29/12/2022
Another year for the books! 2022 was surely eventful and to help steer us in the right direction, we as a team landed on pursuing 4 main goals throughout the year:
- Activate ourselves tow the Nordic startup ecosystem.
- Improve Katalysen's and our portfolio ventures' access to co-investors and venture capital.
- Work towards becoming the most skilled venture developer in the Nordics.
- Maximize the chances of delivering a significant exit during the year.
Keep reading on for a recap of our main highlights linked to these goals, and things to come for 2023.
Outgrowing our shell
We started off strong in April by successfully completing (despite market turmoil) our IPO on the Spotlight Exchange in Sweden. We became, and to our knowledge still are, the only publicly listed early-stage venture developer in Sweden.
The IPO not only helped strengthen our brand, but also allowed us to market our portfolio ventures to new groups of potential co-investors and clients, giving us and our portfolio improved access to venture capital, and invaluable experience from the IPO process. An experience that can be reused when portfolio ventures wish to pursue the IPO path.
It was also time for us to say goodbye to the identity we’d had since 2015 as Katalysen & Partners, and welcome our new form as Katalysen Ventures. This change in name and brand identity did not alter our purpose, attitude, or approach, which remains to back and support promising early-stage ventures as an operative, hands-on venture developer and investor.
With our new brand in tow, we spent this year putting ourselves out there more than we have any year before. We incorporated in the USA and set up a hub in San Francisco headed by Marcus, hosted our first few events for our portfolio ventures and network, attended startup conferences like TechBBQ in Copenhagen and Slush in Helsinki, and ended the year teaming up with ecosystem peers to launch a new community meetup concept in early 2023 (more of that to be shared soon).
Hands-on support
As we have become better at communicating our model and expertise (did you miss our newly published case studies and toolbox of expertise on our website?), and the added attention from being publicly listed, we have had a series of highly interesting discussions with other early-stage investors, one of which is exploring the opportunity of a fund partnership.
It became apparent throughout the year, a year which has been humbling for many, that the majority of problems can only be solved through hands-on work. With this demand for operative support we see that we can be an excellent partner in many investments, sometimes as an anchor investor providing both expertise and financial capital, and sometimes as a co-investor focused solely on providing risk-reducing expertise to the venture.
To further aid our hands-on approach on the path to portfolio exits, team member Emil Ahlanzberg shifted roles to become our first Investment Manager. Focused on amongst other things supporting our ventures in exit readiness projects, work that often involves close collaboration with partners suchas institutional investors, investment banks, and stock exchanges. To date we have done two successful exits to reputable buyers; United Spaces to Castellum, and Urban Green to Nordic Waterproofing Group.
Team and portfolio growth
Team is at the core of what we do. Without our team, we would not be able to provide the hands-on support companies come to us for. This year we welcomed three new team members; Anna and Robin as Ventures Lead’s and Oskar as Growth lead. At present we are 11 core venture developers with varying areas of expertise, and we are currently hiring a Finance Lead to join us! Learn more and apply by December 31st.
Due to the market conditions, this year we focused more so on supporting our existing portfolio. However, as our team was strengthened, our ability to make pure expertise investments improved. As such, we invested our expertise in four new ventures during the year:
Skawen - Smart ventilation for energy saving and optimized indoor air quality
Webbess - Website-as-a-Service for SMEs
Traders Alloy - (soon to be Edger Finance) - Platform providing investors with data on publicly
listed SMEs
Varannan Vecka - Co-parenting app for conflict prevention
View all our portfolio ventures here, and if you are looking for a venture developer submit your pitch here.
Heading into the new year
2023 is right around the corner so we wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone in our network from startups, investors to partners for your trust in co-investing and/or working with us. We look forward to stepping into the new year with you all by our side! We continue to work towards our goals in the new year, but would add to it to become significantly better at investor relations towards retail investors. So expect to hear more from us in 2023!
The year will be kicked off a bit differently as we decided to make the most of the darkness and relative calm of New Year and invite the team to work remotely, and connect with other ecosystems of co-investors and entrepreneurs. Half of our team will be spread out across the world, with Anna and Robin heading to Bali, Emil to Cape Town, Tobias to Tokyo and Yuval to Tel Aviv. We believe that people perform best when given the opportunity to fulfil themselves. When combined with exploring collaboration opportunities, we are certain everyone will come back with refilled energy, new opportunities in the bag, and lessons learned. Don’t hesitate to contact our team, should you wish to make introductions in their various January-destinations.
Closing with exciting news, we outgrew WeWork and will be moving into our new own office on Birger Jarlsgatan 22 in central Stockholm! This is an exciting step for us as we will have more space to host get-togethers and connect with our network.
Wishing you a wonderful Holiday Season and a prosperous New Year!