The Nordic red-hot startup movement continues. On Tuesday, Neil Murray, founder and general partner of Copenhagen-based The Nordic Web Ventures, announced the closing of a $6 million Fund III to continue investing in early-stage founders in the region.
The fund will focus on writing the first institutional checks to robotics-focused companies, AI-native companies and deep-tech founders.
Murray, a solo GP, told TechCrunch that his first two funds were “test vehicles” to demonstrate his ability to identify and invest in top talent in the region. Now, seven years later, he’s written the first check to more than 50 companies, with a portfolio that includes unicorn Lovable and remote worker insurer SafetyWing, and exits like UI design firm Uizard.
As TechCrunch previously reported, the Nordic ecosystem (which includes Denmark, Sweden, and Norway) is now valued at more than half a trillion dollars and received more than $8 billion in venture funding by 2024, making the region one of the hottest emerging markets in Europe. Murray said Fund III had more than $20 million in investment interest, but decided to cap it at $6 million because it was “more interested in alignment than AUM.”
Staying small, he said, means he can better link incentives to performance rather than management fees. He also said that staying small, especially as a solo GP, gives him more flexibility while “everyone else is still talking”.
“The fund cap was not a limitation,” he said. “It was the strategy.”
Check sizes for the fund will be around $200,000 and it hopes to support between 30 and 35 companies. “I think it’s more important to invest in Tier 1 founders than to back Tier 2 founders and over-optimize ownership,” he said.
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Murray’s limited partner base includes institutional backers such as Allocator One, founder Christoph Janz and Pacenotes. Founders from Kahoot and Pleo, in addition to operators from Meta and Google, are also LPs in Fund III.
“A lot of founders from my first two funds have invested in my new fund, which is also an incredibly important metric for me,” he said, adding that he has already returned more than half of the capital he raised from Fund I and Fund II.
His Fund III focuses on artificial intelligence, robotics and consumer, he said, because those are some of the leading sectors in the Nordic region. The consumer has always been a top category in the sector, as TechCrunch has previously discussed in a podcast about the area.
The region is also known for its computer science, engineering culture and manufacturing, which, combined with a “calm methodical construction style”, positions the Scandinavians well for “artificial intelligence robotics in industry, healthcare, logistics and the increasingly consumer environment”.
Although he has a keen interest in Scandinavians, Murray is actually originally from the UK and moved to Denmark in 2013 without knowing a single person, he recalls.
“I was very interested in tech start-ups, having worked on digital products in London,” he continued. When he moved to Copenhagen, he realized that the ecosystem made a big contribution to the tech world, although people hardly talked about it. This led him to start the website ‘The Nordic Web’, where he breaks down what’s going on behind the scenes of the booming tech scene there.
This site saw him tracking investments and exits, and soon VCs were asking him which founders were looking for capital. Soon, Murray wanted in on the action, and in 2017, he launched a $500,000 Fund I. Shortly thereafter he stopped writing The Nordic Web to focus more on investments. And all this led him here.
“On the whole, Scandinavians are not experiencing a ‘moment,'” he said. “They are experiencing a shuffle. The depth of talent, the level of ambition and the maturity of the ecosystem mean that this wave is not a peak; it is the foundation of the next decade of Nordic companies.
