Vaens

Investment decisions are guided by Chairman Ville Vesterinen and Investment Director Topi Jokinen. Vesterinen previously served as CEO of Grey Area, a mobile-gaming studio, and co-founded ArcticStartup, a publication that covered Nordic tech from 2007. Jokinen's background includes founding and operational roles at multiple Finnish software companies before joining Vaens.

Vaens focuses on seed-stage rounds — typically the first institutional capital a company raises. Check sizes are generally below €500,000, targeting the moment when a founding team has built an initial product but not yet scaled distribution. The firm has also selectively participated in follow-on rounds at the Series A stage.

The firm invests primarily in Finland, Sweden, and Estonia, with a wider mandate covering the Nordic and Baltic region. Helsinki serves as the home base, and deal flow has historically been strongest in Finnish enterprise software startups given the principals' deep local networks.

The firm concentrates on B2B software, with a particular interest in enterprise SaaS, machine learning tooling, and industrial technology. Vaens avoids consumer internet, gaming, and hardware-heavy plays — areas where Helsinki has produced winners but where the partners have less direct operator experience.

Deal flow is anchored in the founders' networks across the Nordic tech ecosystem. Ville Vesterinen's long tenure at ArcticStartup and his operational history at Grey Area provide visibility into emerging teams before they formally fundraise. The firm supplements this with referrals from portfolio company founders who have gone on to build repeatable B2B businesses.

Vaens operates as a private asset manager structured around seed-stage venture capital. The firm does not market itself as a multi-family office or a fund-of-funds. Its model resembles a classic European micro-VC, raising committed capital from external LPs rather than deploying a single-family balance sheet.

The portfolio skews toward horizontal B2B tools — platforms like Valohai for MLOps and Blok for real estate transactions — rather than narrow vertical SaaS for legacy industries. This reflects a preference for software infrastructure that serves technical buyers inside multiple industries, a segment where Nordic technical debt and engineering culture create a measurable advantage.