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We invest in growth startups with a strong digital business focus
Sofokus Venture’s new investment company, Digital Heart Capital II, actively invests in and accelerates early-stage digital heart startups. Digital Heart Capital I was founded in 2020 and has invested so far in nine digital startups and will focus on participating in the later rounds of the portfolio.
With a background of more than 20 years of digital business development, we specialise in high-growth digital businesses. We operate with an entrepreneurial attitude and support your growth with a “late founder” mentality. We invest in early-stage startups (angel/pre-seed/seed).
Sofokus Ventures investment focus:
For an early-stage business, strengthening the economy is important, but even more critical is support during challenges and in pivotal moments.
Each company is unique, so instead of a general accelerator programme, we support companies not only with a financial investment, but also on issues of common interest. A few illustrative examples are listed below:
While building a business is in principle industry-independent, digitality requires its own specific expertise. Recruiting of software developers, designing a platform-based business concept, ensuring the scalability of a customised software MVP or using a product-led growth (PLG) to market are just a few examples of the specific skills needed for digital.
We can fluently talk with you about business composability, modern application architecture, A/B testing, software security or technical debt management. Sofokus Ventures understand the importance of digital matters in the development of your business. Our background of more than 20 years in digital business development sets us apart from most investment companies.
Conventional investing wisdom says that in principle risks decrease the further a company grows. We don’t disagree with this wisdom, but digitalisation brings its own peculiarities. We regularly audit tailored software solutions, so we are aware how easy it is to invest hundreds of thousands in an application that needs to be rewritten for all the wrong reasons.
A digitally-driven company can grow very quickly, so errors made early can easily multiply. That’s why we are keen on hopping in early and helping you to manage the business risks. The lifecycle management of your core business solution is one such thing.
eMabler creates a more sustainable future by making eMobility more accessible with the API-first electric vehicle charging platform.
Mintti Cleaning offers a responsible and modern alternative for quality-conscious businesses and consumers.
Coventures brings together entrepreneurs and innovative companies to solve the world’s most relevant challenges.
With their cutting-edge mobile service, Raxalle transforms on-boarding processes on construction sites.
QualityDesk is the easy way on to assess and improve your own and the performance of your call centre teams.
Liveto provides all the tools for successful events, whether virtual, physical or hybrid.
With our 1 million users, Exolyt is a social media analytics providing TikTok analytics to brands, influencers and businesses.
eMathStudio offers a fun way to learn mathematics with a digital guidance.
Confienta is a Finnish company established to serve our ageing population and their relatives.
Statzon is a subscription-based market intelligence platform providing access to in-depth market reports and insights from hundreds of trusted sources.
Sellai’s platform provides professional B2B sales representation as a service to companies struggling to find competent outsourced sales agents.
BlogTec’s easy-to-use online platform gives companies access to high-quality SEO & content services without requiring a big budget.
CaterMate is a HoReCa staffing company providing first-class caterers for all types of events.
Wudpecker’s AI tool creates convenient summaries and to-do lists of relevant information from virtual meetings, notes, emails and files.
Comprehensive freight management with one system – FreightOpt is a system for shippers to search, book and track shipments.
We make early stage investments in two different stages: pre-seed and seed (aka angel round). Pre-seed is often an informal round of funding, which can involve close associates and is very early in the innovation process. Team formation may not yet be complete, product/market fit not yet found and core digital software not yet implemented.
At this stage, the focus of the investment is to help shape the business fundamentals in a way that enables scalable competitive advantage to be built through digitality. Designing the software solution, implementing the MVP and outlining the product vision are typical steps. Building (or strengthening) a founder team is often necessary.
During the pre-seed investment, we will work with you to define a plan and objectives, which, if achieved, will automatically help us to further invest in your company at the seed stage.
A seed investment round; also known as an angel round; is usually the first formal funding round for a company. Typically, several investors are involved and some may be private (angel investors).
In a typical seed-stage company, a core team has been formed, a product has been launched and the first customers have been acquired. The aim is often to establish the company in the market and accelerate growth.
We invest in the seed stage together with other investors, in order to create a sufficient support network around the company. Depending on the case, we can act as lead or co-investor. We are flexible and our main objective is to create an seamless investment round that will boost the team and the company’s story.
We are committed to helping early-stage digital businesses. While we cannot invest in everyone – at minimum – we will at least try to guide you to the next door. So feel free to get in touch and we’ll talk more about your situation!
Turo Numminen
Head of Startup Investments
turo.numminen@sofokus.com
+358 50 517 1752