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Dear friends,
What a year it’s been! With all the challenges life has thrown at us, here at Wellstreet we have kept our momentum and have continued to support our companies on their path to success. We are proud of our founders for weathering the storm, and feel energised and excited for 2021!
What's Up?
🔔 2020 Recap
Looking back on this year, we made 12 investments, in 6 new startups and 6 existing portfolio companies. We hosted 135 workshops and mentoring sessions for our portfolio, and we established Wellstreet’s first fund: Wellstreet Ventures Fund I 😅 Watch this short video summarising our stats, to a somewhat over-dramatic soundtrack 🤗
🔔 Global Partnerships
As an investor at idea and seed-stage, our partnerships are key to help scale our impact on portfolio companies and this year we have worked hard to solidify those relationships. With Google for Startups widening our network, and additional partners like Level 39 in London, le Village in Europe and Numa in New York, our portfolio now has access to tech hubs and ecosystems all over the world!
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🔔 Partnership with Cancerfonden
We proudly announce yet another strategic partnership close to our hearts, with Cancerfonden, The Swedish Cancer Society. Through this collaboration, we will seek out every opportunity for Cancerfonden to fundraise through Wellstreet's portfolio and network activities.
This year, we will skip our usual Christmas festivities here at Wellstreet - as most of you will I’m sure - to avoid the spread of the virus. 😷 We have also chosen to refrain from sending out Christmas presents to our network of friends and investors. However, Christmas doesn’t have to be canceled for everyone so we chose instead to donate to Cancerfonden, where it can make a difference. We also invite you to donate your usual Christmas office party budget to this amazing cause and to support the essential work they do.
Portfolio Update
🔥 DanAds reached revenues of 4M USD, and growth of 105% over last year. The team has grown to 100+ employees, in the Stockholm and London office, and was joined by key staff in US, Canada and Ukraine, including Andreas Larsson joining them as interim CFO. They were also appointed as one of the top strategic partners in the industry by AdExchanger.
🌪️ Returnado this year grew the number of returns processed through the platform by 433% and its recurring revenue 500%. They published the initial results on their work for Royal Design, who saw their returns and claims handling time become significantly faster and a 29% reconversion to exchanges rather than refunds. 📦
💰 Pensure: since we invested in June, Pensure has built up its senior management team with a CMO, a CTO, and Key Account Manager and announced strategic partnerships, notably with Bookio and Alexis HR in order to offer their services to an ever-growing pool of customers.
🕹️ Gamifiera experienced fantastic results with their first customer Inet.com, who saw user content creation increase by 2000% thanks to the service. 85 times more unique customers now interact with member functionality and they have seen 1.5 million new customer interactions since implementation in June. What’s more, all effects are purely organic and still growing 6 months after launch, without any notifications, SMS or emails sent to customers, and no bonuses or physical incentives. 🤯
🎽 ICIW had a fantastic year performing above all expectations, and in November reached over 100M SEK revenue for 2020. 🏃
Don’t miss!
⬥ Future of Retail: we announced our investment in Future of Retail, as we believe the relationship between retailers and suppliers is in great need of change. Read about it here. 🆕
⬥ Fintech Loft: We've been busy lately building a framework to prepare for the Swedish fintech ecosystem of the future. Curious? Read our special newsletter edition, the Wellstreet Fintech Journal, and see what that's all about. 💰
⬥ Have a look at this Wired article pointing out how obsessing over heroic origin stories of brilliant founders with one-time brain waves has made us overlook the importance of R&D, execution, iteration and team work. 🖥️ 💻 🤖
⬥ Team: If you’re reading this journal but you’re still not sure who I am, you can read about me here. 🙈😳
That’s all for 2020 folks!
Wellstreet has big plans for 2021, so see you all again soon for further announcements. Until then, despite the circumstances, we hope you have a magical Christmas 🎄 and a wonderful and much-needed break.
Our warmest wishes,
Jess & the Wellstreet Team
