We invest in the best founders, and we have a deeply-rooted belief that anyone can be a founder — regardless of your gender, geographical location, prior experience of running a startup, etc.
Being transparent about who we invest in and how we make our investment decisions is truly important to us. In the below summary, you can learn what characterises the 33 portfolio companies in our pre-seed fund Accelerace Invest II (Q3 2023)!
Almost double the companies, compared to the industry benchmark, have all female founder groups (ARTXP, pianini and THE UPCYCL) – that is 9,1% compared to the industry average of 5%
Compared to the industry average, our fund has 1% less teams with female founders, after two investments in Q3 of 2023.
Industry benchmark data: Stateofeuropeantech report 2022, Denmark.
20 of our 33 portfolio companies are based in Copenhagen, six are spread across Denmark (pianini in Struer, Digital Devotion Games, TuneButler and THE UPCYCL in Aarhus, REDO Neurosystems in Aalborg, Leagues in Køge, and Doubble in Odense), and five outside of Denmark (Skin Bliss, Teamlearning, Goods, Weedbot, Chew and Salu.
Compared to the industry average, our fund has 52% more teams based outside of Copenhagen.
Industry benchmark data: pre-seed and seed 2021-2022 (Vækstfonden).
The majority of the founders in our portfolio are building their first-ever startups!
We are very proud to still be ahead of the industry benchmark.
24 of our 33 portfolio companies are all first time founding teams. Just four companies are founded by all serial founders (YooNoon, Weedbot, Salu, Hyphen and Parazute), and four by a mix of first-time and serial founders (Bikekey, Jungle, Impactly & Aioray).
Industry benchmark data: pre-seed and seed 2021-2022 (Vækstfonden) + LinkedIn.
A process robot installed in employees’ browsers to automate internal processes in a company
An indie game studio that specializes in making quality multiplayer games for social entertainment
Develops a novel treatment option to combat chronic pain arising from muscles and joints
A two-sided marketplace that connects customers to artistic and cultural experiences hosted by local artists
A smart charging solution that enables EV drivers to charge their cars faster, greener, and cheaper
Founders feel compelled to improve our world. Their resolve makes them impactful, creative and natural leaders. They create breathtaking momentum, and their ambition drives them to design for scalability and category creation.
At Accelerace, we have always focused objectively on the behavior, momentum, and ambition of the founders whose business ideas we fund. We observe what they do. Not who they are in terms of age, gender, socioeconomic status, education, religion, etcetera.
When we say objectively, we mean that it is no secret what boxes founders need to tick in order to land a pre-seed investment from us. We are not hush-hush about it. Quite the opposite, we do our very best to communicate exactly how we make decisions and which parameters we evaluate. You can take our investment readiness test to get instant feedback on the likelihood of getting an investment from us and/or sign up to our pre-accelerator and watch the incubator course “Timing” to understand how we make our investment decisions (e.g. return expectations, parameters for evaluating your team, and which information we present when pitching startups to our investment committee).
We simply invest in founders, and to us, anyone can be a founder.
