The Road Ahead
TL;DR: I'm closing down Futuristic, to instead focus on angel investing for the time being. I'll take the coming months to think more about what the future holds.
I was never actually meant to be an investor. After closing down my second company in early 2017, I was looking for something to work on until I had my next idea. I figured that working with startups would expose me to great founders and a host of problems worth solving for my future company. Luckily, I had the means and privilege to take out time to work out how to best support early-stage founders. In the following six months, I met with countless people and exchanged loads of ideas. I went over everything from a local co-working space to a venture studio.
In the summer of that same year, things came together. Rather than innovate on the investment model, I wanted to help ambitious founders get on a venture trajectory from the beginning of their journey. Futuristic was born, a pre-seed fund aimed at the pre-institutional funding gap in the Nordics. As time passed, a realisation slowly crept up on me: I’m a much better investor than I ever was a founder.
Since the first investment, Futuristic has been an exhilarating journey. Today, my portfolio counts 25 companies across all five Nordic countries, with many more to come. I’ll never forget the tough conversations with the first team to shut down their company, nor will I forget my celebratory dance when the first founder signed a VC term sheet. However, as of today, the pre-seed fund Futuristic will be no more.
Known Unknows: The Nordics and Europe
I’ve previously written about how the European venture landscape is changing at a breathtaking pace. It’s nothing short of a miracle that European founders can finally access the resources it takes to build global winners. As an investor, this means the ground is constantly shifting underneath your feet, and only the nimble survive.
I’m no stranger to this development. Over the past twelve months, deploying pre-seed capital has become increasingly challenging. Today, a lot of ambitious and pedigreed founders skip the step altogether - no less aided by venture funds forced to take earlier risk than they used to. While I continue to believe that there will be great opportunities in pre-seed, the leading indicators point to the absolute number of opportunities slowly shrinking. The known unknown is at what pace this will develop in the coming years. You can stick around to find out but might see a nasty surprise in your returns down the line.
In a market like Europe where you have a lot of known unknowns, you want to 1) always keep your finger on the pulse to understand where things are going and 2) have the flexibility to go after new opportunities fast. Being gifted with both flexible (and patient) investors and an increasingly European view, this is why I’m closing Futuristic the pre-seed fund. I’ll keep investing, with the remaining capital being transformed into an angel pocket with fewer restrictions on investment strategy.
Institutional Dreams and the Future
There was a time when I believed Futuristic would turn institutional. A powerhouse of a firm dominating pre-seed. My thesis was simple: the Seed funds would continue to grow larger, thus leaving space underneath them, similar to how Seed itself emerged from beneath Series A firms. As with most people trying to predict the future, I was wrong. In reality, capital increased across all stages, forcing everyone into taking much earlier risk than was the costume just a few years ago. As a small fund, this means your tickets become increasingly irrelevant.
I briefly thought I could solve my problems by raising a slightly larger fund myself. Some of you reading along may even have seen the only ever Futuristic fundraising deck in existence. It was a fool’s errand, as such a fund would always be at the mercy of larger funds with more capital to deploy. Without a specialised niche, I do not believe such micro strategies will work (with a few notable exceptions).
Instead, I’ll spend the coming months figuring out what’s next. As mentioned, I’ll keep investing as an angel, while once more spending time exchanging ideas with lots of people. I also plan to immerse myself more in writing, so subscribe to this new Substack if you like my occasional musings. All future writing will be here.
While there are many uncertainties ahead, I do know this: I still have unwavering excitement for investing and playing my part in shaping the future of European tech. Frankly, you’d have to drag me out kicking and screaming.