Salo IoT Campus is a community of high-tech companies, researchers and educational instutitions working together on a daily basis. They have over 100 companies and 2 000 people on working and studying on their campus.
They offer versatile premises, comprehensive services and an active expert community. They are seeking more companies and partners to join them in making a smarter future.
They’re based in Salo, Finland, approximately one hour from Helsinki.
Marubeni Corporation is one of the oldest ones in Japan with over 160 years of history. Their CVC arm is looking to co-invest €0.5M – 3M tickets into companies raising rounds of €3 – 50M. They look for scalable business models, and have invested into software, ecommerce, marketplaces, among others.
They are interested in smart city infrastructure (energy, EV charging etc.) and digital solutions (cyber security, entertainment, commerce, but not specializing in communication software).
Sampo Accelerator is a no-equity 3.5-week acceleration program ran by Mike Bradshaw, who was the Head Coach of Startup Sauna when that acceleration program was active. The program includes follow-up meetings and checkups after the program to support the founders’ growth path.
The program is optimized for first-time growth company founders. They’re looking for companies around launch, with a working demo but without significant customer numbers. The solution will be evaluated too when applying, but teams are the main focus. Teams typically have to have background in design or product development (ability to build a solution and generate interesting ideas).
The program is free until the company generates €1M of revenue profitably, at which point the company is suggested to make a small contribution to the accelerator’s founder community.
The coaches each have over three years of experience in building startups. They’re not investors, which enables them to offer an independent point of view.
Sampo Accelerator is ran three times a year, starting typically around October, January and April. They also organize a social gathering for alumni and coaches twice a year: the week before midsummer and around the time of Slush.
The Founder Institute runs two pre-seed acceleration programs in Finland: a general one for all founders, as well as a Global Center of Excellence for Food Ecosystems, interested in all food-related solutions.
Their program works for all founders, even those who don’t have an idea yet, until the stage of having good sales and the first professional investor on board.
The programs cost €599/€799 (early bird/regular fee), with a possibility to get a stipend to cover the costs. The participants also commit to a 4% warrant.
SCM Advisors is the UK-headquartered investment arm of the Ukrainian SCM conglomerate. SCM’s main industries are metals (especially steel), mining, and energy,. They also have a broad range of other investments e.g. in banking, retail and real estate.
They have a preference for B2B and data. About a third of their portfolio companies use AI or machine learning. They are interested in hardware investments too, especially on companies related to their group’s businesses. Health solutions like process automatization are interesting, but not pharmaceutical drugs.
They’re a co-investor, often the 2nd to 4th biggest investor on a round.
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.