Match made at Nordea Investor Speed Dating: ONEiO + Fairpoint Capital

After several years of successful physical events in different countries, Nordea Startup & Growth started organising online Nordic investor speed dating events in the autumn of 2020. The pandemic had restricted the possibility of meeting in person, and Nordea saw a growing appetite among global investors for the creativity and strong business ideas coming from the Nordic startup scene.       

“We thought: we have 4,500 startups and growth companies as customers in the Nordics and we also know hundreds of investors (venture capital funds, corporate venture capital companies, angel investors), so why not arrange for them to meet?,” explains Teija Nousiainen, Deal Flow Manager at Nordea Startup & Growth.

Investors come well prepared

Since the autumn of 2020, 12 Nordea Investor Speed Dating events have been held, and 400 Nordic startup/growth companies and 470 investors have been matched at 1,300 one-to-one meetings.

One of the participating companies in the event in November 2021 was ONEiO from Finland, which afterwards landed seed-round capital of EUR 7,2m and found its lead investor Fairpoint Capital at a Nordea speed date.

“The format is really time-efficient as it is a closed event and the participating startups/scaleups and investors have mutual interests,” says Juha Berghäll, CEO of ONEiO Cloud.

“The participating venture capital funds are looking for Nordic companies from the specific area that they represent. Then when the brief one-to-one meeting takes place, it’s easy to decide whether a follow-up meeting is needed. We also liked the fact that venture capital funds choose who they want to meet – this way we don’t need to do the analysis and they come well prepared for the meeting,” Juha Berghäll explains.

Nordea Investor Speed Dating attracts investors all over the world thanks to the opportunity to see quality deal flow from around the Nordics, and the online setup does not require travelling.

“We have appreciated Nordea’s speed dating events as the pre-selection of the companies has been made professionally and the format of the events has been high-paced and efficient,” says Hadar Cars from Fairpoint Capital.

Nordea Investor Speeding Dating is based on short pre-booked meetings between founders and investors.

“Although we only had 20 minutes to get an initial impression of ONEiO at Nordea’s event, Juha managed to make us curios enough to continue the dialogue elsewhere, which ultimately led to an investment from us,” Hadar Cars adds.

Dating advice for founders

After the successful matchmaking between ONEio and Fairpoint Capital what is the matched pair’s advice to founders searching for capital and thinking about participating in Nordea Investor Speed Dating in the future?

“Be prepared – have a well thought out and proper growth plan, for example how much you want to raise and what you look for in investors. At the short one-to-one meetings with investors you can get immediate feedback and feel if there is potential for future collaboration,” says the ONEiO founder.

“My advice to entrepreneurs is to adjust their pitch to the short time available and make sure to get to the “juicy parts” quickly in order to arouse investors’ interest enough to continue the dialogue after the event,” concludes Hadar Cars from Fairpoint Capital.