ambitious Nordic founders
• Klarna's 10 M&A deals from the past 12 months
• will a husband and wife translate their local mket share from Sweden in Europe?
• Estonians raised funding to go where the competition is fiercest
• Danish startup made by Irish woman taking a stab at online groceries business.
Interesting deals
🇸🇪 Pricerunner was acquired by Klarna in a $1 billion deal - 20X revenues, generated only out of Sweden.
Embedded finance locally and likely will incorporate the technology in other markets - Klarna's app is increasingly positioned as a competitor to Amazon's marketplace, though arguably with a slight different implementation approach. Btw, they hate being called a marketplace competing with Amazon's but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... Will look more into it over the weekend.
Fwiw, Pricerunner is the tenth (and the priciest) M&A deal that we tracked for Klarna in the past 12 months:
• M&A deals: Woilà (Sweden), Search Engine Marketing (Sweden), Toplooks (US), Hero Towers (UK), Stocard (Germany), Apprl (Sweden), Inspirock (US).
• equity investments: Violet (US), Billie (Germany).
🇪🇪 Ampler Bikes, manufacturer of electric bikes, raised $8.6 million from Taavet+Sten, joined by Jaan Tallinn's Metaplanet, Ambient Sound Investments and Ragnar Sass.
Founded in 2014 by a former moto racer pro, it looks like an Estonian business all the way given that the backers are all high profile locals.
Ampler has only lived off their sales and crowdfunding equity, which I'd assume thickened their skin for selling conviction and building brand and community. This round seems like the next level and the first where they take onboard pro investors - Taavet is one of Europe's super angels fwiw and I bet his new VC vehicle is more ambitious than that.
So it is a story to follow, particularly how Ampler unfolds business for conquering European markets - they say that the money raised will be used to expand in the Netherlands and Switzerland as the next core markets alongside Germany, by opening new showrooms and service centres. Exactly where the competition is stronger in Europe, right?
🇸🇪 Eways, which operates 8,000 smart charging points across Sweden, raised $8.1 million from local investors and said it wanted to list locally in Stockholm in the spring.
Those guys are good - husband and wife, started it out of an apartment back in 2015 and rode an adverse wave of no electric cars sold in Sweden for a few years. The tide has turned in 2018ish - fun fact: Sweden is third after Norway and the Netherlands in terms of EVs adoption in Europe.
The question is, of course - are they able to scale it out Sweden and turn into an unicorn? I believe you can accomplish any bold goal if you work with the right people. :-)
And then, an additional, market-related one - how does this model of owning hardware sold for a subscription fare against a marketplace model like those guys are doing? Some high profile pros already betted on the marketplace model, so there's that.
🇩🇰 Coalescent Mobile Robotics, building robots for grocery warehouses, raised $1.9 million from seasoned robots-experienced investors.
I believe this is what makes the online grocery shopping business interesting. How do you achieve economies of scales and scope by using as little labor as possible - Amazon has mastered it, while the bunch of VC-backed startups doing grocery are more preoccupied to spend $ for marketing and mket share so they could flip the companies and make VCs happy. But retail ops is all about supply chain fixed costs optimisation, because inventory is killing your opex anyways.
So that is a tangent reason for which I find Coalescent interesting. Will they be able to pull a multi million business out of it? Perhaps - worth knowing is that the biz is made by an Irish lady with solid robotics experience, both as academic and in the business out of Odense's robot hub.
Other notable startup deals
🇸🇪 Svea Solar, providing end-to-end integrated solutions for capturing solar energy, raised $18.5 million from local angel investors (big check for wealthy individuals).
🇸🇪 Skyresponse, SAAS supplier of solutions for distribution and management of alarms and events generated by connected devices, raised $5.8 million from Nordic Eye and existing backers.
🇸🇪 Quartr, building a mobile app for investor conference calls, raised $5 million from a local family office, 6 months after they raised $1.6M from angels.
🇸🇪 Elsa Science, building a medical platform designed to help people manage chronic illnesses, raised $4.5 million from investors led by HealthCap.
🇳🇴 Eduplaytion, developer of a math game used by some 80k Norwegian students, raised $3.5 million from Peak Capital and local investors.
🇫🇮 Mjuk, operating a marketplace for quality secondhand furniture, raised $1.6 million in a round led by Lifeline Ventures.
🇸🇪 Skillbreak, operating a community marketplace for workshops, raised $800k from local angels.
🇳🇴 Hayk, startup building a car-sharing operation, raised $600k from Link Venture Capital.
🇸🇪 Waytobill, SAAS developer of a tool used for telesales checkout, raised $350k from a local angel investor.
🇪🇪 Mentornaut, building an online tutoring marketplace, raised $200k from local angels.
Please note that this is just a deal selection - the complete dealflow is available here.
Active investors
🇳🇴 Melesio Capital
🇸🇪 Polynom Invest
🇸🇪 Edastra Venture Capital
🇳🇱 Peak Capital
🇸🇪 Fredrik Posse (founder at Soundtrap)
🇫🇮 Ville Vesterinen (Atomico's scout)
🇺🇸 Michael Batnick (research director at a NY-based wealth management firm)
🇳🇴 Back in September, Schibsted went all in in a local new gen electricity provider w/ 100k customers with a $40+ million secondary deal on top of an all-shares M&A deal.
🇸🇪 EQT Ventures followed on a $75 million series C closed by a British software developer of a tool for advertising-based businesses.
🇫🇮 Maki VC followed on a $4.8 million seed+ round led by Hoxton in a British biotech using AI to predict how viruses will change.
🇩🇰 The European subscription management market remains both fragmented and in its early stages - PSG merged a German company portfolio with a Danish one doing SAAS for payment processes and subscriptions.
Not least important, Norwegian Visma just bought another Danish startup doing API-driven subscription technology.
🇸🇪 Louise Fritjofsson, wife of Creandum's partner Carl Fritjofsson, raised $3 million from Upfront Ventures for a food waste startup selling online groceries in California. (fascinating to see how an established food waste model in Europe will get implemented in California)
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