Nordic tech’s —next big idea

Antler asked some of the leading VCs and angel investors in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Estonia to share the big ideas they feel founders can pursue to build the next generation of Nordic tech success stories.

Venture capital and angel investors expect startup ideas that have a positive impact on climate change and society to become the success stories of the future in Denmark and across the Nordics. 

Ideas that leverage technology to address climate change and social problems dominated the recommendations from Nordic investors. These were closely followed by ideas to drive productivity and efficiency in B2B software.

Michael Wiatr, Partner at Antler, comments, “At Antler, we believe that now is the best time to become a tech founder. We live at a time when emerging technologies and new innovations are uniquely placed to address major global challenges for the planet, society and the economy. These ideas shared by some of the region’s best investors show just how many game changing startups are waiting to be built.”

40
investors shared their big ideas
5
countries involved in the study
40%
focused on climate tech

Big

opportunities

Geeta Schmidt

SEED Capital, Denmark

“Application Security is an area that can benefit from the recent leaps we have seen from AI assistants or co-pilots. New assistants or co-pilots can help developers build more secure applications by providing real code fixes that understand application and how it will react once the fix is implemented. I believe this is a real gap to address and requires a developer friendly interface that makes it easy to adopt and integrate into their current workflows.”

Daniel Mariussen

Dreamcraft Ventures

“Someone needs to build a standardized governance layer that blocks AI from training on your data unless permission is explicitly granted, or automatically granted according to some determined principles you could change. Claai.xyz and a few others are trying to tackle this problem, but I'm still waiting to see someone who have really thought through distribution, and sequencing of 3rd party partnerships etc. Distribution and adoption is super difficult here.”

Louise Lachman

Ugly Duckling Ventures, Denmark

“In the realm of B2B subscription/SaaS, there is a significant opportunity for founders to leverage emerging technologies to drive automation and efficiency. As enterprises face increasing demands there's a growing need for intelligent solutions that can streamline complex processes and enhance decision-making. Founders who can harness the power of AI to create scalable, subscription-based platforms that address these needs will be well-positioned to capture a substantial market opportunity.”

Caritta Seppa

Spintop Ventures, Finland

“One stop platform for startups, SMEs, small companies where accounting, reporting (compulsory tax and government reporting) and payroll all come together. So instead of logging now in Finland for example, to different websites and places for handling all reporting, payroll etc, if all of this could be done in one place, would save money and time for small companies.”

Robin Daniels

Zensai, Denmark

 “We have chronic unhappiness in the world and we need a platform that unlocks the potential and motivation in each and every one of us so we can solve big societal challenges.”

Frederik Andersen

Sagitta Ventures, Denmark

“Ability to solve water shortage (either through better recirculation or substitute water usage with alternative solutions). We have seen recent examples of water shortage caused by global warming e.g., in Southern Italy. We are also seeing an increase in forest fires close to big cities requiring a lot of water to put out the fire.”

Terhi Vapola

Greencode Ventures

"Climate change is probably the biggest problem we are facing at the moment. Issues related to applying AI to address the waste of energy and optimization of industrial processes, as well as climate adaptation and risk management are something we are interested in at the moment. This could be combined with advances in satellite data."

Bjarke Kling Staun

Angel Investor, Denmark

"The cost of solar power is fast approaching zero. This is amazing news for addressing climate change, but it's not sufficient. We need to build technology to 1) efficiently turn (free) electricity into all the other things we need that currently emits greenhouse gasses, and 2) address the mismatch between production and consumption of electricity in a solar powered world, specifically the fact that no power is produced when the sun has set."

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