Launching our new $50m Swedish Seed Fund in Europe’s Top Unicorn Factory
The new fund has already received $33m in commitments from renowned tech entrepreneurs such as New York-based Kevin Ryan, founder of $8bn database company MongoDB, and Martin Gren, founder of the Swedish unicorn Axis Communications.
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With currently more venture capital at the later stages than ever before, J12 will invest earlier than most institutional investors in the region, filling an important gap for Swedish innovation, a gap that the more established VC firms have left behind due to increasingly big fund size; such as recent closes of EQT Ventures at €660m, Northzone at $500m and Creandum at $300m. Strong relationships with later-stage investors being of essence, several partners at leading European VC firms have also invested in the new fund, e.g. Johan Brenner at Creandum — early investors in Spotify and iZettle, Hans Otterling at Northzone, Malin Holmberg at Target Global, headquartered in Berlin and Nenad Marovac at London based DN Capital.
“We decided to back J12 as we believe that they are well positioned to fill the early stage gap in the Swedish market” — says Nenad Marovac from DN Cap and previous chair of Invest Europe, the leading VC and PE association in Europe.
Acknowledging the market gap, J12’s track record, and our team’s ambition to establish a top tier VC firm, the state-owned investment company Saminvest is also backing the new fund.
Track Record from SSE Alumni Fund — DHS
We have built up a track record managing the Swedish angel network DHS Venture Partners, backed by a group of 25 Stockholm School of Economics alumni consisting of diversified entrepreneurs and business leaders (13 female, 12 male) such as Lars Lindgren, Eva Redhe, Susanna Campbell and Mattias Miksche. By co-investing alongside the group, J12 has been able to get greater access to deals early and can combine the value-add that a dedicated fund brings with the specialised expertise and industry knowledge of individual angels.
The previous fund DHS has been amongst the first investors in for example the food app Karma, now backed by Kinnevik and US firm Bessemer Venture Partners and home rental platform Qasa, recently acquired by Blocket, part of the Schibsted house.
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We invest in companies addressing 1) Sustainable Systems, 2) Better Being and 3) Empowered People
Leveraging the strong local footprint combined with a diversified expert network, J12 is looking to invest in 25–30 Nordic, predominantly Swedish companies across industries and business models within 1) Sustainable Systems, 2) Better Being and 3) Empowered People (post coming to explain this in more detail).
Today, about two-thirds of the investments have a consumer focus, many being marketplaces, the other third being B2B, typically SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies. It is expected to keep a similar distribution going forward.
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About Sweden Tech
In 2019, Sweden represented 68% of Nordic VC investments and in particular, Stockholm has grown into a unique melting pot for technology ventures and claims after Silicon Valley, to be the home to the second most unicorns per capita in the world as well as the largest tech company in Europe, Spotify. Already today, 18% of the workforce work in high-tech related jobs and with now second, third and fourth generations of entrepreneurs from the likes of Spotify, Klarna, King, Truecaller, iZettle, Skype and Cint, experienced tech talent mingles in abundance as never before.
About J12
Behind J12 is besides serial entrepreneur Bo Mattsson, a 29-year-old entrepreneur-trio, Swiss Luca Banderet, Francoswede Alexander Paterson Pochet and Englishman Emmet King. The international trio has originally founded J12 in 2014 in the heart of Stockholm, on Johannesgatan 12, and have since co-founded various tech and investment ventures.
