Denmark-based venture fund BackMinds, founded in 2016, likes to think that doing business in Europe should be done differently. The new €50 million fund will aim to take a path less traveled by most venture capital funds, seeking “the blind spots” that traditional venture capital often overlooks because of typical venture capital behavior (such as investing in white men in major capitals).
Instead, the new fund will look for companies with high potential outside of European capitals and for entrepreneurs who are often overlooked by traditional investors.
The fund’s investment range will be €500,000 to €3,000,000 on initial investment, and across Europe, excluding the UK, as it is outside the EU.
“Sweden is well ahead of demographic and digital transformation and we can apply many insights as we look for overlooked opportunities in Denmark and Scandinavia,” said Susanne Najafi, founder of BackingMinds, in a statement.
The fund’s geographic focus is on Northern Europe and includes LPs from Spotify, King, Supercell and the H&M family office, but no institutional investors to date.
Those LPs include Supercell’s CEO Ilkka Paananen, the Persson family that owns retailer H&M, and Spotify co-founder Martin Lorentzon. Other investors in the new fund include founders of private equity firms EQT and Nordic Capital, Thomas Hartwig, who is a co-founder of King – the company behind Candy Crush Saga. Also the founders of software company Sinch Robert Gerstmann and Kristian Mannik, and the Olsson family behind the Stena group of companies, including the ferry company.
After launching in 2016 with an undisclosed fund size, BackingMinds says it has since invested in 13 companies led by women or immigrants or outside the Stockholm area.
“It’s not about charity or investing in diversity, it’s about driving social change and eliminating injustices through good returns. We go straight to the solution, challenging bias and emphasizing blind spots by capturing returns in companies where traditional investors see only risk,” added Sara Wimmercranz.
Najafi was previously the founder of more than ten companies, several of which she left, including Eleven, one of the largest beauty e-tailers in Scandinavia. Wimmercranz previously co-founded the e-commerce company Footway, listed on First North Stockholm with a market capitalization of SEK 2 billion. They are joined by partners Sara Resvik and Niklas Thörnestad.
BackingMinds claims that evidence of these homogeneous networks and herd behavior is reflected in the VC data, which shows that most Danish VCs only invest in Danish startups, not further afield, while immigrant founders are often ignored.
Investments so far:
● Brain Stimulation: Precision diagnostics and individualized digital rehabilitation.
● Cemvision: reinventing cement with a product that is economically, environmentally friendly and technically superior.
● Combify: Construction technology specialized in digitization and visualization of data related to construction projects.
● Lingio: industry-validated language learning to improve operational efficiency in the labor market.
● Serviceform: Simplifies complex technologies and brings them all under one service – for all companies.
● Skrym: a headless solution for optimizing logistics with built-in emissions tracking.
