Capital A Partners (CAP A), a USA and Nordic-based venture capitalist firm specialising in B2B technology, is launching a USD60 million fund focused on early stage companies hailing primarily from the Nordic Region.
The areas of focus will be sectors including Internet of Things (IoT), mobility, and human-computer interaction (“HCI”), as well as the nanotechnology, advanced materials, and security layer technologies that enable them. CAP A, already strategic partners with Ericsson Garage, the Nordic Innovation House-New York, and other parties, has recently received early commitments from California-based Universal Electronics Inc (UEI), a leader in control device and IoT technologies, and other strategic investors to become part of the new fund.
Louis Hughes, COO and head of corporate development at UEI, says: “Becoming involved with CAP A’s new fund early has already provided us access to technologies from the Nordics that otherwise we would not see. Having this intelligence and the opportunity to invest through CAP A is a value proposition that we have not seen before.”
The new fund follows a EUR15m fund, Butterfly Venture Fund III, which CAP A launched in partnership with Butterfly Ventures, the leading Finland-based Nordic seed investor, and an earlier successful pilot fund, CAP A Fund I, consisting of 18 investments across the Nordics and USA. The firm is based between New York and the Nordics, with managing partner and co-founder Tanya Marvin-Horowitz having spent five years based in Stockholm. CAP A is planning the initial close for the fund during the first half of 2018.
“Nordic B2B technology start-ups are an extremely compelling investment proposition,” says Tanya Marvin-Horowitz, co-founder and managing partner at CAP A. “The region has a tremendous heritage of industrial technology development, design and engineering expertise which has created many very exciting new companies in the B2B space and flourishing local ecosystems. Many of these start-ups now have the vision and the opportunity to expand into the USA and global markets; they just need access to the right know-how and capital, both of which we can provide at CAP A.”
David Mendez, also co-founder and managing partner at CAP A, adds: “We think we are unique among our peers in the venture capital industry in having such extensive, on-the-ground knowledge of the Nordic region. In addition, our newest New York-based partner Inbar Haham, formerly of Magma Venture Partners, has years of experience of helping Israeli technology firms succeed in the USA, an operational model we are duplicating for the Nordics.”
Marvin-Horowitz says: “We serve as a bridge between global capital and the leading innovators in the Nordics by filling an important gap in local ecosystems which have not been saturated by venture capital like other hubs internationally.”
