So that means that we just run different programs depending on what stage a company is at, and then we try to funnel them through and make sure that they scale sort of through all the programs, but they can also come in from the side and just do one program or or test something out. And and, you know, since we are connected to a university, it's also the value add of coming to us to study because since all universities are free, right?
Then it's really about the offer that you have to potential students. And so a lot of our programs are free for anyone who wants to come, even if you graduated like twenty years ago, you can come back and get support for free. And then we charge for the program where we also invest. And that's sort of where the fund comes in and and works on top of the program.
Welcome to The Investor, a podcast where I, Joel Palafinkel, your host, dives deep into the minds of the world's most influential institutional investors. In each episode, we sit down with an investor to hear about their journeys and how global markets are driving capital allocation. So join us on this journey as we explore these insights. Alright. So we are live. So excited for this episode. Because I just got back from Europe, specifically Sweden.
I went to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark and was fortunate to meet Julia before I traveled. So she was kind enough to give me a lot of tips on where to, you know, where to go, where to visit, what foods to taste. So it's good to kind of do a little bit of a recap of my travels and learn a little more, about, you know, investing, you know, in Europe. So Julia Dellen is the CEO of SSE Ventures. It's the venture capital fund of the Stockholm School of Economics.
So investing in startups, they also have a startup incubator as well, with with part of the business school.
So, excited to go really deep, you know, Julia, and and learn a little more about you and highlight all the great things that you're doing and also your your fund and the university and just kind of the ecosystem, you know, so selfishly, I just wanna learn more, and I just wanna share this knowledge with the with the investment community, the fund managers, the GPs, the the institutional investors. So welcome to the show.
Yeah. Thanks, Joel. It's a pleasure to be here, and I'm so excited to hear some from your Sweden trip. I haven't yet. So Yeah. I hope we get to talk about that. We will. I'll talk about it. And, you know, and I I think we met very, very briefly at the happy hour in New York. So we'll talk about that too, you know, your travels in New York. But, you know, maybe as an icebreaker, I'll kick it off. So I went to Norway, spent some time there. It was really beautiful.
State in Oslo. They have like a really cool opera house and you just like walk up the opera house. It's like a ramp. So, was a little scared kind of coming down, but made it back down. And, it's just a really cool culture there. It's just everybody's really friendly. And then right after that, we went to Sweden. So we took, just a brief plane trip and we stayed we stayed kind of in the suburbs of Sweden. And then there was we did a boat ride. So there was kind of like the old town of Stockholm.
So we did that and then did like a canal ride. And then there's like a little zoo there too. I don't know if you're familiar with the area, but, there's like a there's like a little zoo across from, the canal. So that was a lot of fun. And then we ended up in Denmark. We stayed in Denmark for three days and, kind of stayed in, oh, my mind's blanking, but wherever Tivoli Square is, what's the In Copenhagen. Copenhagen. Yeah. So we stayed in Copenhagen. That was really amazing.
I mean, we went to, like, the Louisiana Museum. And, you know, that was only like an hour away. So, yes, if you guys want tips, let me know. I'll definitely share like my my route. But it's like those three countries are really close to each other and, you know, pricing, I guess there's a lot of arbitrage too, depending on when you go. So, you know, I went to L. A. Before a few months ago and like the tickets to go to L. A. Were almost the same price to to go to Europe.
So, so there's, you know, you'll be surprised there's, you know, sometimes just different deals depending on the time you go. And then what Julia was saying before we started was, you know, it's daytime until like 10PM. So you still kind of end up staying up if you have kids. It's kind of weird too, because they're still up as well. So you feel very productive because you can just do so much in one day because it's daylight and you don't you don't realize it. So that's my 2¢, Julie.
I mean, anything you would add in terms of if people were traveling, is there like a country or something else that you would add to the trip that I missed? We wanted to go to Legoland. So we didn't go to Legoland because it was like four hours away. But Louisiana was just as good. And then to Voli's Park, that's kind of like a theme park anyways, you know? So so we were fine. But but Lego, I think Denmark is where Lego was invented, right? Like, it's originated.
Yeah. Yeah. I I mean, you missed Finland out of the Nordic countries, but Yeah. It's it's a bit further as well from you, so I understand that. But I think I asked you if you were gonna have the meatballs in Sweden. Did you taste it? We didn't, I didn't get the meatballs. I couldn't find it, but they had these really good chocolate balls. Those are amazing. It's like a chocolate.
Yeah. It's like a chocolate ball that has, like, coconut toasting on it, it's like a it's like a truffle kind of a yeah. We had but I couldn't find the meatballs in Sweden, but but you told me that it's just as good as IKEA's meatballs. So Yeah. I could just go to could just go to IKEA and get the same experience. Right? Yeah. And you can make them yourself. It's not that difficult, I would say. That's true. Yeah. It's like a it's like a round burger, pretty much.
Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, the food was really good. So one thing that I had in Denmark, they have this place. I forgot the name of the city, but it's like it's like right on the water and everybody's eating these, these, like, fish platters. So it's like smoked salmon, but some people have herring. I had authentic herring.
I feel like this whole episode is going to be like a travel episode, but, near the Louisiana Museum, they had authentic, Danish food and, they had like this herring, like authentic herring dish, which was really good. So that's kind of a big thing there too. Kind of the the herring, I guess, in Denmark and probably Norway too. I'm assuming. Right? And we have that a bit here in Sweden as well. Yeah. Yeah. We stayed in the suburbs, so it was kind of cool because we felt like locals.
So we stayed at like a hotel that was like, I think, few minutes out. So it was a little bigger hotel, you know, especially with our family. So that was that was good. And then and then Finland, what's what's near Finland? I guess if you're traveling there, are there like, if you were to kinda do a trip to Finland, are there, like, other countries that you would also do? I mean, you can go to Estonia, which has a lot of startups and is really growing as an ecosystem. That's quite cool.
But, otherwise, Finland is so close to Russia. So Mhmm. And after that, there's nothing else but Russia. So Yeah. Not really that close to anything, I would say. Sure. But it's it's a great sort of round trip, especially if you're coming in November, December. You can go to Slosh, which is, like, the biggest conference here in The Nordics that we all all of the VCs and all the startups attend. And there's so many people flying in from from The US as well.
So Mhmm. That's definitely a recommendation. Yeah. Check that out. And then the northern lights are usually that's in Norway. Right? And is that normally in November? I think? You can see it in Sweden as well, but you have to go quite quite far up north. Okay. But you you you know the it's Norway, Sweden, and Finland that all connect in the in the top very top north. Yeah. And so in all countries, can see the northern lights, but it's definitely more into winter time. Okay. Well, right.
Well, appreciate the the additional insight and, you know, hopefully hopefully, had enough of my travels. But, but it was fun, you know, definitely definitely really enjoyed it and and I'm excited to jump right into it with you as well. So why don't we get to know you a little better, Julia?
You know, I I think one thing we can start with is really just your early education, your career, maybe you can walk us through, you know, what you studied and you know, because a lot of people are looking to learn how to number one break into private equity or venture capital and eventually even maybe start their own fund. And there's and we we all have done this from all walks of life, right? We've come from different backgrounds.
There isn't really a cookie cutter way to break into this industry. Some people break into this industry and then get out of it for a few years and then come back. So, maybe you can start with just your early education, your career, and then kind of how you, landed to be, you know, the CEO of this fund, especially of a large institution.
Absolutely. Thank you, Joel. So I could talk a lot about the differences in sort of The US versus the European ecosystem in terms of what where we where we have graduate degrees from or undergraduate degrees. But myself, I studied at the Stockholm School of Economics where I now work. I did my undergraduate there, and it was a three year program in business and economics. And I didn't do much more than that.
I did an exchange semester at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario for four months and after that, just a year after I graduated, I did a short stint at Stanford for two months during a summer. But I would say that I might have less of an education than most people who go into my industry do, but I just knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, so I sort of I decided that after my undergraduate I was done with university.
Now I ended up not being an entrepreneur full time, but, at least I realized I didn't need more more, education that I had. Yeah. And then, you know, so that's interesting, though. I'd love to know the differences that you've noticed between, like, an American education because we have, like, a four year degree, and then business school is usually two years. Some people do a lot more training to get, you know, they're students for life sometimes in America.
So and, you know, and we also have to obviously pay for these levels of education, most usually through debt. One thing that I I learned about some of the countries, I think it's Denmark, or, like, the school is completely covered, through the government. I'm not sure if that's the case. Yeah. The same in Sweden. Yeah. Yeah. You know, then there was a book that I read several years ago. It's called the blue zones of happiness. And, Denmark was mentioned.
A blue zone is like one of the most happiest countries in the world. And, there's a couple different countries where the people are the happiest. Denmark is one of them. And Denmark, the reason why is because the education is covered. There's a sense of unity, like everyone from Denmark feels unified. And then the other piece was, everybody gets paid generally well. So like no matter what job you have, you know, you get good health benefits, you have a good job.
We're like in The US, I'll be honest, I mean, a lot of people are really stressed out about getting good affordable health care. It's, you know, the health care system here is not, you know, a socialist type of system, so you know the rich people do get oftentimes access to the best doctors and sometimes it's not the case for everybody. But I know that there's, you know, good health care in a lot of other countries and I've heard the same about Europe.
I've heard in Europe too, like, maternity leave is sometimes like six months to a year We're like in, you know, I'm in New York, right? So it's like, you're lucky if you get, you know, there's people that have a baby and then they go back to work, you know, maybe in a month or so because they just don't wanna feel, you know, left out or just kind of maybe not getting that promotion that they need.
So I'm happy to talk about the, you know, the cultural differences that you've noticed, you know, with education. You know, I know you spent some time in New York too. So there's probably some things that you noticed as well. Yeah. No. But definitely I noticed the difference between the education levels of people in BC and also what they studied.
I think that there's more diversity in terms of areas that you you majored in when it comes to, like, the New York ecosystem, at least from what I saw, like you can have a degree in history or literature or something like that. While all people in Sweden who work in BC, are either old operators and they usually went to business school for that, or they went to business school and then they went into BC.
So it's mostly finance and business degrees and we don't have the same kind of major and minor system that you have. But I would say that, like, most of us did finance or management or any kind of business degree before we went into VC. But it's also it's, like, basically, the two options that you have in in Sweden if you don't wanna go a completely different path is engineering or or business.
And then the schools or the degrees are quite wide open and there is a lot of breadth in that and then you can sort of do whatever you want with that. Yeah. Okay. So that's definitely a difference. Yeah. Yeah. No. So that's, that's really interesting. And then, you know, so you studied, and you got the formal education, and then, walk me through your career.
Was this your, you know, and only job out of out of college, or do you, you know, move around to a couple different, you know, career paths before you kind of broke? So I've always kind of had an entrepreneurial mindset and I I always knew that I wanted to start a business. So even before university, I I did my own, like, small companies. Like, I did photography work at events, and I I created this company that did the iPhone cases or sold iPhone cases that I had just bought in.
So during my year at my undergraduate degree, I started like my real startup in a sense. It was a ticketing startup that helped event organizers sell tickets online and create beautiful websites. And we did that as as sort of it was me and a friend who were working at another event company, and we had this idea and we pitched it to them and they were not doing anything white label.
They were only selling other people's tickets and they were doing a marketplace for that and they didn't want to do anything white label. So I I sort of stole their CTO and and we created this company ourselves. And so that was my job out of school, just working for myself. And I was able to take up my salary maybe two months after we graduated.
And then after that, we sort of left that after two years, maybe I I had a PM role at a product startup and then I came back to the school working for the incubator. Yeah. And so now just recently, five years later, shifted to working full time for the fund that I also started during my time in the incubator. Yeah. So that's an interesting parallel because I worked I was an engineer, and then I worked in product too.
So, you know, there's a lot of great superpowers that you can have if you're a product manager and then you're working on incubator because you're essentially probably really good at the user experience, testing the product. So what are some things that you think as a product manager that helped you become a really good, maybe incubator manager and, you know, run? Because running an accelerator is definitely different than being an investment manager. You're much more hands on.
You're almost kind of like an extension of a team. So, if someone's coming from, like, a tech background, what are some of the skills that you think, you know, definitely helped you become, you know, talented at the accelerator?
Yeah. I would say that when people ask me in why I switched from a PM role to working at an incubator and that didn't really seem to think that they were connected in any way, I would always answer that, you know, I was this was this linchpin in this big ecosystem and in the PM role. Like, I I talked to sales. I talked to customer service. I talked to tech people.
I talked to design, I talked to marketing, and I was always the ones who are keeping everyone together and making sure that everyone understood each other. And I think that that exactly, that exact role is what you do with an incubator user.
You talk to the founders, you talk to investors, you talk to partners, you talk to potential customers or to potential stakeholders in that many different ways, financiers, you know, and you try to just connect people and make sure that everyone knows exactly where everyone has everyone.
So in in many ways, I think, like, I have a I have a love for connecting people and and networking, and I think that that really helped me in both roles and make made sure that I could take advantage of the things that I learned in the PM role and really apply it to the incubator, even though it was completely different people and completely different structures that you were working with.
Yeah. And of course, like just being a PM in general, it's a great, it's just great knowledge for any founder to sort of have that bouncing board of someone who has been in the middle of everything, also being super passionate about product, but also learning or being reminded all the time to talk to customers, talk to customers, talk to customers. So, yeah, definitely. Yeah, no, that's really helpful.
And I think the, you know, in my mind, I see the incubator as, you know, maybe maybe concept concept plus maybe MVP, maybe not revenue yet. And then, you know, obviously, the accelerator is, like, definitely, like, you know, some some revenue, some recurring revenue, and then the accelerator is to come in and then, you know, hopefully get them to their, you know, seed seed two or, like, series a. Yeah. But is that how you guys look at it too as far as, like, the incubator?
And then it sounds like you don't even have an accelerator. You just kinda jump right into the fund. So is the incubator kind of like maybe a hybrid of, like, an accelerator too because you're getting them to revenue? Yeah. I would say so. In Sweden, incubators are funded to a really large extent by government funds. So we support the companies up until seed almost always. Oh, wow.
And so that means that we just run different programs depending on what stage a company is at, and then we try to funnel them through and make sure that they scale sort of through all the programs, but they can also come in from the side and just do one program or test something out. You know, since we are connected to a university, it's also the value add of coming to us to study because since all universities are free, right?
Then it's really about the offer that you have to potential students. So a lot of our programs are free for anyone who wants to come, even if you graduated like twenty years ago, you can come back and get support for free. And then we charge for the program where we also invest. And that's sort of where the fun comes in and and works on top of the program.
Yeah. And the so on top of that, like, the what are some of the, you know, like so how how does somebody kinda get into the incubator, and what's the process? Do they come up with, like, a business idea or, like, a problem? I guess if you were to kinda and I'm just trying to do this also for the audience. Right? If someone were to just launch a business in your opinion, where where do you think they should start?
So we actually support mostly students from, like, not having an idea or not having a team at all, and and we help you from that stage. Yeah. And that could either be through our program where we support students together and they do batches where they they are matched with people from the engineering school that we are neighbors with. Mhmm. And we do, like, half of the class are students from the business school, half of the class class are students from the engineering school.
Yeah. And we let them go through a ten week program where we just help them understand Mhmm. What is the problem, how do I solve it, and how do I pick it, and and how do I test it, MVP, competition and then pitching it to investors. And that's very much of an education like similar to education, but it's very practical. Although they don't get any points, of course, for any course like that.
But then they can also come in from the side and and have an idea or a pitch deck, and we just connect them with the right people. And then once they have a team and an idea, then they can come into our program, which is like an eight week acceleration program. We call it an acceleration program because we we coach them every week. We sit down with them, do workshops every week, pitch training every week, and then they pitch out of demo day at the end of the eight weeks.
And then we have our last program where we also invest in that. At that program, we require that they have traction, that they have, their ideas should have some kind of sustainable sort of impact in the world and it should be net positive. And then they also should have a team that are diverse in some sense. And we support them from initial traction, like very early traction to raising a pre seed round, which they do usually within six to twelve months.
And then usually before the program ends, after eighteen months, they have either raised their seed round or they're about to raise a seed round. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's great. And, you know, one thing that we also need to note is, you know, Spotify is from Stockholm, I believe, and Florida as well. Right? Yeah. So Florida was one of our companies actually in our incubator in 02/2004. No. Not me personally. But Okay. Yeah. Because that was probably, like, eight, nine years ago, I think. Right?
It's even more. 02/2004, I think they were in the program. Wow. That's crazy. We had, you know, we had Skype 02/2003. That's right. Yeah. Klarna 02/2004, Spotify 02/2006. So we sort of have those. Mhmm. Now nowadays, great startups that were launched in So what do you think it is? I mean, because, you know, we got obviously, we got New York. We got San Francisco. So what what is it that's, like, the secret sauce of Sweden that, like, is minting all of these unicorns?
Is it really, like, the strong tech talent? Is there, like, neighboring countries? Is it just obviously, your university is a big thing too, but are there other aspects that you think just kinda bring it all together that kind of isolate the talent, or do is it it sounds like you guys have a really good ecosystem too. Yeah. I mean, definitely, the engineering schools and this this what I talked about in the beginning about business or engineering, it's Yeah.
I think that leads so many people to go into engineering and study that. We've had, you know, a reform very early in '97 that let anyone who was employed sort of a tax, have a tax deductible computer at home and it allowed for like 1,000,000 out of the 8,000,000 Swedes living in our country to have a computer at home. And there are so many of these in like things that happened in our ecosystem very early on that I think led to the tech boom that we saw.
But also like some of these founders, like the founders of Klarna, Spotify, and so on, they've really, really given back to the ecosystem. And we also have these mafias of the early companies in the early 20 century that just like created a bunch of other cool startups and that sort of got the ball rolling, so yeah. Yeah, no, I think you mentioned a good point. I mean, I think the university and that academic foundation definitely helps.
So I've noticed, you know, just it was maybe two years ago, I was like, why are there so many? Why are all the fund admins in Utah, you know, like all the all the major, you know, fund admins that most people work with, and there's a big ecosystem on just the VC back office in Utah. And I was, like, asking somebody that lived there. I was like I was like, why are they all here? You know, there's one of the best accounting programs in, in Utah.
So I think people go there to kinda learn accounting and then obviously naturally, right, every single fund needs to do accounting. So it makes sense to kinda pick from the talent there. So the fact that you guys have, you know, robust engineering talent, and I'm sure there's a lot of diversity there too because I I can imagine, you know, I'm from India, so people from India probably wanna go there.
You know, number one for the for the you know, do you have to be a of Swedish origin to get free school, or do you just have to be a Swedish citizen, I guess? A Swedish citizen. Yeah. And and any EU citizen can also get free education in Sweden. So it's not just here. It's also citizen all citizens all over the EU. So it's very I mean, it's very, very special here in in Sweden because all universities are free, I think, in many other countries like Germany.
And I think Denmark, it's the public schools that are free. Mhmm. But then the private schools still cost. But I I mean, Stockholm School of Economics is a private school, and and we don't pay. So, yeah, it's a privilege for sure. Yeah. No. Absolutely. And especially I mean, that just that that just opens up more opportunity, and I feel like we could definitely follow example, hopefully have some type of platform to to, you know, unlock school.
And then the health care system there, that's can we talk about that as well? Just kind of the health care system in Sweden? I guess that's completely covered by the government as well, right? For the most part. Yeah. So, I think most people pay like $20 for, as I said, and then we have a cap of $120 per year that, you can in total pay for any kind of even surgeries or anything that you have in Sweden in connection to health care. And it's all publicly funded.
I think also just education and health care being free in the sense of, like, almost free, it's definitely created this social safety net that I think also has strengthened the entrepreneurial ecosystem here because it's really it's really not that bad to try to create a startup and fail because you, like most often you're protected. And I mean, meet so many founders who are like, yeah, I don't wanna work anymore.
I'll just go back to school because it's free and you get some government cash to to live and you can loan from the government at a very low interest rate. And Yeah. And it's it's almost like this this safety net of of going back to school is not giving you more depth in that sense, but just some some time to think.
Yeah. Yeah. I think sometimes philosophically, you know, especially with the job market, mean, it could be just as risky to work for a company than it is to launch your own company because, I mean, you could work for a company and get fired. And, you know, obviously, if your company is not doing well, you're gonna fire yourself. Right? Mhmm. So I think at the end of the day, it's kinda like just finding the right opportunity at the right time.
I do believe the industry experience that I have that definitely helped me have more discipline. So there's been some software that I've built and, you know, the software that I built in house, I kind of like thought about examples of like when I was working at a big tech company, there was like a proper discipline of product management, You have to have like, you know, software deliverables, software sprints. You want to prioritize the backlog.
So some of those, like, professional disciplines that definitely helped me, you know, as an entrepreneur. But, but I think that's definitely, you know, really great to hear just as far as just the ecosystem. And I think the next thing that we wanted to talk about was just kind of some of the the top trends, you know, as we talk about now this fund structure, you know, what was the what was the impetus for the fund structure?
I'm assuming it's so that you can double down and maybe, you know, help those companies scale to the next level. Right? So I'm assuming maybe the winners from the accelerator now the fund can come in and maybe lead their series a or take them to, you know, maybe a c two. Is that is that kinda like the sweet spot for you guys?
Yeah. So we actually have a very specific model that I I haven't seen anything like this in Sweden, and it's because we the sort of the problem that we saw in the market, it was more connected to the fact that we didn't see enough capital going into the very, very early stages of startups.
And of course, there's this friends, family rounds that usually happen in The US, but we don't have a lot of like friends and family kind of structure of investing in your family here, would say, only the sort of the richest do. And so we wanted to create something that would support these founders. And we realized that if you're doing a So we do pre pre seed because we give out convertible notes or like safes.
And if you do that, you have to have maybe a three to four years longer investing period or at least holding time compared to other VCs. So when we were up there and sort of seeing that, okay, it's gonna take fifteen to twenty years to close this fund from our investment, we should do it, make it evergreen anyway.
So we redesigned everything and we made sure that we could recycle up to 30% of each exit and then instead sort of call down the capital during seven years and invest that over a time period. And then our idea is to invest in 140 companies during those four to seven years and then make an exit in at least one of them or more of them to sort of build up the balance sheet for ourselves and invest out of that from year eight and onwards.
And then investors still have the same sort of ability to get their money back and and interest on that, of course, that we have a hurdle and that we split eighty twenty. Yeah. Okay. So the fund would actually take outside capital. It wouldn't be kind of like the university's, you know, balance sheet. It'd be kind of an outside Yeah. You know, fund.
And then the and then are you also open to, you know, people from outside of the, you know, I guess the the recycling strategy the recycling strategy would be to kinda just be a evergreen structure where it would kinda just redeploy into the into new assets, I guess. Right? Yes. Exactly. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. We can do that because we raise all of the capital now, and we have our last close this fall. And then after that, we won't take any new investors.
The investors are only able to sell on the secondary market after year seven when we called all the capital. So we don't need to think about like doing deal by deal distributions or anything like that, but we're raising one fund once. And then the idea is that those investors can sort of tag along on the future successes of these startups that have previously gone through the programs that we have, but sort of the new batches coming in from here on out.
Yeah. And, you know, you you spent some time in New York. So what was what were some of the observations that you noticed when you were talking to other emerging managers, you know, as maybe as far as just the, you know, the sentiment? And, you know, you probably talked to some LPs too. So are there any insights that you'd like to share, you know, just kind of in your time here that you kinda learned that was maybe surprising?
Yeah. I someone told me when I was in New York that there are over 800 funds in New York only. I don't know if that is Mhmm. True or you have an, like, an idea of if that's a crazy range or if that's actually lowballing it. Yeah. I mean, you'll be surprised. I mean, I I think the total amount of funds is actually not that much. So it's a very small world. I mean, it's very easy to go to one of, you know, one or two events and see the same exact people. They're the same exact LPs.
So it could be right. I I don't have, LexiBee Insights or Fitch book in front, but it could be right. I mean, may be only, you know, close to 1,000 funds just in New York. And New York's still a small town. Like, people feel that it is a big city because, wow, it's New York City, but it's still a small island. Right?
So so, you know, there is there is Upstate New York in the bigger, you know, state of New York, but in Manhattan, it's still you know, you you do see the same people, you know, for the most part at a lot of these events. So Yeah. It's and I think it's super interesting because you're, like, the same amount of people that we are in Sweden. We're about 10,000,000. You're in, like Yeah. Five suburb or the five boroughs here.
Yeah. The same amount of people, and you have, if it's true, 800 funds, and we have, like, 50. So you like, me going to an event that you organize with other emerging managers and and meeting, like, 30 new people, like, that would never happen here. Like, I think I'm the only emerging manager in Stockholm at this point. Interesting. Okay. So there isn't, like, a huge so that sounds pretty interesting.
There isn't, a huge, like, kind of, like, emerging fund manager ecosystem, mostly entrepreneurs. Right? Yep. Yep. Absolutely. And of course, there are like fund managers, but now we we had like a period going back maybe five years where we had so many new seed funds coming out.
And they were founded by these operational past operational founders or operational people and in startups, and and they were coming out and sort of investing their own capital and and almost more creating a multifamily office than they did a fund, but we call them funds. And it's not that many new people coming into the fund space, but it's more now people moving around to different funds.
So we don't see, we see of course, like a lot of people becoming associates and sort of trying to grow within their respective VC or changing VC, but it's not, like, there's not that much room to grow where the partner is still like, they're still there in the top, you know? Yeah. So So when you say, like, they act like a multifamily office, are they are they, like, helping people Are they, like, doing fundraising for start ups? They're connecting, and they're just doing deal by deal, I guess.
Right? So they're just kinda like a a capital intro consultant versus No. So they they are raising funds, but they're putting a lot of their own capital in, and it's it's they're raising capital from their friends most often. Yeah. So it's it's we have less So it's like SPVs pretty much. Yeah. But but they are they are real funds. So they would raise capital once and they would deploy it over three years and then they would move on to the next fund.
But it's it's really like these group of friends almost that invest together. And it's yeah. It's really cool because when you meet these these partners and these teams, it's really like, they're super close connected. You could really tell that that what they're doing, they're they know what they're doing and and they know exactly where they have each other and, but it's almost like that's the bar of raising a fund here.
Like you need to be really, really good and really connected to be able to raise that kind of capital that you need. Yeah, would say too, mean, look, there's there's a new wave of these micro fund managers too, you know, mean, you know, you could do kind of like a you could do like a multi series SPV where you have, it's it's like one SP. It's like a master LLC. And then underneath the LLC, you can do multiple deals.
So it could be kind of like a fun synthetically, and the structure is essentially like a multi series SPV. But, you know, there's a rise of those where people are doing syndicates, they're they're deploying like, you know, dollars 15,000,000,000. I know a guy that's done like 50,000,000 on AngelList and and, you know, it's kind of the same results, right? If you do invest in some great companies, everybody's still getting carry, you're still charging a management fee.
You know, there's a little bit of flexibility, but I think there's a whole there's a whole community based approach to asset management now. And I think at some point, it'll be kind of like the Reddit crowd where, like, people are sharing insights on deals maybe and and, there's that capital, there's that industry intelligence too. So, I've seen this before where there's about, you know, I've done a couple investments in space, and there is a whole community focusing on like deep tech and space.
So when you have like, that thought leadership, those people sharing deals, that helps to maybe mitigate your risk as well, right? Because you got like, other people that are just as smart as you or maybe just have some industry experience that could help you, you know, maybe not, you know, take a bet on a deal without completely diligencing that. So I think that's that's kind of the benefit of, like, working with, friends and kind of a small, community, I would say.
Yeah. I think something that I also thought was super interesting in New York versus here is that we have so few great startups. So funds can't really niche down. So all funds are agnostic, do tech, software, not many go into hardware, but, like, everyone has the same pitch. Mhmm. While in New York, I met so many niched funds and micro funds, like you say.
I would say, like, most of our funds, if they're not, like, North Zone, Creandum, and EQT, which are the biggest ones, then you are, like, a 50 to a $100,000,000 fund. Like, the space is not that big really. And because valuations are much lower here, rounds are also much smaller, so you can still afford to do like twenty, twenty five investments with a 50,000,000 fund. And it's just like and you can basically take the whole round.
And that's also what funds do more here because they almost need it because the rounds are so small. And so it's, while I saw that like the ecosystem in New York was much more collaborative where you would go in with like three microphones or even maybe four or five microphones going into the same round, which, like, that would never happen here. You would have one VC in one round, and that's it. Oh, that's it? Oh, yeah.
Because you see, the thing is usually, like, lot of times, the VCs do need to collaborate because if they're, you know, if they're, you know, if they're doing, like, a 250 check and the round is, a million, there may only be, like, another, you know, two hundred, three hundred k allocation left, but they still need to fill out that allocation to close the round.
So that's why a lot of people are kind of, like, collaborating and, you know, also kind of saying why they like the company and also kind of having like minded people that are investing in that sector, as well because it just kind of helps close out the round. Yeah. So there's there's definitely a dependency, especially if there's like one lead investor to kinda just close out that round, and the lead will also put on sometimes the lead will put a contingency on the founder and say, look.
You know, this is contingent upon you closing the remaining amount too. So there's there's definitely, like, onus on the founder to go out and and do that too. And then, you know, it would be helpful too to know a little more about what industries you're excited about. You know, obviously, when you think about you know, when I think about Skype and Clarna and Spotify, they're, you know, I would look at them as kind of like b to b, but also b to c as well.
So it's like a b to b to c to b to b where there's like multiple customers and you can expand your market over time. But what are you seeing that really is attractive as far as the business model, and what are some industries that you're comfortable with? So I think for the time ever, Sweden is sort of at the same pace as The US in terms of new trends. So, obviously AI is booming here as well.
We're talking a lot about new business models that accompany AI and sort of, is the user gonna get paid for the data they share? How are we using AI in existing companies? How can we make sure that everyone is more efficient with these kinds of technologies? And I think that's like, if there's any trend that we're seeing right now, of course, that's the one. I think that we in general, we like both B2B and B2C.
We think that especially now B2C companies, if they succeed now, they will like for sure succeed in the long term. And so it's actually very exciting to see what sort of comes out And especially these young people usually who come to us, who are very optimistic about the world and what they can build.
And I believe that's also like a trait that you need as a founder to not see all of these obstacles in front of you and really believe that you can build a better model than OpenAI and, you know, try for that and and sort of shoot for the moon and end up in the stars at least. Yeah. No. That's exciting. And, you know, with AI, let's unpack that a little bit. Right? Because look look.
If we think about, like, every summer or, like, every maybe six or seven months, like, what was the hot trend last year? It was, like, web three. Right? Or was that two years ago? Was that was that last year? Web three? And then then there was a whole, like, blockchain thing and the crypto thing. So, and you know what? What I think is really interesting. I don't know if did you see the Apple headset? The new so so I I don't know.
I brought this up to somebody last night, and I was like, look, the demo of the Apple headset, like, I don't know if you actually need a TV anymore because if you're wearing the headset, you can kind of zoom out and then see like the same form factor of a TV. You can also do your work. But I think it would be awkward to watch that with your family, right? Or your friends like everyone's wearing their own headset, or maybe it doesn't. So I don't know.
Do you think do you think like the AI would kind of like integrate in and now because VR was a whole thing like maybe four or five years ago, right? So do you think do you think there's gonna be something where, like, VR integrates in with AI at some point because of this headset? Like, I don't know. Like, what what are your thoughts on the Apple headset and, like, how that's gonna impact, like, maybe investing trends? I don't know.
I think Apple is really trying to make sure that everything that they're doing is sort of connecting into one and that they can really use this interconnected system of theirs. And I think that usually when Apple develops something, they can develop it in sort of silent and we won't hear that much about it except for And most of those projects are closed down. Eventually when they introduce something, I think that they're quite sure that this will be something that we will adopt.
And I don't know, I mean, I'm sure people thought that it was weird that we would sit and stare down our phones when we were riding the subway as well. And like, is that the the world that we're gonna live in in the future where everyone's just staring down their phones? And maybe it will be the same. Like, we will be sitting in a in a living room with our our headsets and Yeah. And watch TV, and it won't be weird for anyone. But I honestly have no idea.
I think that, like, AI for sure is gonna be in the same way that, like, we invest in IT or we invest in apps in, like, the early days. I I think AI is gonna be something that is in in every single company, and and we're not gonna be able to run away from that in the same way. Mhmm. While VR is more of a, like, small subset of of what we do. Yeah. And maybe it's the next the next sort of platform that we build on. Mhmm. But I think we're quite far away from that at least now.
Yeah. And I think, you know, it might augment the well well, I'll I'll agree with you there where it says that where you said that, like, most of the products do stick. I mean, so I don't know any specific products that have, like, crazily flopped from Apple. So, like, the last one that I think is brand new is really, like, the AirPods, and I feel like everybody has an AirPod now. Right?
So I think the I think the cost might have to go down a little bit, obviously, because it's like $1,500 to get the the headset. And I do think it's kind of heavy looking too. So I think if the headset kinda looks like a really cool sun like, pair of sunglasses that you can wear, and you get some type of similar experience, and then I don't know, maybe if you wanna be in cinema mode, like, put something on on top of it. I think that could be really cool.
But I I can see, like, at some point, you know, push notifications. I would probably get uncomfortable wearing it, though. Don't know if I'd wanna wear, like, the glasses all the time. I I don't have an Apple Watch anymore. I used to have an Apple Watch, and I stopped using it because I always have to charge it. So that was my biggest issue. So I just have, like, a regular sports watch because I just wanna know what time it is.
And Yeah. It's, it's, like, frustrating when I always have to charge it. So so I think I think it might replace the form factor of just using the iPad. So, like, if you you know, a lot of times if you're in bed kinda watching the iPad, maybe you just wear the glasses and it's hands free versus kinda having to lean on your arm. So I don't know. But there could be some there could be some generative stuff that kind of comes on top of that.
And and, you know, sorry to get derailed, but I wanted to talk about AI. Super interesting. Yeah. So I wanna talk about AI. Like, what I was initially, you know, before I got sidetracked by the Apple products, like the like, how do you see AI and, like, kinda where where are you guys thinking in terms of, like, the hot market? So, you know, obviously, generative AI is a huge thing.
And then also, you know, prompt engineering, you know, using these prompts from chat GPT to kinda, you know, complete tasks. I think, like, auto GPT is the next generation of that where, like, you can actually do a complete project for you. But are there any interesting startups that you've seen? And do you only invest in Sweden as well, or you you open to outside of Sweden also? I would say we we can invest sort of everywhere, but they have to have some connection to the school.
So it doesn't make sense for us to invest that far out. But in terms of AI, I think that like what I'm seeing and what my thought is, is that I think that AI just as like a pure AI company, it's never gonna be of interest for the VC industry.
Like, us investors, we're never gonna be able to invest in that because our money has to go in and it has to really shift something, like, proven a hypothesis or, like, something with just, like, marginally and and the money can just get you from that point to the next, and then they can grow massively. I think then AI, like, pure AI place, they're never gonna do that either. They are, like, super niche.
They can create their own cash flow by themselves, and they can sort of grow, but it's gonna be a cap in the market. Or it's, like, infrastructure place where you need so much money where VC the VC model doesn't make sense. If not another player comes in and also invests in that, of course, like Microsoft did with OpenAI.
But I think AI on top of companies that already have a moat, have some sort of offer to the customer where it's they can compete with others, not with AI, but because of other things and adding AI to sort of make processes more efficient or making search better for users or something like that. That's super interesting for VCs.
Sure. And and something that I look towards more and and we try to help our startups figure out how they can apply AI in a way where it makes sense for the company and for the customer and not get so stuck with like, oh, we should implement the chatbot or we should make search chatable or because it's not always the best idea, I think. Yeah. No. Absolutely.
Well, all these insights were really amazing, and I just love to, you know, talk to other people from different regions because you just get a different perspective, and it helps you have a more open mind. One thing we were gonna talk about too is maybe a little more on the micro side. So, like, you know, what are the nuances in the investor ecosystem between, like, Sweden versus London and then just the general Nordics? Any any things you wanted to cover there?
Yeah. I think most of it I covered because the I would say New York and London is quite It's It's pretty similar. Yeah. And the what I heard when I was in London was that it was really hard to get into rounds in Sweden and collaborate with other VCs because they would take the entire round. So the London ecosystem is definitely much more different and they also have more funds and more micro funds and specialized funds and it makes more sense.
And I think that definitely in The Nordics, we need to learn to look beyond The Nordics and don't not think that we are the best sort of region in the world just because we have all of these amazing companies coming out of the Nordics that we're so proud of, but we sometimes we get too stuck in that.
Yeah. Of course it helps that we are so small countries, we all speak our own language, so we had to learn English at a very early age, which means that we also have a global mindset from a very early day in our startups, but still we're sort of afraid to step out of our comfort zone and leave this nice social safety net that we have, I think, and and move to London and move to New York to run our startup.
So I think that we still have a lot to do in this ecosystem before we can sort of compete with the London, New York and eventually maybe San Francisco or Silicon Valley ecosystem. Yeah. I mean, along with collaboration, one thing that I noticed too, especially since, like, 2020, when when COVID happened, there was a big boom of, like, the emerging manager movement.
And, a lot of people were building in public very similar to how they were building startups in public, where they would document their journey. And I feel like that's the best kind of marketing when you say, hey. You know what? This is how I did it. Here's like what I did. Here's what I changed. Here's the challenges that I faced. And I feel like, there there could be an opportunity for some of these countries that are, you know, a little less collaborative.
If you're like a small manager that comes out of a university and you start documenting your journey, that could probably get you into maybe some of the rounds with some of the founders too because they may resonate with you as almost kind of like being a builder and and building the the fund and the website and like the whole strategy from scratch.
And one thing I'll say too, we have a lot of resources on our web page, but I've tried to just try to aggregate as many resources and pieces of wisdom in terms of just kind of how to how to do portfolio construction, how to how to put together, you know, a presentation, you know, all those things. It's on the Internet now. Lot of people are putting it out there, so that's been definitely a lot more prominent than I've than probably, like, five years ago. So that's kinda been Nice.
I will definitely check it out. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And, Julia, you know, really appreciate your time. I guess if anybody has any questions, feel free to, to chime in. I also posted, Julia's website, and she also has a blog as well. So, put that out there. But, you know, really appreciate your time and your flexibility, and and, it's really been great getting to know you. So hope hopefully, we'll get to catch up again soon in person if either of us go across the pond. Yes. Exact definitely.
And I just have to do a shameless plug of if you wanna know more about the Swedish ecosystem, we have a podcast called Startup Syndrome, which we speak in English about the Swedish ecosystem and sort of what startup founders can learn from this ecosystem. So if you are interested in that, you should just search on Spotify or wherever you find your podcasts for startup syndrome. Yeah. Absolutely. I'll put the link in there so everybody can also just conveniently, click to it and subscribe to it.
So thanks for thanks for that, And, appreciate you having me, Joel. I know you're really busy, so appreciate you making time for me. Yeah. It was a pleasure. Thank you, Joel. Yeah. Take care. Bye.