Venture Capital (VC) firms provide capital to startups with long-term growth potential. Over the last decade, the Danish VC industry has grown significantly, with a number of firms emerging to support startups in Denmark.
This article focuses on venture capital firms in Denmark and was last updated on 26 October 2022. If I'm missing a fund, please let me know and I'll add it.
Be sure to check out Venture Capital Careers for VC jobs.
BlackWood Ventures
BlackWood Ventures was founded by experienced financiers and entrepreneurs who saw the need to help investors get access to VC by offering a diversified fund and the opportunity for angels to co-invest in selected startups.
They have European DNA and speak English, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, and Danish in the office.
Their focus is on the following high-growth areas:
- Fintech: Fintech offers important room for innovation and the market maintains strong growth. In fact, the global fintech market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 25.2% over the next five years, while40 European fintech unicorns were created last year in Europe.
- Deeptech: Deeptech encompasses several areas with heavy research and development needs. Our primary interest lies within the most dynamic sectors, including Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain. The global AI market is expected to sustain a 39.7% CAGR during the next five years.
- Cleantech: ”The next 1,000 unicorns will be sustainable, scalable innovators within climate tech” - Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock. We firmly believe that cleantech startups will benefit from several trends linked to the net-zero transition, policy changes, and increased corporate investment.
byFounders
byFounders is the community-powered early-stage venture fund investing in globally ambitious teams connected to the Nordic and Baltic countries. They’re backed by some of the region’s most accomplished founders investing in and supporting the next generation of globally ambitious founders.
They invest from pre-seed to series A (investments ranging between €0,5m - €4m) and are currently investing from our second fund. They pride themselves on three things:
- True founder compassion - They’re founders and their empathy for founders permeates every interaction, where they strive for transparency and candor. They also have some of the most founder-friendly terms on the market ;)
- Global tight-knit network - They’ve built what they call the ‘byFounders Collective’ which consists of 50+ experienced founders and operators who are incentivized to help them with deal sourcing, evaluation, and most importantly: to help their portfolio companies succeed. These people are today - together with their 45 portfolio companies - spread across the US and Europe.
- They care about Tomorrow - They believe in the future and recognise the power they hold in shaping it. They, therefore, put a lot of effort into responsible investing and help startups to make a positive impact on the world.
Venture capital jobs at byFounders
Climentum Capital
Climentum Capital invests in European startups that can cut down megatons of CO2 equivalents in a concrete and measurable way. The fund targets late Seed and Series A investments into the six sectors that demonstrate the largest CO2 reduction potential:
- Industry & manufacturing: Each industrial company has to change their value chain and manufacturing technologies. To support this, we support technology leaders in robotics, engineering, industrial AI and efficiency improvement solutions with high carbon impact.
- Energy: Energy consumption is the largest CO2 contributor in Europe. To move away from oil and gas we support leading technology players in grid management, energy storage but also new technologies for sustainable energy generation spanning from hydrogen, fusion and geothermal to solar and wind.
- Food & agriculture: To feed the growing population new ways of food production and consumption are required. Exciting innovations are emerging in agriculture and forestry, digitizing these segments and increasing the generated value. Alternative proteins and innovative food systems along the value chain will be an integral part of a sustainable and carbon friendly diet for the planet.
- Buildings & construction: Renewing and creating sustainable buildings requires building automation technologies, alternative building materials and new concepts to reimagine houses and cities.
- Transportation: Mobility needs span from road to rail, water and also air transportation. Investment priorities will be on urban mobility solutions, alternative fuels and on intelligent freight logistic solutions.
- Water & waste: Intelligent waste management requires circular recycling solutions and the development of new materials that replace and improve plastics, composites and other materials with high carbon foot prints.
The fund has a double incentives structure, with carry indexed on both CO2 reduction and financial returns.
As one of the first venture capital funds with a double carry structure, Climentum is dedicated from day one to evaluate and only invest in companies that hold true carbon reduction potential.
To deliver on its ambitious impact targets, one of the five partners (Stefan) is fully dedicated to the measurement and reporting of the actual portfolio’s CO2 footprint.
Damgaard Company
Damgaard Company is a Danish-owned investment company. The company has been acting as a combined VC firm and business angel for 20 years, investing in small and medium-sized software companies with disruptive technologies and business models possessing untapped potential for further hyper growth – domestically and internationally.
Their investment criteria is as follows:
- Your net revenue over the last 12 months or your Annual Recurring Revenue exceeds EUR 1M
- App and cloud technology are key components of your product or service
- Your global market allows for massive growth
- Your company values and leadership approach attract people with exceptional skills and commitment
- You are involved in no activities with extensive GHG emissions, and you consider yourself conducting business in an environmentally and socially responsible manner
Den Sociale Kapitalfond
Den Social Kapitalfond is a specialized, value driven, and professional investor that seeks to create attractive returns with a positive social impact. They invest in small and medium-sized socially responsible companies to help them realize their potential for growth and to contribute to society.
Dreamcraft Ventures
Dreamcraft Ventures are hands-on venture engineers who invest in tech-driven companies from pre-seed to series A in the Nordics and Europe. They’re generalists with a proven track record in gaming, esports, D2C, B2B SaaS, and decarbonization.
The Dreamcraft Universe is built on three drivers:
- Progressive is about being young, curious, and looking for the visionaries who disrupt our current knowledge and way of thinking. Dreamcraft is there to progress with founders shaping the future 🚀
- Proper, polite, and do what they say they do. There is properness and orderliness in the way they craft. They take pride in being diligent and thorough. Many of the Dreamcraft team have been founders and operators themselves and know the storms founders need to stand steady through 💪
- Down to Earth. They like t-shirts, not suits. They value advice and know there are always ways to improve. That is how they work, who they are and what they value — being casual and approachable. They are, and they like, learning machines who take every opportunity to absorb knowledge 😃
GRO Capital
GRO Capital invests in and develops outstanding B2B software companies. They focus on companies with strong products where they can help facilitate a change in performance through scaling sales and marketing, strengthening the leadership team, and improving operational performance.
They typically deploy between EUR 10m and EUR 50m equity per investment, acquiring both majority and minority stakes. This usually implies that the relevant Enterprise Value ranges between EUR 20m and EUR 200m. Typically, minority investments consist of both an acquisition of shares from existing shareholders and a capital increase in the company, allowing for an acceleration of growth
Heartcore Capital
Heartcore Capital is Europe's consumer technology VC. For over 20 years, they’ve helped founders turn insights into the next generation of iconic consumer-facing technology companies. They believe technology is the most powerful driver for human happiness and focus their investments around B2C and B2B2C companies that are changing people’s lives for the better.
They invest from pre-seed to Series A and their favorite journeys are with founders who started at the idea stage and have run all the way to IPO - it's never "too early" to get in touch with them.
IDC Ventures
IDC Ventures seeks to identify, invest in, support, and propel disruptive companies at the forefront of digital innovation. They habitually lead vs. follow, and heavily focus on the main areas of expertise of our strategic partners: fintech, marketplaces, and platforms.
They deploy capital using a well-defined, multi-stage strategy and disciplined approach that balances risk and knowledge to concentrate high levels of ownership on the winners.
IMPACT Partners
IMPACT Partners was the first European investment platform dedicated to impact investing. They invest in innovative and responsible capitalism whose lingua franca would be the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Investo Capital
Investo Capital is a Danish venture capital firm based in Aalborg. They invest in carefully selected Danish early-growth tech companies that can scale globally and where they can add value while providing great exit opportunities within approximately five years.
KOMPAS
KOMPAS is an early-stage venture capital firm funding breakthrough innovations that accelerate the digital transformation and industrial automation across the built environment. They invest in construction tech, prop tech, advanced materials, IoT, climate tech, and industry 4.0 across Europe, Israel, and the US.
Lehrmann Ventures
Lehrmann Ventures is a Danish venture fund that invests into startups and scale ups primarily in the Nordic region and within SaaS, eCommerce, and marketplaces. They take an active approach to their investments and wish to be your partner throughout your growth journey.
Their investment philosophy is based on:
- Investing in talented people: They invest into the best teams that display a high degree of energy and drive, and whom are deeply passionate about their business concept and understand that execution is everything.
- Believing in challenging status quo: They love businesses that seek to rewrite todays norms and standards in order to challenge the status quo of specific markets. They look for powerful concepts that gain traction with and acceptance from its customers.
- Wanting to grow businesses fast: They focus on growing businesses fast by taking an active role as a board member where they help you set the strategic direction for the company. They combine data-driven decision making with experience to form a cocktail for success.
Lundbeckfonden Ventures
Lundbeckfonden Ventures started in 2009 and has invested in 30+ companies in the USA and Europe. Their current portfolio is around 18 companies which represent a broad spectrum of therapeutic fields in the life science industry.
They stay close to their investments by serving on the board and their portfolio companies can leverage their existing international network as well as their commercial and scientific expertise.
Maersk Growth
Maersk Growth is the venture arm of A. P. Moller. Maersk’s mission is to digitise, democratise, and decarbonise supply chains by backing new business models and technologies. The “Maersk Growth ABCDE” is their core offering. It enables startups to leverage their assets, brand, customers, data and expertise in order to launch earlier and scale faster.
They invest in promising startups in three critical areas:
- Smart logistics: The future of logistics is digital, flexible, transparent and convenient. They invest in ventures that deploy new technologies and business models to enhance the global flow of goods.
- Enabled trade: Smaller enterprises are disadvantaged by complexity in the supply chain and lack of information, trust and financing. They invest in ventures that are eliminating these barriers by simplifying and improving access to trade.
- Sustainable supply chain: Sustainability is a global aspiration and logistics has a key role to play in addressing environmental and societal challenges. They invest in ventures that increase sustainability by reducing emissions and waste across the supply chain.
NB Capital
NB Capital was seeded in 2001 by a small group of highly experienced biotech investors and a pharmaceutical company. Since the beginning they’ve focused on investing capital in public and private equity markets using principles of risk aversion and innovation.
The aim is to find truly low risk investments (defined as low risk of losing capital) with a potential upside to be captured over a 2-3 year time frame, all tailored to the investors risk-tolerance.
Nordic Alpha Partners
Nordic Alpha Partners is a Northern European growth fund that was established in 2017. They believe that innovative European hardtech companies, operating in the sweet spot of the industrial, digital and green transformation, is the driving force to achieve global economic sustainability.
As a minority investor, they fuel the growth journey with and around the founding team.
Nordic Eye
Nordic Eye is a Danish venture capital firm based in Copenhagen. They invest in carefully selected early-growth companies in tech and lifestyle business areas with high revenue potentials and international scope.
Between the team they’ve founded or co-founded well over 20 startups and invested and advised many more. Their experiences cover IT consulting, metadata, digital data, SaaS, big data, property, finance, extensive sales experience and more.
Nordic Makers
Nordic Makers wants to be the investor that was not around when they founded their companies. Whey they founded their companies, they were rather lonely. The Nordics was an immature startup ecosystem, and there were few investors and advisors. Today, the Nordics are the hottest ever, but that has also brought in charlatans and robber barons.
They want to build a new kind of investor. Angel style. Founder friendly terms. Not report mania, but quick conversations. They won’t be your boss but your peer.
They prefer to lead seed rounds, above $500k and below $2m, and take you to the A-round. You need to have a solid team, and at least half a good product, and some traction regarding numbers. They don’t need monetization or everything figured out, but they want to be able to have the discussion how it becomes a $100m yearly revenue.
NorthCap Partners
NorthCap Partners is a team of experienced professionals with operational backgrounds building companies and comprehensive venture capital experience. They are looking for the best entrepreneurs in the ICT field and particularly within cloud computing (SaaS), communications, mobile/mobility, online services and e-commerce.
They invest in:
- Seed: They invest in companies from around first revenue and onwards. While they generally look for investments in the Northern half of Europe, they only do seed investments in Denmark.
- Early stage: They look for companies with a proven business model and a revenue of €1-2 M or more in the Northern half of Europe (including Germany).
- Growth stage: They invest in well-established companies with revenue typically in the range from €10-25 M located in the Northern half of Europe.
Novo Holdings
Novo Holdings is the holding company of the Novo Group and manages the wealth of the Novo Nordisk Foundation. Headquartered in Copenhagen, with a presence in San Francisco, Boston and Singapore, they are a world-leading life science investor with a focus on creating long-term value.
They invest out of a number of vehicles:
- Novo Seeds identifies, builds, and invests in exceptional startups and provide capital, network, and know-how to transform promising life science discoveries into successful biotech startups.
- Novo Ventures is a life science venture capital investor, delivering knowledge, network, and capital to public and private companies. They strive to invest in companies that develop innovative drugs, medical devices, and diagnostics.
- Novo Growth supports high-growth life science companies. They focus on investments in clinical diagnostics, industrial biotechnology, biologics supply chain, and healthcare IT.
- Principal Investments makes sizable investments in leading and well-established life science companies who are in attractive market segments with strong underlying growth drivers.
PreSeed Ventures
PreSeed Ventures invest early in founders with the potential to rewrite the future. For more than two decades, they have scouted, mentored, and funded Danish success stories like Vivino, Trustpilot, Lunar, Seaborg Technologies, and Glycom.
They primarily invest in the pre-seed and early seed stage, and when they invest they’re often the first institutional investor. The companies they support can be in any stage between prototype with nearly no traction to early revenue. They like to see some indication of proof of concept and a complimentary, full-time founding team.
Promentum Equity Partners
Promentum Equity Partners backs ambitious entrepreneurs in making real and lasting impact with their business ideas. They invest in companies with strong value propositions, significant market potential, and passionate entrepreneurs.
They focus on six main industries:
- Enterprise productivity: Great software companies able to solve pain points across enterprises.
- Digital consumer experiences: Consumer services experienced and interacted with in a new way.
- Robotics and automation: Automation is growing rapidly in relevance and sophistication.
- Entertainment ecosystems: New ways of enabling entertainment for consumers.
- Fintech and legaltech: Industries undergoing extensive digitalization creating vast potential.
- Ag tech: Innovation in food production and distribution has never been more prevalent.
Rulebreaker Ventures
Rulebreaker Ventures is a private investment family office that is an active investor in venture scale tech startups in Denmark. They passionately enjoy working with ambitious and rulebreaking entrepreneurs who create business models that can scale internationally.
They have a wealth of experience from direct and indirect investments in TrustPilot, Asetek, Napatech, Cocom, Spotify, Avito, iZettle, Klarna, EpiServer, Tobii and Nimsoft.
Scale Capital
Scale Capital helps Nordic founder teams scale and win in the US market. They invest $500k-$1.5m in digitization and disruptive B2B technologies at seed and series A, with reserves for follow-on investments.
They’re active partners from seed to exit and work closely with visionary founders and teams throughout the different phases of scaling and internationalization.
Seed Capital
Seed Capital is a seed stage investor in Denmark. They believe new technology can disrupt existing industries and create immense business opportunities. In Denmark there are many outstanding entrepreneurs capable of identifying innovative and value-creating opportunities. They believe the next generation of tech entrepreneurs will play a key role in shaping Denmark’s future, and are highly committed in working with them to achieve great results.
Spring Nordic
Spring Nordic makes early-stage B2B investments and have a preference for cleantech, hardware, software, and green energy - but are open to any novel solution. They prefer to invest after proof of concept and once proof of business has been established / the first million DKK or two has been registered as revenue.
Their typical cheque ranges from 3M to 10M DKK, sometimes up to 15M DKK - and they’re happy to syndicate when expedient.
Sunstone Life Science Ventures
Sunstone Life Science Ventures is an independent European venture capital investment firm whose purpose – and passion – is to seek out, enable and empower the most promising life science therapeutics innovations.
Their investment strategy has a strong industry focus vis-à-vis potential buyers of their portfolio companies. Since they believe that most exits in the life science sector will continue to take place in the M&A space, they prefer business models suitable for this exit route.
Syddansk Innovation
Syddansk Innovation is a pre-seed venture capital investor in Denmark. Their focus areas are:
- Robotics: With over 15 robot investments, where Universal Robots is their biggest success and a significant upgrade within the vertical, they do everything to support the robot companies of the future.
- Industry: With over 40 investments in industry, they have made more investments in this vertical than any other. They continue their focus on bringing forward innovative entrepreneurs.
- IT: With over 30 IT investments and a strong network in the industry, they seek to bring disruptive solutions to the market in collaboration with their founders.
- Welfare technology: With over 30 investments in welfare technology and strong competences in the vertical, SDI is always looking for tomorrow's revolutionary welfare technology.
All their investments are tech-based startups in the pre-seed phase. They carefully select companies based on strong ecosystems and teams, well-thought out and ambitious plans, and fit with their established skills and network.
The Aventures
The Aventures are tech nerds exploring emerging and innovation technologies with curiosity. They foucs on the themes defining the future of the next generation:
- AI and automation
- Space explorers
- Gaming and virtual worlds
- Web3 and blockchain
- Crypto natives
- Culture, alts, and collectables
- Climate movement
Vaekstfonden
Vaekstfondend is a state investment fund that provides capital and strategic support to diverse companies. Their growth fund invests on market terms in Danish companies with a track record and in young, innovative Danish companies with ambitions to grow beyond the country’s borders.
Willmach
Willmach is a global venture capital firm with early-stage focus. They provide capital and expertise to outstanding founder teams from pre-seed to series A, who are building unique, transformative companies based in Europe and Asia, regardless of sector. With that said, they have a preference for evergreen themes like Enterprise IT & SaaS, consumer Internet, eCommerce, and HealthTech.