#24 - Tuomas Kosonen 🇫🇮 (Inventure) on investing in Wolt, characteristics of Baltic founders, biggest challenges when scaling and hottest industries for investment right now

Tuomas Kosonen is a partner at Inventure, one of the leading VCs in the Baltic Sea region. Inventure has invested in such familiar Baltic companies as Nordigen, Scoro, and Whatagraph as well as Finnish juggernaut and one of the most used apps in the Baltics - Wolt

In this episode, we talk about the Baltic Sea region as one of the leading global tech hubs and the future outlook of the Baltics and the rest of the region. We also discuss the VC investment decision-making process as well as the key challenges in scaling companies. Finally, we cover some of Inventures biggest hits and misses along with the hottest industries in tech today 

The topics covered in this episode with Timestamps

[01:50] - Introduction and the origins of Inventure

[04:20] - The Baltic sea region startup scene history and outlook

• The historical relationship between Finland and Estonia
• First investment in the Baltics - Froont
• Nordic/Baltic bay - global startup hub
• Outlook for the Nordics
• The reasons behind the success of the region
• Baltics as core home market for Inventure
• Challenges in attracting talent to Finland and the region
• Characteristics of Baltic founders
• Norwegian startup ecosystem

[21:25] - Investment decision making process and investing in the Baltics

• The importance of legislation for investment decisions - minor
• Things that VCs are looking for in startups
• Getting in on Baltic deals in time
• Investments missed out on 

[30:15] - The biggest challenges in scaling companies

• Product-market fit
• Having the right people
• Building a compelling story
• Ability to go abroad
• The ability of the founders to grow with the company
• The role of VC in the management team changes

[39:35] - European VC trends and the most exciting industries

• The story of investing in Wolt
• Last-mile delivery industry - clearing up of an accumulated backlog of opportunities
• Why is Amazon not in last-mile groceries?
• Insurance industry - is the hype real?
• Hyping product teams vs industries
• Other hot industries - health tech, agtech, products improving quality of life
• Future of Inventure in the Baltics

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Support for this episode comes from Nexpay > https://paynexpay.com/

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