Solo VC and Lovable investor Neil Murray raise third Scandinavia-focused fund | TechCrunch

The Nordic red-hot startup movement continues. On Tuesday, Neil Murray, founder and general partner of Copenhagen-based firm The Nordic Web Ventures, announced the closing of a $6 million Fund III to continue investing in early-stage founders in the region.

The fund will focus on writing the first institutional checks to companies focused on robotics, AI-native companies and deep tech founders.

Murray, a solo GP, told TechCrunch that his first two funds were “test vehicles” to prove his ability to spot and invest in top talent in the region. Now, seven years later, he’s written the first check for more than 50 companies, with a portfolio including the unicorn Lovable and the telecommuter insurance company SafetyWingand ends up like the UI design company Uizard.

As TechCrunch previously reported, the Nordic ecosystem (which includes Denmark, Sweden and Norway) is now valued at more than half a trillion dollars and received more than $8 billion in venture capital funding by 2024, making the region one of the hottest emerging markets in Europe. Murray said Fund III had more than $20 million in investor stakes, but he decided to limit it to $6 million because he “cares more about alignment than assets under management.”

By staying small, he says, he can better tie incentives to performance rather than management fees. He also said staying small, especially as a solo GP, gives him more flexibility while “everyone is still debating.”

“Limiting the fund was not a restriction,” he said. “It was the strategy.”

Check amounts for the fund will be approximately $200,000, and he hopes to support between 30 and 35 businesses. “I believe it is more important to invest in Tier 1 founders than to back Tier 2 founders and over-optimize for ownership,” he said.

Murray’s limited partner base includes institutional lenders such as Allocater One, founder Christoph Janz and Pacenotes. Founders of Kahoot! And Pleo, in addition to operators of Meta and Google, is also LPs in Fund III.

“Many founders from my first two funds have invested in my new fund, which is also an incredibly important metric for me,” he said, adding that he has already returned more than half of the capital he raised through Fund I and Fund II.

His Fund III focuses on AI, robotics and consumers, he said, as these are some of the top sectors in the Nordic region. Consumer has always been a top category in the sector, as TechCrunch previously reported on a podcast about the region.

The region is also known for its computer science, tech culture and manufacturing, which, combined with a “calm methodical architectural style,” positions the Nordic countries well for “AI-powered robotics in industrial, healthcare, logistics and increasingly consumer contexts.”

Although he has a keen interest in the Scandinavian countries, Murray is actually from Britain and moved to Denmark in 2013 without knowing a single person, he recalls.

“I was very interested in tech startups because I had worked in digital products in London,” he continued. When he moved to Copenhagen, he realized that the ecosystem made a great contribution to the tech world, even though people hardly talked about it. That led him to found the website ‘The Nordic Web’, where he explained what was happening behind the curtains of the booming tech scene there.

On that website he tracked investments and exits, and soon venture capital funds were asking him which founders were looking for capital. Murray soon wanted in on the action, and in 2017 he launched a $500,000 Fund I. Shortly afterwards, he stopped writing The Nordic Web to focus more on investing. And all that led him here.

“In general, the Nordic countries are not experiencing a ‘moment’,” he said. “They are experiencing a blending. The depth of talent, level of ambition and maturity of the ecosystem ensures that this wave is not a peak; it is the foundation of the next decade of Nordic breakthrough companies.”