Inception Fund

MEGA 🇸🇪

Vantel (YC W25) has raised $2M to give commercial insurance brokers AI superpowers! Our investors are Y Combinator, Rebel Fund, Inception Fund, and prominent angels who have backed $10B+ companies like Spotify, Airbnb, Revolut, Adyen and Brex at the earliest stages. They are some of the world’s best founders, AI experts and insurance insiders. They include Lukas Saari – co-founder and CEO of Tandem Health, Axel Ericsson – Thiel fellow and co-founder of Callin, and Oliver Jung – one of the most successful angel investors of all time, as well as angels from institutions like Lloyd's of London and Anthropic. Ulme Wennberg and I are deeply grateful to be working with some of the best brokers in the US, who are partnering with us to build the future of commercial insurance. With this funding, we're speeding up development and working closely with our customers, transforming their feedback into game-changing features faster than ever. See the difference for yourself: book a demo through the link in the comments.

KTH Royal Institute of Technology is such a insane founder factory 🤯 A concrete example many people don’t realize: Ali Ghodsi, CEO & co-founder of Databricks (one of the most valuable private tech companies in the world) - is a KTH alumnus. And he’s far from alone. There are countless other exceptional founders who trace their roots back to KTH. E.g. Hjalmar, who has co-founded healthcare unicorn Neko Health with Daniel Ek, is a KTH alumni. And take some of today’s most exciting AI startups - like Lovable, Legora (formerly Leya), Tandem Health and Modal all have KTH alumni as founders (Anton, Max, Lukas, Oliver and Erik). And the list keeps growing. Further in the latest Y Combinator W25 batch, Sweden had a record three startups accepted: Vantel (YC W25), Bluebook, and Vetnio (YC W25) - all of them founded by, you guessed it: KTH alumni. I often say that any strong tech ecosystem rests on two pillars: founder factories and world-class technical institutions (just look at Silicon Valley). And now, we’ve entered a golden era of innovation in the New Nordics — with a new generation of Nordic and Baltic technical founders emerging in record numbers. They’re more experienced, more ambitious, and better positioned than ever before. There has never been a better time to be a technical builder. This is just the beginning. There has never been a better time for the Nordics (and Europe) to create its next tech giant after Spotify. LFG!! PS. Spotify founder Daniel Ek is also a KTH dropout 😉 #artificialintelligence #startups #kth

Are you a crazy technical builder? Apply today. Europe needs more risk takers. #fr8

Gregor Mendel cracked genetics in a monastery. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, a self-taught scientist who worked in isolation in Delft, was the first to observe bacteria under a microscope. Deep work demands deep focus. FR8 isn’t just for coders. It’s for anyone pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. This summer, we’re accepting a few teams in bio, climate and health tech. If you’re ready to disappear for three months and do your life’s work, we’ll handle the rest. We cover accommodation, food, flights, all living costs, so you can go all in. No distractions. No equity. Just pure focus and results. You’ll be surrounded by the smartest young minds on the planet, all obsessed with their craft. Applications for Cohort 1.0 (SUMMER) are closing in two weeks!

The image below was taken by Gustaf Alströmer 🇺🇦 yesterday at the Y Combinator W25 batch demo day 📸 YC, now 20 years old, has become a rite of passage for technical early-stage founders. We’re seeing more Swedish founders applying (and getting accepted) to YC, but we want to see more across the Nordics & Baltics. That’s why we’re launching Nordic YC Nights - to build stronger bridges between the YC community and technical founders in the New Nordics. Upcoming Events: 📍 March 18th in Helsinki –AMA event at the Illusian Founder Office (apply here, still a few spots left): https://lu.ma/6tjnhzwn 📍 April 24th in Stockholm – AMA event with Swedish founders from the YC W25 batch at Zenith Ventures office (apply here, spots limited): https://lu.ma/q2x7c7bb Below are some interesting recent YC stats (via Palle Broe & Lenny Rachitsky): 1️⃣ YC has gone from being a Consumer investor to primarily a B2B investor. Consumer companies have resulted in over $200 billion of market cap, while B2B companies are currently privately valued at some $170 billion and are on the rise. 2️⃣ Based on batch profiles, founders are betting on AI (specifically, B2B AI) to be the next big thing. The most promising subcategories include “Engineering, Product, and Design,” Infrastructure, and Sales. 3️⃣ Solo founders are at a disadvantage. Although solo founders are encouraged, the data does show a steep decline in the number of them accepted to YC. 4️⃣ Success has so far been driven by U.S.-founded companies. More than 70% of the startups have been founded in the U.S., and to date, 99% of returns have come from the U.S. 5️⃣ The durability of YC companies is significantly higher than that of the average startup. More than 50% of companies are still alive after 10 years (vs. 30% average). 6️⃣ The chances of startup success are higher with YC. 45% secure Series A (vs. 33% average), 4% to 5% become a unicorn (vs. 2.5% average), and 10% achieve an exit. 7️⃣ The VC power law also exists at YC. Four companies account for more than 85% of YC’s returns to date: Airbnb, Coinbase, Reddit, and Instacart. 8️⃣ The investors in YC companies are the “crème de la crème.” Tier 1 VCs frequently invest in YC companies, and some have made several hundreds of investments. Many say they want to create a “Y Combinator of Europe.” I always advise against it - it’s impossible. YC is YC for a reason, shaped over 20 years of compounded progess. Instead, Europe must build something of its own. That’s why initiatives like Project Europe (backing 18-25yo technical founders), Inception Fund (backing technical founders of any age with New Nordic ties) and Operators & Friends are so exciting - rallying top entrepreneurs & AI leaders to elevate Europe. Let’s Make Europe Great Again -the talent is here! #ycombinator #projecteurope #inceptionfund

So great to see Project Europe finally out of the bag supporting next-gen young founders 👏 This initiative reinforces something I’ve believed for years: we need more technically strong, network-oriented, and agile inception investors in Europe backing the next generation of technical builders in a no-nonsense way. This is also why I kick-started the Inception Fund late last year. We’re e.g. bringing together elite AI leaders, operators and entrepreneurs from the Nordic & Baltics ecosystem to support the next wave of technical founders (no age limit) - while also building stronger bridges between Europe and the US. So much is happening in Europe right now, and it’s time to shift into even higher gear. There has never been a better time to be a European technical builder 🚀 LFG! #venturecapital #europe #founders

I made this post back in June 2023 👇 Fast-forward 20 months and Anton Osika, Fabian Hedin & team have built one of the fastes-growing startups that Europe has ever seen, reaching €17M ARR / +€1.4M MRR in 3 months. Similar chart as below, but instead of GitHub stars we're talking about revenue 📈🫰 Anton and the Lovable team exemplifies the new generation of technical founders we see emerging from Sweden & the Nordics - more experienced and ambitious than ever before. The result? There has never been a better time for Sweden, Nordics and Europe as a whole to build its next tech giant after Spotify. Yesterday it was made public that Creandum is leading Lovables's pre series A round to accelerate the momentum and build a new European category leader. To quote Fredrik: "The last time I kept waking up in the middle of the night thinking about the user love for a product we were in discussions with was in 2007, in the process towards investing in Spotify. Lovable has the potential to become one of Europe’s most important AI companies." I firmly believe that coding AI could rival historical platform shifts in enhanced productivity and reduced input cost: workstation to PC, client-server to cloud, web to mobile, etc. We've entered a new era where it's now faster to make working prototypes with code, than design them in Figma. Building fullstack web apps is becoming as easy as using Canva. I'm excited to keep on supporting Anton, Fabian and other next-gen technical Nordic founders taking on the challenge to build legendary companies. There has never been a better time to build. Let's go!! #artificialintelligence #startups #europe