Or how to consciously decide on your level of risk

byFounders Celebrates Camille Zivré's Promotion to Principal

Forget everything you thought you knew.

Creating the right context for productive work with AI-powered summarization

OWND abstracts away the complexity of purchasing NFTs by lowering the technical, financial, and social barriers. This allows fashion enthusiasts and sneakerheads to purchase, trade, and collect fashion NFTs, including physical items from leading brands such as Nike, Adidas Originals, Gucci, Prada, to name a few. And they are just getting started. 

Investing in a greener future with DREM - Accelerating the deployment of heat pumps

Supernormal uses a fine-tuned Large Language Model to automatically generate meeting summaries, decisions, and action points.

Too often, we see small business owners hurting from the stress of financial uncertainty. We see them learning the hard way (and often too late) that they should’ve invested in tools that bring visibility to their finances, and they should’ve asked for support to help make the right strategic financial decisions in a timely manner.

Watalook offers a comprehensive platform that caters to the unique needs of independent beauty professionals, allowing them to manage their clients, brand, and finances all in one place.

We're finishing the year strong by welcoming Magnus Melau to the team as Impact & Finance Manager. In his role, Magnus will support our portfolio companies in building and scaling responsible businesses while ensuring transparency in our operations and financial performance. Read on to find out more about him and our reasoning for introducing such a role.

Proptech startup Proper has just raised an additional €3 million in new funding. The Copenhagen-based team is aiming to transform the way we live, facilitating greater harmony between landlords and tenants.

Creative Force’s mission is to streamline and enable creative operations for leading e-commerce brands and online retailers. In a nutshell, they automate manual tasks so the creator can focus on creativity.

Dr. Sara Naseri - CEO & co-founder of our, Qvin recently made some noise in the media and on stage as the the stellar team launched the Q-Pad: the first and only healthcare service to scientifically prove menstrual blood can test for critical health information – just like a traditional laboratory blood test.

For years, I tried to self-educate myself about VC and the startup industry. I read and studied as many books, articles, and podcasts as I could, and watched as many episodes of Silicon Valley as possible to get a glimpse into the life of a VC. I have now been with byFounders for 9+ months and I have come to the conclusion that VC is not something that can be self-taught. Here's what I've learned.

With a background in operations & product at climate tech giants, Northvolt and Einride, and an engrained go-get-'em attitude brought on by her New Jersey roots, Idil comes with an impact-driven personality and focus to byFounders.

Cello is the world’s first user-led growth platform that helps businesses to harness their most passionate users to drive word-of-mouth growth at scale.

We’re humbled to announce that Magnus Hambleton has joined the byFounders investment team. Currently sitting with us at our headquarters in Copenhagen, Magnus will be one of the first employees to join the Stockholm office, which is due to open its doors in late 2022.

“The main bottleneck for European startup growth is not the lack of capital, it’s the lack of talent!” This sentence has been said by many and I’m now stating it again because it’s sadly the truth. If we are serious about wanting Europe’s tech scene to thrive (and one day be on par - or better - than the US) then we need to drastically improve our ability to attract and retain talent.

We’ve been truly excited by the emergence of parenting tech for a while now, and supporting children and their parents in dealing with mental health struggles is a mission we obviously want to stand behind. We’ve been actively looking for the right combination of a product market fit and founder drive. When we came across Aumio - a unique sleep and mindfulness cosmos for children - jumping onboard was a no-brainer for us. Let us tell you why. 

Anonymous VC review site Landscape has published the first list of the top 20 seed investors in Europe, based exclusively on feedback from founders - and byFounders made the list! Thank you to all of you who voted for us!

Do you know how difficult it is to find a needle in a haystack? That's how Tommy and I felt when we started to search for a third partner. Today, we're excited to announced that we actually managed to find the needle in the haystack. Please welcome Sara Rywe as the third partner of byFounders.

We’re so proud to lead the €4m seed round in London-based Fuzey: the all-in-one messaging platform that centralizes small businesses’ communications, payments, marketing, and calendars. 

We’re so excited to welcome Camille Zivré to the investment team and look forward to seeing in action the passion and dedication she has toward founders.

Anne-Sofie Nielsen, VP of Software Development at the global HR & financial SaaS company, Workday, previous CTO of Peakon and nemlig.com, and an active member of the byFounders Collective, shares with us some of the challenges of growing with a CTO role, how to acquire some of the skills that will be needed along the way, and when to consider if you are still the best fit for the role - and vice versa.

Unless you have a celebrity founder, or a flair for spectacular press stunts, getting press coverage for your startup is notoriously hard. Very few have a revolutionary product to carry them through, and the reality is that 99% of startups aren’t inherently newsworthy.

We invested in Monta in March this year. Since then, Casper and Anders and the rest of the team have not looked back and we are firm believers in Monta being on track to be the dominant EV charging platform in Europe and beyond. Here’s why:

The human costs of the pandemic forced the scientific community to rethink how processes, such as drug development, can be done 10x faster than before. PipeBio is at the frontline of that development.

Because no founder should have to go it alone.

For too long crypto native companies have been lacking a stable and secure banking foundation to run their businesses from without the fear of being shut down by their, presumed, banking partner. Enter Januar.

Denmark is in a unique position to become one of the largest impact startup hubs in Europe. The responsibility of investors, beyond financial returns, is being taken more seriously following the corona crisis and criteria like ESG will soon become mandatory. Paired with a new generation of mission-driven founders, who are becoming more selective about what investors they will allow onto their cap table, we see the responsibility movement positively accelerating.

When first meeting Victor Folmann and listening to a very candid podcast episode he did on Iværksætterhistorier we learned that Victor’s entrepreneurial career started already in his teens. He quickly realized that he had a knack for sales; whether it was vegetables or cell phones didn’t matter; you had something to sell; he was your guy.

Having been a long-time user of dating apps, I was intrigued when we got the tip that there was a brand new super-hot dating app in Iceland. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but after meeting David, understanding his background and vision for the product, and being blown away by his charisma and displayed drive, I was sold.

At byFounders, we are a team of enthusiastic foodies. So, when we heard about BonBot: a modular retail food concept with a mobile front-end and a robot-powered store, we knew we had to meet the talent behind it. Learning that BonBot was founded by extremely impressive King veterans made us even more intrigued.

The pandemic has showed everyone one thing: remote work is here to stay. In this article, Tony Beltramelli, CEO & co-founder of Uizard.io, shares what he's learned from running a remote-first company for the past three years.

What is it like working for a VC in the New Nordics? Our most-recent joiner, Kipras, shares his experiences to, hopefully, help others who may be thinking about breaking into the industry find the best fit.

Since day one, we have made efforts to take responsibility beyond what’s expected of a VC. We are now making these efforts more explicit by gearing up to launch a holistically impact-aware strategy. Here's how we are taking the next step to building the VC fund of Tomorrow.

Similarly to how you need to consider who you want to join you on your journey, we as investors need to consider what rocket ships we should opt for a seat on. In this post, we are outlining how we structure our thinking when evaluating companies.

"There are few things with my job that I appreciate more than when people drastically surpass all my expectations!" - Sara Rywe, Investor here at byFounders, was so impressed by the founder's tenacity, extraordinary grit and structure, she knew we absolutely needed to be part of their journey.

Imagine building something transformative. Then imagine no one ever noticing. In this article, we share why founders need a Minimum Viable Distribution strategy to succeed.

2020 was a year like no other. But moving behind the screens did not slow us down: we still welcomed seven new startups to our portfolio! From an AML software company working to ‘make money good’, to AI that makes negotiating more honest and responsible, without further ado, let’s meet our newcomers!

At byFounders, we instantly got excited about the idea of building a digital property manager that automates all manual tasks while also ensuring that the property owner and landlord feel in control. More importantly, we were captivated by the founders.

This month we didn’t just onboard two new byFounders Collective members from Norway: we also welcomed Kipras to our core team!

Further bolstering our position in the Norwegian tech ecosystem, the byFounders Collective now encompasses a total of 65 of the most successful entrepreneurs and operators in the Nordics and Baltics, providing its portfolio companies operational expertise and a global network.

What do you need to know at seed stage? In the spirit of transparency, we wanted to share our Term Sheet and our thoughts behind some of the clauses we deem most important.

What makes us a community-powered VC fund? Why, our Collective members, Portfolio founders, and core team, of course. Let us introduce you to them.

“Stories help us connect with people, and build community.”

We are delighted to introduce the latest addition to our team: Sebastian Johansson!

Perhaps best known for her time as co-founder, COO, and interim CEO of KRY (2014–2018), Josefin previously founded Glossybox and has served as COO at Videoplaza and Faction Skis.

In this post, team member, Bjarni, aims to take a closer look at recent innovations within FashionTech and highlight some of the trends and startups that are disrupting the fashion industry. Based on this, he will make some predictions as to what is to come.

On why we invested in Bob W - an alternative to hotels and hosted homes. By sourcing and decorating high-quality suites in curated neighborhoods, Bob W can offer the livability and affordability of short-stay homes with the consistency and sustainability at scale of a hotel, 100% digital and touchless.

“I’m inspired by the people who set out to solve some of the world’s most pressing challenges — the one of a kind people who dare to be “nerdy.” I feel grateful and privileged to be able to listen to the stories of these founders daily.”

How to build your board — or the art of carefully choosing your investors

The past year has been fun and intense for the byFounders team. We've made a total of 14 investments, of which 11 are brand new entries to our portfolio. Ranging from AI-trained robots to computer vision prototyping, sustainability-as-a-service, a global social safety net, automated contract handling and more, it’s safe to say that we’re staying true to our agnostic investment focus.

We’re proud to welcome three new founders to the byFounders Collective: Christine Spiten, Lasse Andresen and Karl Munthe-Kaas.

Johan Brand notices a concerning trend: many early-stage founders give up too much ownership of their business too early. How to think about your cap table?

At byFounders we invest in seed stage companies across the Nordics and Baltics. Deliberately spending time on the ground across all the countries in which we invest, the byFounders team have the honor of meeting so many great founders, investors and ecosystem players all contributing to the success of Nordic and Baltic entrepreneurship. Recently, we’ve been seeing interesting signs of something brewing in one country in particular: Norway. This is why we think it's time to pay attention.

Since our inception, we’ve invested in the brilliant founders behind 11 awesome companies. We're looking forward to meeting, following, and investing in many more from across the New Nordics in the years to come!

This month we didn't only close our first-time EUR 100 million fund — we're moreover thrilled to welcome Juuso Koskinen to the byFounders team!

How we raised a EUR 100 million first-time fund to support the next generation of Nordic and Baltic founders

We're proud to announce that serial entrepreneur and founder of Transfluent, Jani Penttinen, joins byFounders as our first Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) to support the next generation of Nordic and Baltic founders.

Robin Daniels (Matterport, Salesforce, Box, LinkedIn, WeWork) shares some key marketing lessons you should keep in mind as you grow your own company.