Iceland’s Crowberry Capital launches $90M seed and early-stage fund aimed at Nordics

Crowberry Capital, operating in Reykjavik and Copenhagen, has launched Crowberry II: a $90 million seed and early-stage fund aimed at startups in the Nordic region. A second close — bringing in an additional $40 million — is planned for July 2022.

The EIF (European Investment Fund) is the lead LP on the fund, after putting in €20 million from the EU’s “InnovFin Equity” program. This is InnovFin Equity’s first VC fund in Iceland.

Other investors include Icelandic Pension funds, several family offices and angels, including David Helgason, founder of Unity Technologies.

Crowberry II, which claims to be the largest VC fund operating out of Iceland, is headed up by three women founders: Hekla Arnardottir, Helga Valfells and Jenny Ruth Hrafnsdottir.

The Crowberry I fund (a $40 million fund launched in 2017), invested in startups in the areas of gaming, SaaS, health tech and fintech.

Hekla Arnardottir said: “An incorrect assumption is that because we are women, we are only interested in supporting female founders. As our investment record shows, we support companies because they are game changers, irrespective of the gender of their senior team members. However, we also benefit, as an all-female team, from a circumspection which means that we can see potential in businesses and sectors which are typically overlooked by others in our space.”

She added: “Inclusivity is good for business, and through being open and approachable, your deal-flow multiplies in parallel to your talent pool, and businesses are built with a broader potential user base. It’s crazy that in 2020, female-led startups received just 2.3% of VC funding, yet Crowberry considers this to be an opportunity: where the Nordics lead in gender equality on a societal level, we want to show that the region can also show the way in terms of inventive venture support.”

Crowberry’s previous fund (Crowberry I) featured 15 companies, of which 33% had female CEOs.