Nordic VC Inventure is right this moment asserting its fourth fund, of €150m, to again early-stage startups within the Baltics and Nordics. This fund may also see the VC dip its toes into even earlier levels by writing angel investor-sized tickets.
What’s the main target of the fund?
Inventure goals to be the primary institutional investor {that a} startup brings on, whether or not that firm is in B2B SaaS, healthtech, fintech, deeptech, marketplaces or client sectors.
A 3rd of the fund can be allotted for investments in new startups, with the remaining stored for follow-on investments within the best-performing startups, in line with funding accomplice Ekaterina Gianelli.
“What we all know finest is the way to create worth within the firm from pre-seed or all the way in which to Sequence B,” Gianelli says.
With ticket sizes starting from €200k to €5m, this fund additionally offers scope for the primary to make even earlier investments — angel investor-sized tickets.
Angel investments with out angels
Inventure’s shift in direction of attempting to entry even earlier-stage dealflow isn’t completely distinctive. Many later-stage VCs have began angel programmes to get higher visibility on early-stage firms and to make certain to not lose out on a number of the finest younger startups. Atomico, Sequoia, Blossom Capital and Backed VC have all launched their very own scout or angel programmes.
Seed and pre-seed VCs haven’t actually seen the necessity for it since they have already got good insights into early firms. Lots of the traders at these corporations additionally angel make investments with their very own cash, corresponding to Sophia Bendz, accomplice at Cherry Ventures.
Not like different scout and angel programmes in Europe, which give cash to angels to take a position on behalf of a agency, Inventure’s “angel tickets” can be written by its personal funding group. The method for writing these tickets can be much less in depth than the same old due diligence concerned in bigger tickets. In line with Gianelli, funding selections are finished inside two days of the startup taking calls with three of the firn’s traders.
“I feel this angel programme is mainly the earliest stage the place we will make investments when founders don’t have anything however an concept, a PowerPoint or one thing comparable,” says Gianelli, who runs the angel programme for Inventure.
Thus far this yr, the VC has finished 5 of those angel rounds with tickets starting from €200k to €500k. The plan is to do 18 in complete over the following two years, largely investing alongside different angel traders.
“It’s not an enormous amount of cash as such. However then, after all, from the founder’s perspective, it’s a really, very simple approach to get further cash so as to add on prime of, for instance, angel traders,” Gianelli says.
“The main focus is especially on operators and presumably serial entrepreneurs [for angel tickets]. Some may be new founders, however then we’ve to have a really excessive conviction that these folks know what they’re doing. And I feel that’s the largest wager.”
Not turning away from high-risk investments
Inventure is without doubt one of the most energetic VCs within the Nordics and has about 80 startups in its portfolio, amongst them the Finnish refurbished telephone startup Swappie, Swedish pet insurance coverage Lassie and an exit in Finnish meals supply startup Wolt, which was acquired by US-based DoorDash final yr.
With the tech market cooling down, many founders are involved that traders will flip their backs on high-risk investments to deal with much less dangerous startups. This isn’t one thing that Inventure plans to do.
“By way of threat profile, we haven’t modified. We put money into very early levels so it’s typically a wager on the founders and by supporting the very best ones we hope that they know what they’re doing,” Gianelli says.
The LPs
Whereas younger VCs could have a more durable time elevating capital for brand spanking new funds with the shift available in the market, closing its fourth fund was not an incredible problem for Inventure, in line with Gianelli.
With some slight delays with the previous few signatures, the fund is now full with backers made up of 90% institutional traders such because the European Funding Fund, UK-based Molten Ventures and native Nordic actors corresponding to insurance coverage firm Ilmarinen, the state-owned personal fairness firm Tesi and monetary establishments like OP and Nordea. The opposite 10% of LPs are household workplaces and personal people.
Mimi Billing is Sifted’s Nordic correspondent. She additionally covers healthtech, and tweets from @MimiBilling
