Wave Ventures, which was established in Finland, is managed by ambitious students. The company is supported by investors, including the Skype-founder Niklas Zennström. Now, Wave Ventures announced in a press release that they expand to Sweden.
Young students from Aalto and Helsingfors Universities established Wave Ventures in Finland. Now, they want to expand to Sweden. The company can currently manage approximately SEK 12M (about € 125 800). The amount mainly comes from Niklas Zennström, founder of Skype and Atomico.
To embark business in Sweden, Wave Ventures stationed Rasmus Areskoug from Lund University as a venture partner. Furthermore, Hampus Jakobsson (Nordic Makers) and Marta Sjögren (Northzone) joined the company as advisors. In Sweden, the Venture Capital fund will cover Stockholm and Skåne, without any permanent office in the beginning.
“Since we are well established in Finland, we decided to launch our business in Sweden as a natural step towards expanding to other countries”, says Andreas Saari, a co-founder student and executive manager at Wave Ventures. “Our target does not confine on looking for promising companies. We want to work hand by hand with the entrepreneurs we are collaborating with”, he added.
Micro investments at an early stage
Since launching the business in May, Wave Ventures started investing at companies like Quicksave, Blok, Surgify and Carbo Culture.
“We are going to launch 30-40 investments in value of SEK 250.000-500.000 (ca. € 26200-52500), which will be quite enough for our team to continue with their ideas”, according to Andreas Saari.
The fund is managed entirely by a team of students, and the team composition will be updated regularly. The diverse student team’s greatest asset is being immersed in the very same community with the future founders – their current peers. Wave Ventures is backed by an experienced advisor team consisting of Nordic serial entrepreneurs and VCs, ensuring continuity and providing their experience to back up the team and to help further accelerate the initiative of uniting the Nordic startup ecosystem.
“I have been following Wave Ventures’ team for a while, and believe that the young students have their fingers very well on the pulse of the tech scene and especially the early adopters’ consumer group. As for someone rooting for unifying the Nordic startup ecosystem, I think the initiative of an easily approachable student-run fund is extremely refreshing”, tells Marta Sjögren, the latest addition to the fund’s advisor team and an investor at Northzone, the first investor in Spotify, Avito, Trustpilot, and over 100 other tech companies.
As for the next steps, the company is now on the lookout for the boldest founders in Sweden, especially in the fields of SaaS, consumer cases, and deep tech. In addition, they are looking for top talent from local universities to join the management team of students in near future.
