong as well.

Due to his strong and varied background in the financial sector, he has the capacity to offer more than just an angel ticket in especially interesting cases.

Startup Norway

Startup Norway is a private organization, offering multiple acceleration programs for Nordic startups and investment opportunities for angel investors. In addition to pitching events, they offer a training program for angel investors. Their startup programs include generalistic fundraising for early-stage startups, as well as ones focused on fields like travel, fashion, sustainability.

They prefer startups have at least a working prototype. They also have some programs for Norwegian startups where an idea can also suffice.

Metsä Spring

Metsä Spring is looking for startups that add value to the Metsä Group ecosystem. They’re the CVC unit of Metsä Group, a large Finnish forest industry group.

On manufacturing model companies they focus on those in the pilot and demo phase. On service model companies they’re most interested in those in the proof-of-concept stage.

Valuatum

Valuatum is a company making credit risk asssessment with AI. They also make angel-type investments into early-stage companies in technology, especially B2B SaaS and energy, and traditional fields as well, such as machinery.

Their contact person for investments is Esa Mäkeläinen.