List of top early-stage funds in Nordics

The Nordics has one of the most active startup ecosystems in Europe, with some of the continent’s most successful startups — including the likes of Klarna, Pleo, Aiven, and Oda — and 15 more unicorns. Four out of the five Nordic countries had record-breaking spells in 2021, with the highest aggregate funding ever recorded in the region and some of the largest rounds in Europe. So which are the top early-stage investors to know in the Nordics, where are they focusing their investments — and how’s the gender diversity of their investment teams?
Today, using data from Dealroom, Sifted is spotlighting the top early-stage investors in the Nordics. You can find Dealroom’s full methodology here, but the rankings are based on the following data points:

• Number of unicorns in portfolio
• Number of “future” unicorns in portfolio
• Number of rounds in the last 12 months

Dealroom has also weighted the rankings by a “dilution score”, so funds that invested in unicorns at seed stage got a higher score than those that got in at a later stage.
The rankings are divided into seed and Series A funds, however, some funds listed are investing at both of those stages.

1. Creandum (HQ Sweden)

Latest fund: Creandum announced a $500m fund (its sixth) in March, its largest fund to date.
Focus: The Stockholm-headquartered VC focuses on startups in Europe and European founders in the US. Creandum is industry agnostic but with its latest fund it is keen on areas such as the creator economy, Web3, the metaverse, energy and climate tech. It is able to write a wide range of cheques from €500k up to 12m.
Deal count in Europe in 2021: 16
Investment team gender split: Partners: 1 woman, 7 men. The wider investment team: 4 women, 7 men.
Notable investments:

• Swedish fintech giant Klarna (unicorn)
• German online broker Trade Republic (unicorn)
• Estonian mobility startup Bolt (unicorn)
• Swedish telehealth startup Kry (unicorn)

Full story here