Creandum + London = 💚

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Creandum

5 min readNov 24, 2021

“What happened down in the dungeons between you and Professor Quirrell is a complete secret, so, naturally the whole school knows.”

We are not comparing the social dynamics of VC to that of a wizarding boarding school (or are we!?) — but to some of you, the announcement we are now about to make will not come as a surprise.

Regardless of your level of insight we are super excited to (finally) officially tell you that we at Creandum have leveled up and now have 12 feet on the ground in the UK!

How it started, How it’s going

Two decades ago when Creandum was the new kid on the block we had the long-term ambition to build a globally leading firm. Looking back, perhaps we at least had a fraction of the drive (and positive naivety) that seems to be a common denominator amongst the founders in our portfolio. Since that time we have taken steady steps, with regular intervals, to build the Creandum footprint across the European continent (and beyond).

Creandum started making investments outside the Nordics in 2012. One year later we put Johan Brenner on the ground in SF to build our office and presence there. Not only did we want to help portfolio companies make it in the US but we also wanted to make sure we had our ears to the ground and understood both the European and US investment landscape. In 2016 Simon Schmincke opened the Berlin office and with great success managed to make DACH one of our most important regions.

So does that mean we are now betting on the UK to become one of our most important regions? Well no, not really…

…Because it already is

Just as VCs take bets on entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs do the same with VCs. We are thankful that Simon, Maria, and all others in the Depop team dared to take a bet on us (via Fredrik) and become their partners and Creandum’s first UK-headquartered investment. Not to mention for letting us follow their journey to becoming the leading Gen Z vintage marketplace in the UK and US — and all the way to exit.

“Fredrik is one of the best investors on the EU tech scene. His support has been invaluable, not only financially but morally too. I truly valued his guidance as he helped get Depop to where it is today.” — Maria Raga (Depop)

We are also proud backers of Argent, where we felt an instant connection on how we consider product and the weight we put into making a great UX/UI experience. We are very excited that they let us join in the early days of their fantastic journey. Great things ahead!

“Having built and sold one business with Creandum (Peak Labs), I knew they were the best partner from the earliest stages to help build ambitious product and culture.” — Itamar Lesuisse (Argent)

And there’s more to be announced soon — we can’t wait to tell you about the latest pre-seed / seed team that has chosen us and are now rocket-ship-fuelled-up.

“What we really appriciated was that they had respect for that you haven’t figured out all things at an early stage, plus their experience in taking companies from seed and beyond very successfully” — Stealth founder

As you can hear, we have been excited about the UK for a long time, and this is why it has become the second-largest market for our last two funds (beside Sweden), and also one of the fastest-growing.

We are (not) on a plane (or on a boat)…

…Or on Zoom for that matter. Having spent time on airports and planes Zooming into board meetings and founder calls, we ultimately asked ourselves: Why all this going back and forth? If the UK already is one of our core markets we should pay the respect to the ecosystems and founders that it deserves and make sure we are just a Boris-bike ride away.

With the Monzo mafia, the Revolut mafia, the Depop mafia, Deliveroo mafia (and many more!), we feel the UK is more exciting than ever. And with more tech talent roaming the streets of London, Manchester, Oxford, Cambridge, Nottingham (the list goes on!) than ever before, we felt we couldn’t stand a day longer only being blurry Zoom faces.

Calling UK founders, operators, and investors!

We* are extremely excited to take this next step in the history of Creandum.

And although geographies change, investment focus is still the same as it has always been; being the first or one of the first institutional investors on the cap-table (i.e. pre-seed to Series A), of the most ambitious founders. We look forward to continuing to focus on the most important problems facing the planet and are excited about all aspects of consumer and software innovation that will play the part in the solution.

With our 12 boots on the ground we would love to speak to you; investors, founders, and operators. Just hit us up here or follow us here and here.