Unconventional Ventures
Snapshot
Fund Type: VC/PE
Fund Size: $23M
Investment Stage: Pre-seed and Seed
Geographic Focus: Nordics (primary markets) and Europe (secondary markets)
Sector Focus: Climate tech and sustainability (60%), Health and education tech (40%)
Fund Overview
Unconventional Ventures (UV) was founded to bridge the persistent funding and power gap between early stage investors and diverse founders in the Nordics where only 1% of VC funding in the Nordics goes to all female teams, 4.4% goes to mixed teams and 94.7% goes to all-men founding teams*). UV focuses on strong diverse founders - identifying as women, people of colour, immigrants and/or LGBTQ+- who are developing impact-driven climate, health and education solutions to challenges identified through their own professional and lived experience. The fund invests in tech-enabled companies with impact at their core: they’re an SFDR Article 8 Fund, with a robust and SDG-aligned impact framework, an embedded Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion lens and are 2X aligned.
Why We Invested
Unconventional Ventures is one of the only funds in Europe with an explicit diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging lens and clear commitment to social justice. The fund has a female-founded, led and ethnically-diverse team; their investment strategy explicitly attempts to address and rebalance the multitude of systemic barriers that have historically marginalised women and diverse founders from accessing the capital, support and networks they need to build and scale impact-driven businesses. HfC’s investment in backing the first - and only - all-female led team focusing explicitly on diverse founders in climate in Europe is intended to address systemic barriers including access to money and decision-making power. It is a demonstration that diversity drives better and more resilient environmental, social and financial outcomes.
Women as Agents of Change
Almost 90% of UV I portfolio companies are founded by either all-female or mixed gender teams. The Fund meets the 2X Criteria at both fund and portfolio level.
One portfolio example is Dora, a Danish female-founded transport tech solution designed to decarbonize the trucking industry. Transport contributes about a quarter of Europe’s GHG emissions and 80% of the increased diesel consumption is attributed to trucks. The industry is also heavily male-dominated at all levels and lacks transparency. After 15 years working in the industry, Rikke Høyer and Sidsel Høyer Knudsen were frustrated that carriers could not track and monitor their CO2 emissions. They could see increasing regulation on the horizon and knew it was time to act. Dora is specifically targeted at SME carriers, which represent 80% of the market and have no affordable and accessible solutions for tracking and reporting on GHG emissions. Dora helps these carriers to measure and optimise for CO2 emissions reductions, increasing transparency and efficiency and decarbonizing the trucking industry.
*source: Funding Report: The Untapped Potential in the Nordic Startup Ecosystem and Beyond (November 2023)
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