Trind VC plans up to five early-stage investments in next six months

The sponsor is currently deploying equity via its Trind Ventures Fund II, whose final close was announced in September 2022. The vehicle has made eight investments to date, Linnanvirta said. It has one unnamed target in due diligence at the moment, he added. 

Trind VC, which aims to invest in 30 to 40 startups within its targeted four-year investment period, has so far invested less than 10% of its fund, Linnanvirta said. It offers small entry tickets and focuses on follow-on investments, he said, adding that 60% of the fund is allocated for follow-ons.

The vehicle offers up to EUR 1m in initial investments and can invest up to EUR 5m per company including follow-ons, according to Linnanvirta and the company's announcement.

Trind VC's sweet spot is making entries at seed or late-seed investment rounds, however, it can also make initial investments at pre-seed or Series A rounds, Linnanvirta added.

The sponsor, which also has offices in Helsinki and Munich, has a pan-European investment mandate and its home markets include the Baltics and Finland, Linnanvirta said. Most of its new deal flow currently comes from Finland, followed by Estonia, Spain and Lithuania, he added.

Trind VC looks for startups with consumerised business models that rely on a lot of end customers with small and recurring purchases, Linnanvirta said. This enables companies to gather much more data compared with many B2B-focused companies with only a few bigger clients and gives them an advantage of being data-driven, as well as gathering more accurate insights into customer behaviour, according to the sponsor's announcement.

The vehicle has a lifecycle of ten years and will ideally start considering its first exits in seven to eight years, Linnanvirta added.

He highlighted Xceed, a Spain-based nightlife technology company, among its Fund II portfolio companies that are planning to raise a Series A investment round within the coming six months.

Debut fund
Trind VC made investments into 23 companies from its EUR 21m Trind Ventures Fund I, which was launched in 2018, Linnanvirta said. The investment period of the debut vehicle ended last year, but the fund can still make follow-on investments, he added.

Fund I has five years left until maturity and will move to a more active exit mode in two years from now, Linnanvirta said. Nonetheless, it already exited two portfolio companies, he added. 

Trind VC has so far exited Taimer, a Finnish financial administration cloud services specialist, and Chatchamp, a Munich-based conversational commerce and guided selling provider, according to its website.

Taimer was sold to the Finnish IT company Heeros for EUR 5.1m in November 2021, as reported. Chatchamp was acquired by trbo, a German cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider of an onsite personalization platform, for an undisclosed consideration in February 2023, also as reported.

Linnanvirta named Ready Player Me, Neural DSP Technologies and Jobilla among few notable investments from the debut fund.

Ready Player Me, an Estonian cross-game avatar platform for the metaverse, closed a EUR 55m growth round in August 2022, as reported.

Neural DSP Technologies, a Finnish music technology company, aims to reach a turnover of EUR 100m in 2025 and could pursue acquisitions, as reported in December 2022. 

Jobilla's CEO and co-founder Henri Nordström told this news service in March 2023 that the Finnish talent acquisition startup was aiming to raise between EUR 20m and EUR 30m in a Series B round within a year.

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