Norrsken VC - Impact investing in a market downturn with Agate Freimane

Agate Freimane is a General Partner at Norrsken VC, a €125m Swedish early stage impact VC investing in technology that solves some of the world’s greatest challenges.

She comes from investment banking at Morgan Stanley and then worked at a PropTech/Fintech startup: Brickvest.

In today's show, we will discuss with Agate:

• the state of Climate Tech in the Nordics

• the correlation between impact and financial returns

• What the current economic slowdown means for Climate Tech VC

• the biggest learnings from raising Norrsken VC and investing in 41 companies

Listen and Learn

• The Norrsken backstory: how 3 unicorn founders started 6 years ago a one-stop shop for impact investing (2:00)

• Agate’s views on the Climate Tech scene in Sweden and the Nordics (4:50)

• How Stockholm wants to become the global impact capital (5:00)

• The transition from a tech ecosystem to impact ecosystem (5:30)

• The power or role models to scale the ecosystem (6:00)

• How Northvolt’s success led the charge to a booming Swedish electric ecosystem (trucks, airplanes, boats) (7:00)

• What Agate thinks of the “classic VC downturn letter” that most VCs have been issuing to their portfolio companies (9:40)

• Startups with strong fundamentals will remain the best VC cases (11:20)

• Why impact startups might be the most resilient in an economic downturn 

• VC investing comes down to two options: vitamins vs painkillers. Impact companies are the painkillers (12:00)

• Is 10 years sufficient as a time-horizon for deeptech hardware solutions? (13:00)

• Why Norrsken looks for deep tech startups that have immediate pent-up demand (14:00)

• The one area where Agate has completely changed her mind in the past 2 years (17:10)

• Why  Norrsken’s biggest mistake was to fall in love in something else other than the team (18:00)

• Agate’s tips to people that want to break into Climate Tech and join a startup (22:50)

• The 700 Climate tech jobs listed on Norrsken’s job board with  (24:00)

• Why the hardest part is to break into the Climate community and why it gets much easier to transfer between companies once you understand the climate ecosystem (25:00)

• How Norrsken runs investment decisions (27:40)

• The 1-to-1 correlation between financial and impact returns (29:00)

Show Links

• Norrsken VC

• Norrsken Foundation

• Niklas Adalberth

• Stockholm Mayor: “We want to be the impact capital of the world”

• Northvolt (building Europe’s largest EV battery gigafactory)

• Einride (electric trucking) 

• Heart Aerospace (electric airplanes)

• Candela (electric boats)

Nordics funds list:

• Norrsken VC (Sweden)

• Pale Blue Dot (Sweden)

• 2150 (Denmark  / UK)

• Climentum Capital (Denmark)

• Nordic Foodtech (Finland)

• Voima Ventures (Finland)

• Trellis Ventures (Sweden)

• Trellis Road (Sweden)

• Katapult (Norway)

• Summa Equity (Sweden)

• Almi Invest (Sweden - Public fund)

• Helen Ventures (Norway - CVC)

• Yara Growth Ventures (Norway - CVC)

• Vestas Ventures (Denmark - CVC)

• The classic VC downturn letter → Y Combinator infamous letter to their portfolio companies

Carveouts

• 700 climate impact jobs listed on Norrsken VC’s job board https://www.norrsken.org/jobs