The Nordic countries make up just 4% of Europe’s total population, but they account for a significant amount of venture capital investment.
That said, Norway’s VC community has been somewhat dormant for a while. The country makes far too much money from oil, giving it one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds and a large system of socialized support. Not a bad thing, but as a result, there are few “hungry” tech entrepreneurs.
High-profile players like Northzone and Creandum did well with early entries into Spotify and Klarna, among others, and now Norway is catching up with the rest of the European hubs. Among the trends our survey respondents identified were e-commerce, blockchain and crypto, healthtech, energy, mobility and climate.
Investments highlighted included Fairown, Kahoot, Spacemaker, Cognite, Pexip, PortalOne, Dignio, Speiz, Plaace, Glint Solar, variable.co and Nomono. Local investors tend to invest 50% to 90% of their fund into local startups,…