Funded by Finnish unicorn founders Wave Ventures has announced a €2 million investment in a variety of Gen Z tech startups
- ByStartupStory | November 22, 2022
Entrepreneurs and venture capital organisations want to collaborate with Gen Z since they have become an essential market for many emerging enterprises. The largest student-led VC fund in Europe, Wave Ventures, which is based in Helsinki, just raised €2 million for the opening of its second fund. Finnish unicorn founders like Ilkka Paananen (Supercell), Kristo Ovaska (Smartly), and Miki Kuusi (Wolt), among others, support the new fund. It aims to take advantage of exciting startups at their very beginning.
At the earliest feasible stage, Wave Ventures‘ second fund will invest in 20–25 diverse Gen Z founders and teams. Investments made during the so-called leap stage allow for the writing of tickets even before the creation of a founding team, verifying the concept and, in some circumstances, an actual idea. The jump stage is where Wave is concentrating its efforts to increase diversity in the startup ecosystem, particularly among young entrepreneurs. They think the Wave target region of the Nordics has a rather homogenous startup ecosystem.
The team notices a lot of people who aren’t part of the traditional startup networks (like Slush) who are interested in starting their own business but who need assistance finding investors or validating their potentially revolutionary idea. This is where the new fund from Wave comes in.
In response to a request for comment, a Wave representative stated that their team “tries to break this barrier (and simultaneously build their dealflow) by going directly to schools and talking with students about entrepreneurship: a grass-roots activity to break founder stereotypes and give young people from all walks of life the tools to start their entrepreneurial journey.”
The most recent investment made by the student-led VC is in Mona Ismail’s Some Frogs. She is establishing a cutting-edge social media platform and is one of only a few young female startup founders in Finland. Erik Kymäläinen, the recently appointed CEO of Wave Ventures, states, “We want to make the leap simpler for talented prospective founders by investing in them earlier than any European VC has done before.” “At the moment, there are a few so-called “super entrepreneurs” that have established themselves and can quickly catch the interest of VCs and angel investors. The problem is that there isn’t a methodical way to support, validate, and invest in people at the outset. “Pre-seed investors frequently want to see validated ideas, but we believe that the most promising young founders should receive support much earlier, and this is where we step in as a VC,” says Kymäläinen.
The Wave Ventures team, which has been serving Gen Z founders as the go-to resource for six years at the centre of Nordic university ecosystems, is made up of a special mix of the region’s finest students. According to Timo Ahopelto, founding partner at Lifeline Ventures, “Finland has seen a lot of success in student-founders in recent years.” Wolt, Swappie, CarboCulture, Blok, Veri, and Huuva, to name a few, are recent success stories. We have found that many talented founders may go unnoticed because they are unsure of their concepts. These leap-stage founders will benefit greatly from Wave. According to Ilkka Paananen, co-founder and CEO of Supercell, “the entrepreneurial student community is a significant factor supporting the development of the Finnish startup scene.” “Finland needs more great businesses, and part of the solution is to give aspiring founders the appropriate early support. In the student community, Wave Ventures is in a great position to support budding entrepreneurs who might otherwise go unnoticed by later-stage investors.
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