Nordic Angel Program (NAP) is an international cross-border training and investing program for business angels, which facilitates cross-border angel syndicates and shares angel investments’ best practices. Led by experienced local angels, NAP offers a unique opportunity to invest as a group in promising growth companies linked by leading startup events in Denmark, Estonia, Finland, and Norway, such as Slush, TechBBQ, Seed Forum and Latitude59. The program is run by EstBAN, FiBAN, DanBAN, BAN Norway and supported by Civitta Eesti and NordicBAN.

Angel investing has been called out for its slow processes: collecting the syndicate, tickets and finalising contracts  often takes months, which is a big strain for both the lead investor and the entrepreneur. NAP makes the life cycle of one investment round as quick, transparent and effective as possible. This eases recruiting both new angel investors as well as international investors to join syndicates which has been one of the main goals of the program. Also, having experienced lead angels to guide the syndicate has been in the core of NAP’s success. 

“During the initial phase, the lead investor’s role was about identifying the best startups. Later in the process, my role was coordinating a proper and fast due diligence process of the top 3, ultimately resulting in an investment offer to the best company. The best startups out there will get other offers, which is why it is key to make decisions efficiently to avoid losing good deals. Despite the syndicate consisting of 23 individuals, the startup should feel that they are only negotiating with one angel. I believe the main task of the lead angel is to make sure nothing stalls the decision making process, and that decisions are based on a proper level of due diligence”, comments Sune Alstrup, a lead angel of NAP by DanBAN. ​

The results are clear in providing an example as a functional model. Since January 2018,  1445 startups have applied for the NAP syndicates’ investment out of which 18 startups raised approximately 3,12 million euros. Four additional startup deals were made into the top-runners of each round, accumulating the final investment sum to over 3,1 million euros within 18 months. However, it’s not just the money that startups get, as the CEO of Screenful Sami Linnanvuo, winner of the first NAP by FiBAN, explains:  “I’ve learned many things from several of them. Most importantly, we now have access to their knowledge and can ask advice whenever we run into a situation that we can’t figure out ourselves. It’s a safety net of a kind.” 

The invested capital came from 411 angel investors who participated in the program. In addition to the opportunity to invest, investors get valuable training in all aspects of angel investment cycle. Structured angel investor education is not common in any part of the world, making the New Nordic area the trailblazer. NAP can therefore be considered a role model or a blueprint for other business angel networks to create their own educational tools. The toolbox on how to create NAP in one’s own angel network is available for professional business angel networks.  

NAP Final event is taking place on the 5th of December in Tallinn. Investor, reach out to participate to the event! ​

A record-number of 30 angel investors, with 11 foreign investors, participated in the Nordic Angel Program at Slush. FiBAN’s syndication service has already culminated into three successful funding rounds, with a track record of awesome investment targets: Screenful, FeelingStream and Duuers. This fall, angel investors, with lead of Tuomas Pahlman and Reima  Linnanvirta, went through 130 companies to find the best one in Slush’s deal flow. After months of reviewing, interviewing, due diligence and negotiating, Crowst came out as the number one company and will receive syndicate’s investment up to 300 000€. 

Crowst is an insights platform that helps marketing departments gain real-time on-location consumer feedback at low cost. “Crowsters”, as they call their users, redeem gift cards by the amount of reviews they do, as well as get the chance to influence the market. Crowst team has already gained benefits from the angel investors: “On being shortlisted in the top 15 after the initial online process, it was very valuable to spar one-on-one with the investors to hear their feedback, challenging our own thinking. The deep-dive done during the due diligence process was quite thorough and made us sweat through the discussions with the lead investors. It is great to have eventually earned their confidence in our business and be selected for investment. We look forward to leveraging the wealth of experience and expertise the angel syndicate brings as part of this investment program”, comments Richard Jerome, CEO and cofounder of Crowst. 


Good founders that work well together was very important for the investors. "Early stage is all about focus and execution. Crowst team was not so advanced as some others, but they actually convinced us actually by not doing some important stuff. Because they had done the more important stuff. And they had done it darn well and focused on what matters so far”, describes Tuomas Pahlman, co-lead of the syndicate.

 "The deep-dive done during the due diligence process was quite thorough and made us sweat through the discussions with the lead investors "

This fall, as the investor group was large and diverse, so were the top 15 companies. This represents in a way what angel investing is: in a big syndicate, there’s a lot of know-how in all kinds of technologies and industries, and thus, there’s room to invest into whatever interesting technology there is. In this round, industries varied from health tech to insect-based cleantech, from surveys to cloud-service for apps. Not only that, but the companies had founders who were originally from all around the world, from India to Latvia. “It was interesting to see that there was no single vertical dominating the Top-15. Instead, everything from EdTech to LegalTech, PropTech to FoodTech and B2B SaaS to environmental hardware was represented. This comes to show that good investment cases can rise from any vertical”, concludes co-lead Reima Linnanvirta. 

The whole list of top 15 companies by Nordic Angel Program at Slush: 

• Manna Insect 
• Elias Robot_
• HealthDX 
• Crowst
• React & Share 
• AUVC Tech
• Caidio
• Resimator
• Dealsign
• Nevercode
• Statzon
• Absolute Module
• Datainvision 
• Superlect
• Aeromon

NAP investors, don’t forget to sign up for the final event at Tallinn 5th of December. Contact reetta(at)fiban.org to sign up for the event. 


More Information

Reetta Ilo
International Affairs Manager
reetta(at)fiban.org


​The Nordic Angel Program is cofinanced by the European Commission’s Startup Europe initiative under the Horizon 2020 programme ​​

To advance startup and scaleup focused policy, in partnership with Business Finland and Slush,  Startup Europe will organise a workshop on Accelerating Digital Innovations and Ecosystems which will bring together 350 stakeholders and experts on digital innovation and startup ecosystems. The workshop will take place on 22 November from 13:00-16:00. The session will focus on both startup policy and investment initiatives and how these can best be harnessed to enable digital innovation and growth. Innovators, startup founders, venture capitalists, business angels, national promotional banks, corporate representatives, startup associations, academics, policymakers and the media will attend. Learn all about the policy workshop, and register now.

​For more information, please contact: Bjorn-Soren Gigler

The 2019 NAP Fall programs are the last chance for you to take part in this amazing endeavour! The last NAP batch will be also dedicated to increasing cross-border investments based on the numerous learnings from the previous trainings.​The national programs are hosted by the local angel networks EstBAN (Estonia), FiBAN (Finland), DanBAN (Denmark) and BAN Norway in close cooperation with the main startup events in each region.


Stay Tuned! New calls for applications are coming soon!  
Investors and Startups can apply here: nordicangelprogram.com

The investment of 250.000 euros was made by EstBAN's Nordic Angel Program investors. In total, 52 investors who have participated in a 3-month investors program, took part in the transaction. 127 start-ups applied for the investment from more than twenty countries. The top 15 were given the opportunity to introduce themselves to the investors more thoroughly. The winner was chosen from four finalists, these were GoTennis (Estonia), Outvio (Estonia), PowerUp Energy Technologies (Estonia) and Tasker (Lithuania). Outvio, which gained the investors’ confidence, simplifies the work of online shops by providing software for easy handling of orders and deliveries. The company’s international team has started operations on the Spanish market and plans to use the investment to expand across Europe.

The President of Estonian Business Angels Network (EstBAN), Rein Lemberpuu, finds the trend that international start-ups come to Estonia to raise capital very interesting. “Candidates came from both neighbouring countries and further away, including Great Britain which is considered the venture capital hub of Europe. We are also happy to see that local Estonian startups often have an international team and they focus on international markets, the same applies to Outvio, which won the investment. Such a number of stand-out international startups should make more wealthy individuals consider making their first angel investment. Our role as business angels is to run a thorough analysis and make the best possible decision,” he said.

The Lithuanian company Tasker, which introduced itself on the sTARTUp Day stage develops online management software for companies that manage staff whose work is mobile.  GoTennis, which made it to the final, uses a simple application to connect tennis players and courts and PowerUp Fuel Cells develops hydrogen technology based electric generators for small vessels. 

Anu Oks
Estonian Business Angels Network General Manager
+372 56603344
anu(at)estban.ee
www.estban.ee

Nordic Angel Program is an international training and investment program for business angels from the Nordics and Baltics. The goal is to make more cross-border investment with an experienced group of angels into the best startups that the region can offer. Thus, a perfect chance for Slush, one of the leading startup events in the world, and NAP to collaborate.

From over a hundred companies, which applied for Nordic Angel Program at Slush, 96 passed pre-screening, after which the angel syndicate took over. Lead angels for this year’s syndicate were the superheroes Kim Väisänen and Annukka Mickelsson. After months of evaluating, coaching and negotiating, there was a clear number one in the batch: FeelingStream,a speech-to-text tool to help contact center automate their processes with intelligence: thus, enabling customers to detect leaving customers and cutting the working hours of employees. Their main markets are the Nordics and Baltics, which aren’t attractive to the big players due to the complexity, and frankly, small size of the market for English-speaking market dominators.

“We had over 90 excellent candidates to choose from, but FeelingStream was the clear winner. This time one star was definitely shinier than the others”, comments Kim Väisänen. Strong traction, clear go-to-market plan and entrepreneurs convincing backgrounds were the key factors in choosing FeelingStream as the investment target. “Feelingstream was in many aspects more mature than the others. Although there is still work to be done, as always in startups, they have been able focus effectively. Feelingstream is at right stage for an angel investor syndicate which is looking to invest in many ways to pave the way to a success”, colead Mickelsson continues.

So why NAP at Slush, Terje Ennomäe, CEO of FeelingStream?

“We planned to raise money at the end of the year, and we were looking for investors with a vast network. Basically the reason why we approached Finnish NAP was the connection within the Nordic countries and close understanding our target markets”, Ennomäe describes. And how will the 400 000€ investment be spend? “With the investment we accelerate our growth in the Nordic market. We'll build a product for banking, telecom, insurance, etc. sectors. For our team, we need sales executives and people who love data (data analysts and data scientists).”

Best of luck to FeelingStream- we feel you!

Nordic Angel Program (NAP) is an international cross-border training and investing program for business angels. 

NAP facilitates cross-border angel syndicates and shares angel investments’ best practices. Led by experienced local angels, NAP offers a unique opportunity to invest as a group in promising growth companies linked by leading startup events in Denmark, Estonia, Finland, and Norway.

The service is free-of-charge for approved investors. Find all the investor benefits here. 

Nordic Angel Program is cofinanced by European Commission’s Startup Europe initiative under the Horizon 2020 programme.

More information

Reetta Ilo,
NAP Program Manager in Finland
reetta.ilo(at)fiban.org