Wohoo!
New year and I’m back! Hope you all had a relaxing holiday and are now bursting with energy and new ideas to get the year started. End of December announcements from VCs were mostly filled with reliving all the cool achievements from 2021, so not much happened with funding rounds since the last letter. The January trend on the other hand is predicting what's going to happen during the year.
As always, happy to hear from you, let me know what I missed, what I can improve & what you’d like to read about!
Funding rounds
🇪🇪 Ready Player Me raised 13m$ for their meta verse avatar platform.
🇪🇪 Woola raised 2.5m€ to replace bubble wrap with leftover wool.
🇮🇸 Spectaflow raised 1.7m€ for their hotel ops SaaS.
🇱🇹 HeavyFinance raised 1m$ to connect farmers to investors.
🇩🇰 Lift raised 3m$ for their AI-based client relationship platform.
🇱🇹 No-CV raised 212k$ for their hiring app.
🇪🇪 Migrevention raised 335k€ to treat migrant remotely.
Did I miss something - send me a note!
Quick Notes
Karma Ventures looking for new team members.
PreSeed Ventures launched their new 55m€ fund.
Slush is looking for people to join their team.
Icebreaker.vc is hiring for the investment team & finance.
J12 Ventures is looking for an investor relations manager and a marketing manager.
Sound Bioventures launched their fund with a 110m€ first close.
Opinion
Since this is the first newsletter of the year, lets go with the same theme as most newspapers - my predictions for 2022. Some articles I stumbled upon on the topic: Nine predictions for Nordic tech in 2022, 2022 startup predictions: insights from European investors & 2022 will be the “year of deep tech” say investors. And the rest is purely my own thoughts.
The blockchain/crypto/web3/metaverse (yes, I’m pooling everything together, deal with it) hype in European VCs will continue and we’ll see more VCs jump in the game. I believe this is especially driven by the younger generation of VCs that are excited about the opportunities in the space.
With the energy prices on the rise in Europe, we’ll start to see companies tackling the problems in the energy space with a strong focus on sustainable solutions. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw new companies similar to those that have gone bust, like bulb for example.
The creator economy will see new players as more and more people are looking for that influencer career. We’ll see tools for creators to leverage new opportunities or perhaps its apps that help jump in on the latest TikTok trends or software helping manage content and engagement across platforms.
Food & food delivery will continue to grow and we’ll see new companies in the space as the covid situation encourages us to stay at home. This includes everything from new foods to 10-min grocery delivery companies.
On a similar note as a covid trend, quick shipping of products will also see more new companies in the space or existing companies hopping on the trend. It’s more fun to shop from home when your new ice skates appear at your door in 15 minutes and you can go out skating almost immediately.
We will not see any improvement in the % of funding towards female founders. I would love to predict the exact opposite, but I just don’t see any strong signals suggesting that.
Sustainability and solutions for the climate crisis will be on the lips of founders and VCs alike. More climate VCs will emerge and existing fund managers will share their thoughts and investments in the space. Especially the younger generation of founders will bring new solutions and ideas.
Finland specific, we’ll see even more Slush generation founders as well as those who jump on the journey again after building successful companies (e.g. Wolt).
Let me know what your predictions are & lets get back to these at the end of the year.
Some inspiration to your January
All the best,
Josefiina