5-Minute Interview with Erik Lindblad, Zenith Venture Capital
Dr. Dorothy Kelso
Managing Director, SuperReturn | Board Chair | Emerging Manager Champion
In this series of 5-minute interviews, I shine the spotlight on up-and-coming fund managers in private markets across the globe. All geographies. All strategies. All sectors.
Here's my conversation with Erik Lindblad, General Partner & CEO at Zenith Venture Capital.
Quick facts about Zenith Venture Capital:
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Q: What’s Zenith Venture Capital’s investment strategy?
A: We focus on highly scalable tech companies in the Nordics, solving clear problems and having the potential to go global in a capital efficient way. ?Given the early stage that we play in we strongly believe that it is all about people and for us that means teaming up with extraordinary entrepreneurs and building diverse teams, creating a community for knowledge sharing/support and being very close partners to our founders.
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Q: What is your deal-sourcing process?
A: We have a strong focus on outbound deal sourcing meaning we have convictions internally based on different future scenarios and characteristics that we see potential in. This leads us to sectors and companies of certain types that we map out and contact in order to start building relationships early and hopefully being able to find great companies before others do. In addition, we have an amazing network of scouts, advisors and fellow investors driving leads our way. And, of course, an inbound deal flow.
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Q: What hands-on expertise do you have?
A: Personally, I have a mixed background from start-ups and banking. I started out in investment banking but left after a few years to found my first business, an FMCG company, that was later acquired. Following that I was COO for premium e-comm player CDLP.com from the founding days to scaling it out globally. For the past 5+ years in my role as a VC I have had the privilege to serve on several of our portfolio company boards, something that often tends to get pretty hands-on in the early stages.
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The fact that I myself have had so many sleepless nights over cash flow, launches, funding and other every day start-up problems I think helps me get into the shoes of the entrepreneur and understand what they are going through.
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Q: That does sound very hands-on. Which tech subsectors do you focus on?
A: We are a generalist fund with focus on core characteristics that we develop as the world keeps evolving. For 2023 our five characteristics are human centricity, digital authenticity, co-evolving software, digital fairness and information mastery. This helps us stay focused as a generalist fund while having the ability to develop our characteristics as the future unfolds and drive a sharp and proactive outbound deal search.
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Q: What is your team’s background?
A: We have an amazing group of diverse people with different backgrounds and perspectives. We are 50/50 women/men, have an age span from 30-64, backgrounds from start-ups and scale-ups, as founders and employees, bankers and engineers. I’d say that we are all more company builders rather than pure financial investors, hence we have drawn to the early stages.
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Q: How do you see your business scaling?
A: We will keep raising new vintages to always have an active fund in the market. Fund sizes will grow over time but we aim to not grow them too large as we want to stay true to being a Nordic early-stage player.
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Q: As you’re now raising Fund II, do you have any investments to highlight from Fund I?
A: Some of our most notable investments and exits include Truecaller which was listed at $2bn in 2021, Treyd, Minna Techniologies, Acuminor, Bright Energy and Minut.
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Q: Truecaller surely qualifies as a unicorn. Congrats. What are the key ingredients of your success generally?
A: Our entrepreneurs appreciate our genuine engagement, proximity and support. Having been entrepreneurs ourselves, we know that it is a real roller-coaster to build a VC backed start-up. Our support spans from being a shoulder to cry on to helping to structure option programs and making sure to build organization and structure around our founders to enable scale and make sure they don’t burn out. End of the day it is really about genuine relationships and building companies together where we share risk and together do whatever we can to succeed.
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Q: What valuable lesson have you learnt that helps drive your approach?
A: Personally, I’ve had my struggles ranging from a broken back in a skiing accident when I was young to a rather severe car crash, cancer at an early age and fighting anxiety. So, I know how to fight back and can tell the difference between what really matters and doesn’t. I have through my years at the bank and in start-ups learnt that grit is probably the most important skill. If you combine grit with being caring and listening you will gather a fantastic network and get the ability to work with people who are much smarter than you.
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Q: What advice would you like to share with the readers?
A: Be kind and aim high. I genuinely believe that being kind will give you so much in return, especially in the long run. The days of top-down fear belongs to the past. The future is about sharing and community.
Love this! Thanks for sharing, Dr. Dorothy Kelso Zenith Venture Capital
CEO of GIG Group; Autobiography #FindingMe soon to be a major motion picture!
1 年Good article!
Managing Partner p? Zenith Ventures
1 年Thank you for the interview Dr. Dorothy Kelso and for featuring our journey at Zenith Venture Capital ??