BackingMinds raises new €50 million fund to fund usually neglected entrepreneurs • TechCrunch

Denmark-based enterprise fund BackingMinds, based in 2016, likes to suppose it takes a unique method to enterprise in Europe. Its new €50 million fund will goal to take a street much less travelled by most VCs, trying “for the blind spots” conventional enterprise capital can usually miss due to typical VC herd behaviour (similar to investing in white males in main capital cities).

As a substitute, the brand new fund will search for firms with excessive potential exterior of Europe’s capital cities and entrepreneurs usually neglected by conventional traders.

The funding vary of the fund can be €500,000 to €3,000,000 on preliminary investments, and throughout the entire of whole Europe, besides the UK, resulting from it being exterior the EU.

“Sweden is much forward by way of demographic and digital transformation and we are able to apply many insights when in search of neglected alternatives in Denmark and the Nordics,” mentioned Susanne Najafi, founding father of BackingMinds, in an announcement.

The fund’s geographical focus is northern Europe, and contains LPs from Spotify, King, Supercell, and the H&M household workplace, however to this point no institutional traders.

These LPs embody Supercell’s chief government Ilkka Paananen, the Persson household that owns retailer H&M, and co-founder of Spotify, Martin Lorentzon. Different traders within the new fund embody the founders of personal fairness companies EQT and Nordic Capital, Thomas Hartwig, who’s co-founder of King — the corporate behind Sweet Crush Saga. Additionally the founders of software program firm Sinch Robert Gerstmann and Kristian Mannik, and the Olsson household behind the Stena group of firms, together with the ferry operator.

After launching in 2016 with an undisclosed fund measurement, BackingMinds says it has since invested in 13 firms that are both led by ladies, immigrants, or lie exterior the Stockholm area.

“It’s not about charity or range investing, it’s about driving societal change and even out injustices by making good returns. We go straight to the answer, difficult bias and put deal with blind spots by delivering returns in firms the place conventional traders see nothing however dangers,” added Sara Wimmercranz.

Najafi, was beforehand the founding father of greater than ten firms, a number of of which she exited, together with Eleven, one of many largest magnificence e-tailers within the Nordics. Wimmercranz beforehand co-founded the e-commerce firm Footway, listed at First North Stockholm with a market cap of SEK 2 bn. They’re joined by companions Sara Resvik and Niklas Thörnestad.

BackingMinds claims that proof of those homogeneous networks and herd behaviour is displaying up within the VC information which exhibits most Danish VCs solely investing in Danish startups, not additional afield, whereas immigrant founders are sometimes ignored.

Investments so far:

● Mind Stimulation: Precision diagnostics and individualised digital rehabilitation.

● Cemvision: Re-inventing cement with a product that’s economical, environmental pleasant and technically superior.

● Combify: Development tech specialised in digitalisation and visualisation of knowledge associated to development tasks.

● Lingio: Trade-validated language studying to enhance operational effectivity within the labour market.

● Serviceform: Makes advanced applied sciences easy and convey all of them beneath one service – for all companies.

● Skrym: A headless resolution for optimising logistics with built-in emissions monitoring.