Dear friends,
Welcome to the Wellstreet Journal! 📰 If you are new to the Wellstreet newsletter, this is our way of updating you about our activities and our portfolios. We also share some external news that caught our eye and reports we feel are worth the read. Start your engines and use the autumn well to boost your business. We may be living through trying times, but they push us to be creative and resilient, so when easier days come, we’ll look back and be proud of our achievements. Let’s go!
🔔 Kick-starting our autumn with a bang, we put together a Wellstreet Launchpad event to prepare early-stage startups for scale. As part of our partnership with Google for Startups, we dedicated this edition to underrepresented founders and most companies were finalists of the Shift Initiative, organized by Breakit and Bling. 🙏Read more about it here.
At the 2-days event, the facilitators and speakers shared their skills and knowledge, covering digital marketing, founding teams’ relationships and investor tips.💡The ten participating startups expressed that their absolute favorite part was the four 1-on-1 mentoring sessions they each received. Yes, there were 40 mentoring sessions in total! The sessions provided an “eye-opening experience”, as one of the founders put it! Thank you to everyone who came!
🔔 Wellstreet has new teammates!
We are happy to welcome our new associate Pontus Lund to our family. He is a driven intrapreneur with a background in banking, having had several roles at Nordea, including customer centric-roles and business development, focusing on customer growth, strategy and implementation. Working at Wellstreet since August, Pontus supports our fund managers to screen the deal flow, develop business cases and identify financial viability. 👋
A new position! Our growth advisor Helen von Bahr is now Wellstreet’s CMO. She is a driven, passionate, entrepreneurial marketing and sales expert with a solid track record of developing and optimizing business models in many reputable companies that grew to be scaleups. She has an extensive understanding of the online performance media and sales environment with an international focus. Helen supports our portfolio companies with their marketing and growth strategies and now, apart from that, she is assuming a few more responsibilities. We are happy to see more of her and experience her advice ourselves! 👋
Say hi as well to Joshua Seidel, who’s interning with us this autumn! Josh is German, and just graduated in Management and Economics at the University of Innsbruck, focusing on Finance and Investment. Previously, he worked in the cost management department of UniCredit in Milan and project/operations management at a Swiss digital asset platform. Josh assists the fund managers with business model cases and evaluating companies.👋
Fund news
🚀 Pixery Media will now be part of Hydda Group!🏘️
This partnership will take proptech to the next level, broadening the value chain and value proposition to real estate and construction companies. With Pixerymedia, Hydda will offer shortened sales times, reduced financial risk and enhanced experience of buying or renting homes and offices. Check out the new configuration system, STUDIO delivered by another company under Hydda Group’s umbrella. This product allows home buyers to configure their future homes using a specific or global product database. We're incredibly proud of this great team, developing inspiring and easy-to-use property visualization solutions. We look forward to following their future journey within this new partnership!👏
🚀 We’re happy to see that Zalster is also on track to a beautiful future, now as part of the VO2 family!
Zalster set sail six years ago with the vision to become the new marketing standard for anyone working with Social Ads. Now it is one of Scandinavia's leading companies in tech-based advertising on social media. Entrepreneurs Nathanael Andersson, Albin Stöp and Antonios Kioksoglou founded the company in Gothenburg. It was backed by reputable investors such as Alexander Hars and Lena Apler, alongside Wellstreet. Vo2 is the next-generation holding company for the media tech industry, seeking to create a new large media tech group in Europe. ✨ The future of social ads looks brighter – we look forward to seeing the business develop and scale further!
.gif)
Portfolio News
🦿 Top fashion magazine, Expressen’s Damernas Värld, featured Anatomic Studios. Check out the interview with the founders!
🛒 Congratulations to Brink Commerce for successfully implementing Happy Socks’ new Ecom! 💸💸💸 They now have a modern and hassle-free platform ready to take them to the next level! Happy Socks joined Brink’s satisfied customers' list, such as Efva Attling, C’est normal, Tan Revel, Glas, Rondure and Axel Arigato.
🔥 Congratulations to DanAds! First, DanAds opened TWO new offices! They have officially opened a space in New York City, bringing them closer to their vast client list based in the USA, like The Washington Post, Roku, Tripadvisor, and Expedia Group. It also allows them to support and scale new clients more efficiently. The second office is in Warsaw, Poland, and around ten developers staff it. Second, they were named a High Performer for Summer 2022 by G2, the leading B2B software review site. And third, they revealed the latest addition to the DanAds family: welcome MX Player.
👾 Five main reasons retailers fail in their loyalty programs: Gamifiera's CEO Wilhelm Sporrong discusses the challenges and solutions for e-commerce brands at Spiceworks News & Insights. We would say that the best solution is just partnering up with Gamifiera, as Scandinavian Photo discovered quite quickly! 🤯 They collected more written reviews during the first 20 days live than during the last 12 months combined! And that’s before truly initiating member activities and activating monetary incentives. Good start!
🏋️ Do what you preach! ICIW committed to reducing its emissions by 35% per product by 2025. On top of that, they’ll compensate for 100% of their calculated emissions every year. This year ICIW is investing in two certified projects with the help of ZeroMission: Trees For Global Benefit in Uganda and ADES Solar Stoves in Madagascar. ✅
📢 NEW BOAT ALERT 🚤 X Shore just launched a revolutionary new boat – with an accessible price point! CEO Jenny Keisu shared with Bloomberg how the new X Shore 1 brings about a “Tesla moment” for the electric maritime industry. 💚 X Shore’s commitment to achieving a net-zero emissions boat by 2030 is also a highlight of the interview.⚓If you want to know more about the boat and its specs, go to X Shore's website and design your own X Shore 1!
Portfolio News
🥳 Happy birthday Esgaia! The company has reached many milestones so far in its two years of activities, but we’re sure this is only the beginning!
👏 Future of Retail achieved impressive results in the year's first half! Take a look at how many e-tailers decided to take their business to a new level with the help of Ola Levin and his great team! By the way, they made three new hires over the summer. So they are coming in hot for this autumn! ♨️
📝 Maintract has a new product! Maintract Negotiation Room is your one-stop shop for negotiations. Using this tool allows you to avoid countless versions and endless email threads. Instead, just relax and focus on what really matters. 😌
💳 Steven, the company that offers the world's first card for shared expenses, has teamed up with Minna Technologies to simplify subscription management. The partnership will allow Steven’s 200,000 users to identify and manage recurring expenses and cancel subscriptions, like streaming services and gym memberships, directly within the app. Are we dreaming? Nope, it’s just Steven making dreams come true!
📚 According to Bloomberg, sustainable investments set records in 2021. However, following trends and scraping the internet is not a sustainable way to meet ESG compliance. Texelio wealth solution helps customers to know better faster - casting the widest of nets to provide investment/financial information. Read their ESG use case here. And to learn more, connect with them on Twitter and Instagram.
⬥ In our Launchpad, the startups worked with Kate Gray on the Founders Lab workshop, a deep session about understanding how the founders' relationship is essential to a successful company. Disagreement between founders is one of the top reasons startups fail in the first year. Read different perspectives Sifted gathered on what you can do when founders disagree. 🙊
⬥ Great article from McKinsey about how the Nordics are working hard to create sustainability champions and what they should focus on to become the leading region in the world. 🌱
⬥ Still confused about Web3? CB Insights’ got you; here’s a guide to navigating it. Let us know what you think! 🌐
⬥ Another CB Insights great article; this time, it’s a D2C Survival Guide - read here case studies on successes and failures of well-known D2C darlings. 🛍️
⬥ Dawn Capital wrote this piece to comment on the necessary revolution that the e-commerce industry needs. They list the companies leading this process; sure enough, Brink Commerce is one of the mentioned trailblazers. 🛒
⬥ Read the Q2 2022 InsurTech Insights report from FT Partners Research. 🔒
⬥ Femstreet shared an interesting “Startup Founder's Guide to Equity”, divided into Part I, Part II and Part III, written by Yin Wu. Worth the read! 💸
⬥ Finally! A “condescending moniker” reducing female founders looking for investment only to their gender, The Girlboss concept is dying. Read it at Forbes. 🙄
⬥Five fintechs from our portfolio are on the watchlist that The Mastercard Lighthouse highlighted as up-and-coming companies in the Nordics and Baltics. Congratulations to Enable Banking, Esgaia, Future of Retail, Texelio and Aura Cloud! 🤩
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. 💻
⬥ Aura Cloud is offering an excellent opportunity to join the rising fintech as Chief Technology Officer. They are also looking for a Customer Success Manager.
⬥ 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 great openings, and now it’s for a Customer Success Manager and a Solution Engineer.
⬥ Esgaia is looking for someone to boost Sales Development.
⬥ ICIW wants to keep pushing the limits of its social media with a new Social Media Manager.
⬥ Pensure would love to connect with a talented Sales Executive.
⬥ Textual also has a few open positions; check them out!
That’s all from us. We hope you are pumped up to work hard this autumn! “Challenge” may be the word of the moment in the business and investment environment, but it can also be a stimulating process to improve, iterate, pivot. Our advice is to plan ahead and know when to ask for help!
Please reach out to us at contact@wellstreet.vc with comments or suggestions. Or even pop in to see us at our Stockholm or Gothenburg Hubs! 😉
