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