Wellstreet Journal - October 2022

Dear friends,

Welcome to the Wellstreet Journal! 📰 Read here updates about our activities and our portfolio. We also share some external news that caught our eye and reports we feel are worth the read. It’s now a straight line to 2023 so it’s time to get our heads down and do what needs to be done to end a challenging year with flying colours! Let’s go! 🏃

🔔 It was a pleasure to participate in Gothenburg Tech Week 2022! We hosted an investor panel at an after-work with startups and investors in our local office. Fellow investors shared insights inton the current investment climate and what has changed in their investment process. Thank you to  Spintop’s Peter Carlsson, Norrsken’s Beata Enwall and Crowberry’s Jack Peters for joining us! ✨ Jessica, one of our partners and fund managers, also moderated a panel on the challenges of commercialization and fundraising for quantum computing companies. She also held a “fireside chat” sharing insights into how startups and investors can navigate these tough times and best practices for pivoting.

We are enjoying taking a more active role in the Gothenburg ecosystem! You can meet Jessica on the 10th of November at the Nordic Women in Techs Awards and our Chair of the Board, Caroline, on the 11th of November at the Chalmers Days of Entrepreneurship, where she will hold a keynote speech about entrepreneurship in a rapidly changing world. So reach out if you want to meet us that week!

🔔  Wellstreet has new teammates! Please welcome our new Head of Investor Relations Mikael Magnusson and Joseph Hajj, who will work as an Investment Manager for the Fintech Fund.

👋 Joseph Hajj is an experienced fintech executive. He was an early employee at Klarna, working with strategy, expansion and financing. He then moved on to lead business development and expansion at Benify before co-founding Saffron, a 500-startups backed business, and later founded Phoenician Ventures and Hardcorepayments.com. More recently, Joseph was the Chief Strategy Officer of Swish, the largest Mobile wallet in Europe. He was also one of the founders and the board's Vice Chairman for the European Mobile Payment System Association.

👋 Mikael Magnusson is a seasoned entrepreneur with extensive experience in bringing together investors, customers, partners and other stakeholders to create relationships, networks and communities. For the last fifteen years, he’s worked as CEO, most of the time in the Danfo group, spearheading their 230 employees' operations, turning it into a world leader in its segment. He also devotes his time to several board assignments, such as Chairman of the board of Danske Bank Örebro and Homemaker AB, board member of Danske Bank Karlstad, Indus AB and Skandiamäklarna Örebro, alongside a number of assignments connected to his family’s horse farm and competition activities.

In his role at Wellstreet, Mikael Magnusson works as a bridge between investors and the team, focusing on information sharing and relationship building. Wellstreet is on a journey to create added value and opportunities for our stakeholders and Mikael is an integral part of further developing these initiatives.

Fund news

🚀 Warm welcome to our newest addition to the Ventures portfolio: Y/ELM+! 🐎

Y/ELM+ is a Stockholm-based startup developing next-generation horse rider safety and protection solutions. Founded in 2021, Y/ELM+ focuses on creating cutting-edge rider safety solutions through technology and materials-based innovation — enabling enhanced rider performance via its signature modular, modern designs. Alexandra Berhe, co-founder and CEO, says “I want to give riders safe, smart and comfortable gear with superior shock-absorbing abilities for all riding situations. My one wish as a rider has always been to find failsafe protection that looks good and never gets in the way of the riding experience.🐴🏇

The startup’s funding round was also backed by the serial entrepreneur Alexander Hars and riding star Ebba Danielsson, bringing on board their experience in e-commerce and the horse riding industry, respectively. Danielsson also joins Y/ELM+ as one of the ambassadors for the next generation of highly promising riders. Among other individual accomplishments, she was selected for the Swedish junior national team, where she finished off as a Swedish champion.

Portfolio News

🛒 Happy Socks’ Engineering Team Lead, Isaac Kuehnle-Nelson, talked about how the team used the Brink Commerce API to migrate from a monolith to composable commerce in under sixteen weeks and an incredible downtime of zero milliseconds when going live. 🧦 Isaac tells us what this transition has meant for them. On another note, Brink Commerce is now ready to take on the US market, with the planned expansion rolling out now.

🔥 We totally agree with DanAds’ CEO, Istvan Beres! The team is doing very well and grabbing headlines across the ads industry. CMO Lisen Zethraeus was interviewed MarTech Series about how self-serve is disrupting the Big Tech advertising monopoly; Co-Founder Peo Persson wrote in MarketingProfs about how SMEs are driving the current ads boom and what to expect from 2023; DanAds’ new partnership with Aflorithmic was covered in AiThority with a cool new tool for publishers to create text-to-speech ads quicker and better than before. Moreover, you can read a great use case for Mail Metro Media Ad Manager, built and powered by DanAds.🗞️

👾 It warms our hearts when we see our companies’ customers succeeding, and Gamifiera sure knows how that feels! You can read about how Scandinavian Photo is experiencing a staggering performance jump and how Gymgrosssystem is leveraging its new loyalty system. 🤯 CEO Wille also joined the Metaverse Panel at Nordic Retail Summit, discussing the next generation of shopping with representatives from Snapchat, Microsoft, Frame and Axel Johnson. 🤳

🚸 Hyber was featured in Dagens Industri, highlighting the importance of sharing services in these difficult times. When we reevaluate our expenses due to inflation, it’s easy to fall back into previous traps and make decisions that are short-term and not environmentally friendly or financially beneficial long term. It’s more important than ever that we make better use of what we have and pay attention to the sustainable solutions around us, such as rental. 💚

🛍️ Zalster has recently moved into our office space in Gothenburg and we love to see them closer to us. Things are going so well that they actually needed a bigger office to accommodate the growing team! Wishing them well for the months ahead!👯

Fund News

🚀 Warm welcome to our newest addition to the Fintech portfolio: Enable Banking!

💸 Enable Banking, a Nordic fintech startup based out of Finland, is on a mission to become one of the EU’s leading open banking startups. By delivering open banking APIs and putting customers back in control of their data, the startup has quickly made a name for itself in European fintech. The funding was led by Wellstreet’s Fintech Fund and also included participation from Dutch investment firm Forward VC. The funding guarantees the continued development of the company's infrastructure, technology, and further international expansion into the EU – which Enable Banking has already started pursuing. 📈

The investment news was shared together with a significant new hire, the industry veteran Sarah Häger. A powerful name and leading force in the space, Sarah decided to leave Nordea after fifteen years, where she spearheaded their digital initiatives. Her new job at Enable banking is as the Regional Manager for Scandinavia and the German-speaking countries and she will drive the company’s expansion in both regions.💪

Portfolio News

🏆 We are super proud! Esgaia was announced as the winner of the “Best regulatory change management solution for ESG" in A-Team Group's inaugural ESG Insights Awards! The awards recognize both established solution vendors and innovative newcomers providing leading ESG solutions, services and consultancy to capital markets participants. In addition, Esgaia also partnered up with Glass, Lewis & Co., a leading independent provider of global governance and engagement support services, to provide a customized version of our technology to its institutional investor clients. 🌱

🎥 Pensure visited us at The Factory some weeks ago and used our premises to film a story on how Pensure and its partners Bokio och AlexisHR use innovative ways to solve problems and create growth. We're all looking forward to watching the video about this new case and they promised to release it soon, so be sure to stay tuned on their LinkedIn! 👀

🔍 Last month we told you about Texelio’s ESG use case. Now, they announced the launch of 60+ purpose-trained topics across fields of finance, ESG, strategy and law in their platform. So instead of repeating keyword searches, investors can have their portfolios mapped to key topics they care about, saving significant time finding relevant insights in press releases, news articles, or earnings calls. ✅

⬥ Martin Weigert at Sweedish Tech Weekly compiled an extensive list of Swedish tech startups and scaleups founded and led by women. We are happy to see Alexandra Berhe at Y/ELM+, Olivia Rothschild at Hyber and Matilda Hannäs at Skillbreak. Although she’s not on the list, we also highlight Emelie Strömshed, co-founder of Anatomic Studios. Shout out also to Joina, Brite, Emigreat, Ovulai, Gigapay and Meela, we love these companies founded by fantastic women and wish them every success! 🙋‍♀️

⬥ How Can Business Leaders Create Diverse, Inclusive, and Effective Cultures? Our chair of the board Caroline is an active spokesperson on this topic and other discussions surrounding ESG implementation; her most recent engagement was attending a panel on Realtid’s ESG day. You can hear her talk about it on this podcast episode by Policy 2050. 🙌

⬥ Do you know those “facts” you hear at dinner parties and that sound slightly off? Well, Sifted ran the numbers to expose some of the 2022 European startup myths for what they are. 🤔

⬥ TikTok is launching live-stream commerce in the US. It’ll be interesting to follow that journey!📲🛒

⬥ Wellstreet is very active in fintech for a reason: we truly believe that our thesis is deeply connected to the core of the next generation’s financial needs. And we love to see others think alike: “As this market expands, success will hinge on rethinking the risk and brand calculus, embracing different integration models, and understanding where to play.” Read this report about Embedded Finance by Bain & Company. 🪙💸

Help our companies grow their fantastic teams and get in touch if you know anyone who could be a great fit for any of these roles. 💻

⬥ Brink Commerce wants to fill the offices with change-makers and offers great positions, like Commercial Manager (for DACH region), Senior Software Engineer, Inspiring Tech Evangelist/Writer and VP/Country Lead Commercial in the UK.

⬥ DanAds always has excellent openings. They are now looking for a Solution Engineer.

⬥ Maintract is growing fast now. They need a Fullstack Developer, a UX intern, a Junior Sales Executive and a Junior Developer.

⬥ Textual also has a few open positions; check them out!

⬥ X Shore is looking for a People Partner and a Production Leader.

That’s all from us this time. We hope things are going well for all of you. 🍂 If you need any support or fancy popping in for an Autumn pep talk in Stockholm or Gothenburg, please do! You can also reach out to us at contact@wellstreet.vc with comments or suggestions! 😉

‍The Wellstreet Team