The Finnish Airbnb of event spaces expands to Sweden

    Venuu raises €425 000 on a funding round that got a great boost from Arctic15 – And starts its expansion in Scandinavia.

    Venuu, the Finnish online marketplace for event spaces, announces raising €425 000 in a funding round led by Sanoma Ventures and Reaktor Polte. The service launched in 2013 starts its international expansion with the help of new funds from the western neighbour of Finland.

    “In Sweden we’ll perfect our recipe for quickly opening a new market. The goal is to open the service in the next market early 2016”, says Jasu Koponen, the CEO of Venuu.

    The company has had a strong start in Sweden – where they launched Venuu.se marketplace officially this month – with over 300 joining already the platform. In Finland, the marketplace currently delivers more than €1 500 000 worth of booking requests monthly to its over 1300 event spaces.

    Excited Koponen also tells that the funding round got a great boost from Arctic15 in May, where the company made their first connections with the new investors.

    “We met two of our investors at Arctic15, and when they decided to start supporting us – we actually got few more investors joining in too. So the connections we made at the event became really important for us on getting the funding round actually rolling,” describes Koponen.