Nordea has been one of our strategic partners since Maria 01’s existence. Nordea became one of our initial partners shortly one year after its Startup & Growth Customer Unit in Finland. Fast forward through a collaboration that spans three years, we’ve joined forces to bring forward different initiatives and activities to strengthen the startup ecosystem – from hosting networking dinners to office hours to support the members of Maria 01. Today, we co-hosted the “new normal” for business encounters between investors and scaleups.
About the Scaleup Day by Nordea and Maria 01
Scaleup Day is a virtual event that facilitates high-quality and valuable meetings between some of Finland’s most prominent growth companies and top-tier investors. The goal of the Scaleup Day was to serve the Nordea scaleup clients and facilitate access to capital for them while bringing an international investor network together for a one-of-a-kind virtual meeting session.
Scaleup Day proved to be a very efficient online matchmaking event. As a venture capital investor, we at Inventure always value an opportunity to meet entrepreneurs early in their journey & discuss how we can help entrepreneurs expand. Great sets of ideas were discussed at the event, and we booked several follow-up meetings.
Sami Lampinen, Managing Director at Inventure
The willingness to participate in an online matchmaking event is very high. With the removal of face-to-face events until further notice, the need to connect with new people is still vivid. Scaleup Day focuses on facilitating meetings between scaleups and investors.
A New Era of Meetings and Events
As a pandemic like Covid-19 is hitting the event industry and while travel plans are being canceled, hosting virtual events and meetings has increased significantly during 2020. A survey by Arctic15 highlighted that over 80% of startups and investors say meeting each other is an essential part of their work, and even more, investors are comfortable making investment decisions based on an online meeting. Investing in growth companies without meeting founders and team in person — seems to be the new normal.
2020 Is Not Slowing Down
While 2019 showed an 8% increase in the sum invested by Finnish VCs in domestic and foreign companies, we can foresee based on recent funding movement in the ecosystem that this year’s funding growth numbers won’t slow down despite the ongoing crisis.
Opening up a platform for investors and growth companies where they can meet each other while being relatively efficient is crucial to secure the continuation of investment and dealflow and to encourage collaboration between entrepreneurs and investors. Hence, Scaleup Day is serving that purpose.
Scaleup Day in Numbers
Investors: 21
Scaleups: 25
Meetings hosted: 50
More about the Scaleup Day by Nordea here (Finnish article).
About Nordea Startup & Growth
Nordea’s Startup & Growth unit specialises in serving high-growth companies and companies in their early stages looking for fast growth. We want to build long-term customer relationships and be the partner that supports businesses to grow and succeed throughout their life cycle.
