byFounders

See you at The Shack tomorrow! 👀 We've teamed up with Amazon Web Services (AWS) for an evening of honest GTM stories: mistakes, lessons and everything in between. On stage, we'll hear from Luke Richardson (Light), Philip Ziegler (Zero)& Isabella Merrild Agdestein (Focalx). Come hear what they’ve learned along the way. Secure your spot here: https://lnkd.in/eTmvRyq3

Today, Verda is announcing their $189M Series B, led by Emergence Capital. byFounders is investing again, maintaining our position as one of Verda’s largest shareholders alongside existing investors Lifeline Ventures, Varma, Tesi, Skaala and a group of exceptional angels. It’s a special moment for us as Verda is now byFounders’ second unicorn, just two years after we first invested. When we first met Ruben in 2023, Verda was still called DataCrunch and we became Verda’s first institutional investor in 2024. Since then, we’ve watched the company grow at an extraordinary pace. We’ve climbed together, celebrated together, worked through scaling pains together, brought in members of the byFounders Collective, and even embedded ourselves directly in the company when our Partner Magnus Hambleton temporarily joined Ruben as Chief of Staff. This year, Verda has entered another gear. Revenue grew more than 5x in the first seven months of the year, reaching $165M in annualized run-rate by the end of July. And it’s still just the beginning. Congratulations to Ruben and the entire Verda team. An incredible milestone, with a long journey still ahead. Magnus wrote about the journey from a bootstrapped GPU business in Helsinki to one of Europe’s fastest-growing AI infrastructure companies, and why we’re tripling down on Verda. Read the full story - link in comments.

When we started byFounders, we wanted to create the kind of fund we wished had existed when we were founders ourselves. We couldn’t have known then what byFounders would grow into, or how many people would become part of the journey. Today, three funds in and after years of hard work, we’re incredibly proud of where we are. But more than anything, we’re grateful. Grateful to the founders who chose us and trusted us with their ambitions and their companies. And to the remarkable people around us who continue to give their time, experience and networks to help the next generation of founders succeed. Making this film, we were so happy to see so many familiar faces sharing their message with us. Seeing this community come together made us stop for a moment. Because while we started byFounders, so many people have made it what it is today. To everyone who has trusted us, challenged us and been part of the journey: thank you. We wouldn’t be here without you. We are byFounders.

Weekend reading recommendation 🗞️ Our own Johan Jessen has been writing down some of the things he spends his time thinking about. His latest is on “rewilding the robots” and why the next big leap in robotics might be about getting robots out of controlled environments and into the messy real world. Worth subscribing if you like nerdy rabbit holes. https://lnkd.in/eeawWgYg

As building products becomes easier and more accessible than ever, the challenge is no longer just building something people want, it’s getting it in front of the right people. That’s why we’re proud to announce our investment in Fluencify.io. Running creator and user marketing still requires a huge amount of coordination: finding the right creators, managing outreach and replies, briefing, reviewing content and getting campaigns off the ground. Fluencify is building the system to automate that entire workflow. Its AI agents match brands with creators and users, manage communication and content, schedule campaigns and handle payouts, thus turning creator marketing into a scalable distribution channel. With Erik, Sam & Isaac bringing together agency, creator and technical expertise, Fluencify.io has already reached $2M+ ARR just six months after launch and 13,000+ active creators. We're incredibly excited to lead their $4.3M pre-seed round, joined by Wave Ventures. Welcome to the byFounders family, Erik, Sam, Isaac & the entire Fluencify team! 🖤 Learn more about why we invested in the comments.

A few more moments from TechBBQ! We kicked off Day 1 with Builders & Brews, bringing together a curated group of technical minds for an open conversation about product, AI, and what it takes to build teams that move fast without compromising on quality. Tuomas Artman (Linear) and Jacob Lauritzen (Legora) joined our very own Deina Kellezi for the conversation, sharing lessons from building two very different companies with deeply technical foundations. A room filled with some of the best technical minds in the Nordics and the questions and conversations to match. And then, we switched gears. 🪩 We ended the day with our annual TechBBQ Afterparty, bringing 500+ founders, operators, investors and friends together under one roof. A big thank you to everyone who joined us for the conversations, the beers, the dancing or all three. And a special thank you to our incredible community partners. We're so grateful for your continued support, belief in what we're building, and for being part of the byFounders community. It means a lot to have you with us. HSBC Innovation Banking, Amazon Web Services (AWS), OpenAI, Danske Bank, Cloudflare, Google Cloud, Mazanti-Andersen. Already looking forward to next year. 🖤

Closing out TechBBQ on a high 🔥 For the final conversation on the main stage, our General Partner Sara Rywe sat down with Corti co-founder Andreas Cleve. A pretty great grand finale to two days of TechBBQ. Andreas shared an honest and personal look at what it has really taken to build Corti, from the early struggles and experiences that continue to drive him, to the difficult moments behind the growth and what still scares him about the road ahead. Definitely not your usual scale-up story. Thank you Andreas for sharing so openly, and TechBBQ for having us 🔥

Last week, we kicked off TechBBQ week the best way we know how: with a big BBQ on top of Copenhagen, surrounded by some of our favorite people. And what a way to start the week. Good food, plenty of champagne, an unbeatable view and most importantly, some really good conversations with founders, investors and friends from across the ecosystem. A huge thank you to Lovable, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and HSBC Innovation Banking for bringing The BBQ to life with us and to everyone who joined us and made it such a special night.

Today, we're proud to announce our investment in Cota Robotics! 🤖 Cota is building the operational layer for physical AI – starting with one of retail's most painful problems: overnight shelf replenishment. Rather than selling hardware, Cota operates fleets of robots as a service, delivering the outcome retailers actually care about: shelves stocked every morning, at a lower cost. The platform is hardware agnostic, allowing Cota to adopt the best robots as the technology evolves. We believe the robotics race won't only be won by whoever builds the best robot. As hardware becomes increasingly capable and affordable, the opportunity is in the infrastructure, software and operations that allow fleets of robots to work reliably at scale. With paid pilots already underway, Teo Rizvanovic and Kildo Alias are moving fast to build that layer – bringing a rare combination of commercial urgency and deep technical expertise. We're excited to lead their €1.92M pre-seed round, joined by Rethink Ventures, Icebreaker.vc and a group of strategic angels. Welcome to the byFounders family, Teo and Kildo! 🚀 Learn more about why we invested in the comments.

A major milestone for Adaptyv: $40M Series A. We're incredibly proud to continue being part of Adaptyv's journey as they build the automated lab for agentic biology. Congrats to Daniel, Julian & the entire team! 🚀