VCs: Excel And Follow Your Passion
ArcticEvening Stockholm took place last night in Obaren, Sturehof despite being organised on the same date with Sweden playing against San Marino in football. The event was very high profile due to the panelists, having put in energy to come to Obaren from all over the Baltic region.
ArcticEvening Stockholm - 7th of September
ArcticEvening Stockholm is just around the corner! We have a very good lineup for Stockholm in order and honestly speaking, I hope we could have this panel in Tallinn and Helsinki as well.
Our theme for Stockholm will be Venture Capital and its state in the Nordics and Baltics.
Part of the questions will be provided by the moderator, but this time we'll try something new as well. Since we have the top venture capital companies of the region in our panel - we want to open up the possibility for the community to ask your questions as well. Therefore, do leave your questions in the comments of this post and we'll pick the best and most suitable ones.
Being A VC In The Nordics
Daniel Blomquist of Creandum, a Swedish early stage venture capital company, has posted an excellent post to their blog analysing the differences between the Nordic countries to other countries as well as analysing the differences within themselves. In essence, Daniel goes on to confirm what Will Cardwell said some time ago.
Creandum has gathered a lot of knowledge about the Nordic venture capital market over the last two years to understand the ecosystem better and thus be able to work in it better. They now share some of this knowledge with us. Their main findings from the report were:
Using A Sales Process for Venture Capital
Daniel Blomquist from Creandum venture capital firm wrote lately how entrepreneurs should focus more on which VC to approach than how to approach. He argues that you can make more out of your time if you try to find out and select the most prominent VCs for your firm beforehand. As Ville Vesterinen and Daniel mention in successive post's comments, it is a sales job. But a bit of clarifying could be used to point out the similarities and try enlighten the whole process further. The fund raising process seems to be somewhat comparable to business-to-business selling process.
An Interview With Daniel Blomquist, Creandum
I did an extensive interview with Daniel Blomquist from the Venture Capital firm Creandum. Daniel is an associate at Creandum and profiles innovative companies that have the potential to become market leaders in niche markets. He shares great insight on Nordic companies and gives some first hand tips on venture financing.
Many thanks to Daniel at this moment!
What’s the big idea behind Creandum, what's the philosphy so to speak?
Creandum was founded based on two important strategic principles. Firstly, from a market perspective, we identified a market opportunity due to the lack of professional venture capital investors in Nordic early-stage technology companies. We have seen through extensive analysis of the Nordic venture capital market that significant value has been created in companies that are less than 5-6 years old, which means that one has to invest early to be part of these successes. Secondly, from a resource perspective, we noticed that in many successful US early-stage venture capital firms, the investors often had entrepreneurial and technology backgrounds. This was rarely the case in Europe or the Nordic region. That’s why everyone at Creandum has an entrepreneurial background being involved in building and growing start-ups. Some have also worked as business angels before joining Creandum.
