Revenue: €2-4M/year

Valkea Growth Club

Valkea Growth Club is the startup acceleration, investment and support program of Fortum, a large Finnish energy corporation. The main goal that unites everyone associated with the Valkea Growth Club is to create a cleaner future.

Valkea develops Fortum’s experimented concepts to standalone companies and looks for external early stage startups to assist them in their journey. They offer expertise, development opportunities, funding and premises at Maria 01 in Helsinki.

Their mandate in brief:

  • Thematically focused around energy systems, sustainability & resource efficiency, and empowered consumers
  • High quality, usually digital solutions with >50M€ revenue scale potential
  • Series Seed-A, low 100k€s to low M€s
  • Startups with Nordic activities

They are interested especially in software solutions, but hardware can also be relevant.

Beiersdorf

Beiersdorf is a corporation focusing on skin care solutions, managing brands like Nivea and looking for companies that will help shape the future of skin care and wellbeing.

They’re interested in being the first pilot client of a startup, whether the offering is related software or a physical product.

Telia Lab

Telia Lab is seeking startups with whom to test new customer-based business and technology ideas. They’re the startup partnership unit of Telia, a large telecom in the Nordics and Baltics.

An ideal outcome from a partnership would be a new product they can sell to their existing client base.

Their focus is on software solutions, especially those working with mobile data. They’re also interested in emerging business areas like circular economy data solutions.

Lifeline Ventures

Lifeline Ventures is one of the most successful Finnish venture funds, focusing on teams with Finnish founders. They invest into companies in early stage only and have the capacity to follow-on at least pro rata until very late stages.

They prefer to lead the rounds of their initial investments and seek a board seat.

F10 Fintech Accelerator

F10 is a multi-corporate incubator and accelerator focusing on solutions for the Swiss financial sector.

As they are seeking matches to collaborate with their corporate partners, most of the startups they work with are B2B or B2B2C. They do work with especially strong or suitable B2C and B2G ones as well.

In their incubator program the invest CHF 200k for graduating startups, which are typically approx. 2/3 of companies who start the program. Their aim is that everyone would graduate. The investment is done as a convertible note.

Unknown Group

Unknown Group does startup scouting for corporations and governments, helping them find startups to buy from or partner with.

VenturesOne

VenturesOne invests into European and South Asian companies. They’re sector-agnostic, focusing more on teams and business models. They have a preference for B2B, but invest into strong companies with other clients types as well.

Combient Foundry

Combient Foundry is the venture client unit of a group of Nordic industrial corporations, including Epiroc, KONE, Scania, Stora Enso, Husqvarna Group and Fazer. Together they outline new business opportunities and ensure the corporations are ready to cooperate with agile startups, and publish new opportunities two to three times a year.

The business opportunities typically aim to start pilot projects of €50-200k within a few months, with the goal of long-term cooperation as a client and/or other forms of partnership.

They most often seek physical or software solutions. New operational and business models have also been relevant for them. Most of their challenges are B2B or B2C, but there have been cases involving B2G clients as well.

Submissions for their autumn period are open until 22.10.2020. The next period is expected to open in 2/2021.

Truffle Capital

Truffle Capital invests into software-intensive companies. They have a preference for deep tech and B2B and B2B2C, but have invested into strong B2C or applied tech cases as well.

Sector-wise they’re especially interested in fintech and insurtech.

VNTRS

VNTRS is helping startups validate their problem and solution and building the first product the right way. They also help in attracting further funding.

They’re looking for strong teams with industry expertise. Software has to be a part of the solution, but it doesn’t have to be the main part.

They’re based in Stockholm, and building new teams in Tallinn, Copenhagen, Helsinki, and Malmö. They’re happy to connect with experienced and entrepreneurial people in tech, product and UX fields who are interested in helping startups get their early product right.