Three Baltic fund managers receive €55.8M from ERDF

Three Baltic fund managers have received €55.8M from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), or €18.6M per fund. The tender, announced in 2023, was won by Latvia's BADideas.fund, Nordic-Baltic venture studio Vntrs Consulting, Latvian VC and accelerator Buildit. 

The state-owned development finance institution Altum selected and contracted the fund managers. In addition, they will have to attract private investment, amounting to 10% of the total fund capital, or €2.07M. In total, the fund managers will invest €62M in startups over the next five years. The maximum investment allocated per startup will be €250K at the pre-seed stage, and up to €1.5M at the seed stage.

The fund managers will invest in innovative, export-oriented companies both in Latvia and in other EU countries.

Launched in April 2022 in Latvia, BADideas.fund focuses on pre-seed and seed-stage startups from the Baltic and CEE regions. The typical ticket size is €100K. The fund has more than 40 business angels, founders, executives, and employees from Bolt, Vimeo, Printify, PandaDoc, Pipedrive, and others. The founding members are Artis Kehris, Raimonds Kulbergs, and Ben Leblois.

Buildit is a hardware and IoT startup accelerator. It provides €10K to €50K in pre-seed investments to the best-performing startups and up to €250K in seed investments. Buildit's partners are Matiss Neimanis, Rene Tonnisson, and Aleksander Tonnisson.

Founded in Sweden in 2016, Vntrs Consulting is a Nordic-Baltic venture studio that helps entrepreneurs and large corporations build digital products and services. The studio provides investment and also technical expertise, including advice for growth, funnel marketing, CRO, optimizing AARRR metrics, branding, etc. It has offices in Stockholm, Tallinn, and Espoo (Finland). The founding partners are Kristaps Prusis and Joachim Widd.

UPD: Vntrs Consulting, which received €18.6M from ERDF, established an Outlast fund in Latvia for investment in B2B software-driven startups at the pre-seed and seed stages from the Baltics and Nordics. Outlast fund will focus on SaaS, fintech, cybersecurity, and e-commerce industries. The founding partners will be Egita Polanska, Marija Rucevska, Kristaps Prusis, and Mikaela Pedersen.