How many Partners at international VC firms you can pitch to in Finnish? After this week, there is one more as Atomico named Teddie Wardi a partner. Aalto graduate is now in charge of Nordics, Benelux and Baltics; and SaaS/enterprise tech investments on a European level at the VC firm founded by Niklas Zennström and Mattias Ljungman.
The Aalto graduate is now in charge of Nordics, Benelux and Baltics; and SaaS/enterprise tech investments on a European level at the VC firm founded by Niklas Zennström and Mattias Ljungman. In the international VC scene, Nokia Growth Partners has had several Finnish partners, and PulseOn founder Tero Mennander is a venture partner at Ventech these days.
In 2007 Teddie co-founded Nervogrid, a SaaS-based cloud service management platform. He was 23 and studying at Helsinki School of Economics at a time. Nervogrid was acquired by the publicly listed IT distribution group ALSO in early 2014. His recent investments include Scandit and Bitmovin, and he also works closely with Truecaller, Klarna and Quid.
When we talk with Teddie, the call is coming appropriately from “Ilkka & Mikko” – all Atomico meeting rooms are named after founders. This one stands for Supercell founders.
With both Atomico founders coming from Sweden, looking at Nordics is a special task at the venture firm, which is looking for the best entrepreneurs in the region alongside a dozen others international players.
“Nordics has been a hot region globally for quite a lot of time, but if you look at how many investments people have made – how many active investors there are? It’s a short list,” Wardi said.
The most active investment firms on the list invest often in seed rounds already — a number of Nordic A rounds is counted in tens per year, not more.
“In the seed stage, there is not a huge lack of capital. The number of active investors has increased rapidly. The scene has got a lot healthier,” Wardi said. “There’s no doubt the quality of startup and quality of teams in Nordics is better than ever.”
With a large number of startups getting early funding, the challenge to get further funding has started to increase for later stage investment rounds.
“In the next few years there is still a bit of the funding gap from Series B and onwards,” Wardi said.
At the same time with Teddie’s promotion Atomico named also Carolina Brochado as a Partner. Her recent investments include LendInvest, Farmdrop, Gympass and Uniplaces.
