GaryVee becomes third largest shareholder of ArcticStartup as company raises funding for post-covid expansion
ArcticStartup, the company behind Europe's largest startup matchmaking conference, Arctic15, has raised a new round of undisclosed bridge funding to expand its events and media arms following the pandemic with existing investor and CEO of VaynerMedia, Gary Vaynerchuk becoming its third-largest shareholder.
Having survived the last two years of disruption with strong engagement and revenues following its online events series, the company plans to bring back its physical event series starting with Arctic15 - Helsinki on the 7-8 of June.
The funding round included participation from existing investors but also welcomed 11 new well-known angel investors which included Markus Räikkönen, Taneli Tikka, and Mårten Mickos. The close of the funding round is also coming with a change of management team with Vedat Öndas, ArcticStartup’s previous Chief Operations Officer becoming CEO with outgoing CEO Jan Ameri taking up the position as Executive Chairman as the company repositions itself by preparing to launch its own funding services for startups to help them reduce the time spent on raising capital by identifying and connecting with relevant investors. The company is planning to open a new funding round after the summer.
Speaking about the companies move from survival to expansion, Jan Ameri, Executive Chairman of Arctic15 said:
“I’m very excited to welcome so many great people as new backers for ArcticStartup. I believe it truly shows that the grassroots startup ecosystem work we do is meaningful. And what a ride it has been since I took over as the CEO late 2019. The vision and plans were pretty clear, then the pandemic hit the events industry hard and we had to quickly adapt and go into ‘survival mode’. With the international expansion plans we took the first step with a successful Arctic15 Stockholm conference in Feb 2020 before everything stopped. During the pandemic the need to connect with people was still high so we created and executed a few online events, and we got great results, as over 90% of the attendees said they got at least one meaningful connection. As the pandemic retreated, we decided to reach out to some people in our network, and raise funding to be able to bounce back faster and re-activate our expansion plans. Our flagship conference in Helsinki is coming back on June 7-8th, and other cities to follow. While I will be shifting my role to focus more on expansion, and the foodtech area, I know Vedat’s leadership will help drive ArcticStartup into the future.“
On the ambitions of the company to expand to four continents, incoming CEO, Vedat Öndas, said:
“Startups are solving the world's biggest problems and we aim to solve startup problems. ArcticStartup has been a great player in the Nordic Startup and Investor Ecosystem for the last 15 years via well known Arctic15 events and media outlets. Now it's time to carry this success to the global level. We will extend our conferences and media arm to four continents and continue to serve the global ecosystem in the coming years. Our growth strategy includes creating and acquiring events and media outlets besides opening new services to help startups.”
Speaking of his relationship with the Arctic15 team, Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia said:
“The friendship we have built with Jan and ArcticStartup over the years has been fantastic, and I am looking forward to future adventures together, be it going to sauna or shaving heads on stage. As I am so much heads down on my own businesses and especially launching my VeeFriends NFT Series 2 right now and my conference VeeCon in May, I am not currently looking for new startup investments. But I am very interested in collaborating with cool Nordic brands.”
Markus Räikkönen, Investor at Headline VC on his angel investment:
“Even though I represent a global multi-stage VC looking to back the next Nordic success stories, I wanted to participate in this round as an individual as I see the great value ArcticStartup creates for the whole startup ecosystem via their media and event activities. And they are nice guys to work with!”
The focus of this year's Arctic15 Helsinki will go deeper into emerging post pandemic technologies following a wave of funding in the Nordics. The organisers expect to attract more than 1,500 attendees, 300 investors, 450 startups and 150 corporates, all of whom are seeking to connect with the next generation of Nordic and European startups. At the same time, ArcticStartup is preparing to launch a new Nordic Deep Tech community and a Business Summit to support the commercialisation of science and research based startups, and also looking to boost the early-stage food-tech ecosystem with their Tonic brand, having a couple of food industry angels join the round.
