The most active investors and the macro, sectorial and geographic breakdown of the private investment market from Scandinavia in 2016.

The information below represents a global picture of the private investment market from Scandinavia, as assembled by using the data aggregated in the Knowledge Center, a Nordic 9 data service.

We encourage you to explore all the sections from The Knowledge Center, as it provides updated and granular information from the entire Nordic region regarding:
- Trends (most active investors, largest investments, most invested industries, most active geo hubs),
- Reports, macro and sectorial (by each industry or by each country - monthly, quarterly and annualy),
- Data tools (advanced search and comparison data of investors, companies or macro data).

The information is structured by following the links from below. The report consists of ten key takeaways for the year, tables and graphs, which we believe that they need not be further text described as they are self explanatory. All values in USD.

Key Takeaways
At a glance
The private investments in Scandinavia - the Macro breakdown.
The most active investors in Scandinavia.
The private investment market in Scandinavia - the Sectorial breakdown.
The private investment market in Scandinavia - the Geographic breakdown.
2016 vs 2015 - Scandinavia macro breakdown

Key Takeaways

1. Sweden is by far the dominant country in the region in terms of investments, both from a transaction number perspective (more than the other four countries together) and from a value perspective. Specifically, that would be 473 transactions totalling $765M for the Swedes, while Scandinavia gathered $1.9B from 838 transactions.

2. The countries' capitals - Stockholm, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo and Reykjavik - are the main startup hubs from the region attracting risk capital.

Malmö, Tampere, Göteborg, Lund, Espoo and Aarhus are also areas which attracted significant startup investment in 2016.

3. Scandinavia seems to be a very fertile place for early stage investments, with almost 600 bets under $5M from a bit more than 800 in total this year. That means increased competition at the bottom and more business development for growth money investors.

4. Consequently, there is a good active angel investment activity in the region - 36% from the total investment value. Compared to 2015, both the number and the value of round transactions under $500k doubled - for context there were 230 transactions rounds under $500k in 2016.

5. Notably, there is a number of 148 tracked investments with undisclosed value information - usually, this kind of investments are made at early stage levels.

Adding them up, we have:
- 230 transactions <$500k
- 114 transactions $500k-1M
- 254 transactions $1M-5M
- 148 transactions N/A
Total: 746 transactions.

That is roughly 90% from the total number of private investments made in Scandinavia in 2016.

6. Also worth mentioning is the good number of followup investments made by angel investors, with four individuals - Jonas Nordlander, Filip Engelbert, Peter Carlsson and Staffan Persson - being part of averaging rounds of $2M for the entire 2016.

7. Sweden angels are the most active in the region, with 7 individuals participating in minimum 5 investment rounds this year. On the opposite side there is Iceland where we were not able to track a single angel investment for the past 2 years.

8. Speaking of early stage investment, the state-owned VC houses - Almi (SW), SEED (DK) and Tekes (FI) - are among the most active risk takers in the Nordics. Except for them, other VC investors, active also on the growth levels, are Sunstone (DK), Wellstreet (SW, founded this year!), Northzone (SW), Industrifonden (SW), NFT (SW) and Inventure (FI).

A special mention for Propel and Chalmers, two very early stage funds from Sweden, also in top of the very active investors in 2016. Propel is a private fund investing in the companies from incubator/accelerator STING (Stockholm) whereas Chalmers is part of Chalmers University of Technology from Göteborg, with a very long investing tradition.

9. Most of the investments in Scandinavia were made in $1-5M rounds, which may signal the need of further growth capital needs in the following years (114 transactions vs 68 in 2015). In addition, the $5-10M rounds saw a double number of investments (48), compared to 2015.

The money is plenty, the investees just need to prove a product-market fit for scaling purposes. The most likely candidates will be the ones looking for internationalisation, as local markets are too small for justifying growth money returns.

10. Gaming, VR and financial services were the most sought after in terms of investments, which is not a surprise given the traditional investment returns from the past years in the Nordics. Mobile services, ecommerce and health are also strong areas which attracted risk money in 2016.

Note: the figures are the ones tracked by the end of 2016, there's usually a 30-45 days delay in recording all deals for a previous month. These together with minor deals not made public or we might have missed should be in an acceptable margin error range, with little impact on the overall trends. However, please keep in mind that the investment database as well as all Knowledge Center content is updated in real time, meaning that if, for example, we revise it with a 6 months old deal, the info is automatically updated within the entire site.

At a glance

all data cards are accessible here

The private investments in Scandinavia - the Macro breakdown.

All data cards are accessible here
 

The most active investors in Scandinavia.

All investors

Venture Capital investors

Angel Investors


All data is accessible here

The private investment market in Scandinavia - the Sectorial breakdown.
 

By the value of transactions

By the number of transactions

All industry data is accessible here, the figures breakdown by each industry is accessible here.

The private investment market in Scandinavia - the Geographic breakdown.

By value of transactions

By the number of transactions

All data is accessible for further digging here.

2016 vs 2015 - Scandinavia macro breakdown

For getting at a further detailed situation, you have more data comparison tools accessible here.