VCs Invest Together With The Crowd At Invesdor

Venture capital funds and crowd investors can nowadays invest side by side in the same offerings
The VC-led crowdfunding model, already fairly common in the UK, has landed in the Nordics with two cases at investment platform Invesdor
The combination of a VC and the crowd opens new possibilities for growth companies

Last week saw two VC-led funding rounds close on Invesdor. Translation service provider Transfluent raised €760,000 from more than 200 investors including Finnish venture capital fund Vision+ that increased its stake in the company. HelioZenit, an Åland-based company making solar panels, raised €100,000 half of which came from Ålands Utvecklings Ab (ÅUAB), a VC company backed by the government of Åland.

Both Vision+ and ÅUAB subscribed for shares on the same terms as all other investors.

Transfluent was already one of Vision+’s portfolio companies when the decision was made to run the company’s new equity offering on the Invesdor platform. “Doing the funding round with Invesdor was a good way to combine fundraising with marketing the company,” says Vision+ partner Jari Tuovinen. “Transfluent did a great job capturing the visibility benefits of the campaign and growing their shareholder list with more than 200 names in the process. At the same time we also slightly increased our stake in the company.”

“In UK crowdfunding, it’s already relatively common that a VC acts as the lead investor and the tail of the funding round is raised from the public. The VC benefits as their portfolio company gains visibility, while the other investors get to invest on the same terms with professionals,” Invesdor CEO Lasse Mäkelä says.

“Many entrepreneurs still think that they have to raise funding from one channel at a time: ‘first an angel round, then crowdfunding, then perhaps one from a VC...’,” recounts Mäkelä. “In reality they should combine different funding channels, thereby getting the best of all worlds, such as the knowledge and networks of professional investors and marketing benefits of a digital funding campaign.”