Verdane

Many thanks to Mikko Honkanen, CEO at Vainu, for taking the time to speak to the Verdane Sales, CEO and Marketing communities about Ideal Customer Profile and how to go about defining it. Among other things, the session covered: - The importance of qualifying prospects using ICP criteria to disqualify prospects early to increase sales efficiency - How a well-defined ICP can lead to better net retention and higher lifetime value - ICP project steps, incl. defining goals, analysing existing customer data, involving the commercial team and implementing the ICP in CRM and other go-to-market tools - Challenges in ICP definition: outdated data, data cleaning requirements and risks of lazy compromises On behalf of the Verdane community team, thank you to all our portfolio company teams and external speakers for great contributions during 2024 - we're looking forward to 2025 already! #ICP #privateequity #technology #growth Birte Steen

What if AI isn’t just the future of SaaS but the catalyst for redefining it entirely? In the latest episode of the SaaSiest podcast, Cristina-Tamara Grigorie and Henrik Berg deep dive into how AI is reshaping SaaS. From transforming how products are delivered to revolutionising scaling strategies, they unpack the massive opportunities AI brings to the table. Here are some of the insights you'll hear: → Discover how AI is becoming a core strategy for scaling smarter and faster. → How AI is amplifying human intelligence, unlocking new opportunities. → The power of AI to drive smarter, more precise business decisions. → What’s next for AI in SaaS, and how should companies prepare? In this conversation together with the SaaSiest team, the pair not only look at AI as a tool but also ponder its role as a driving force in the new era of SaaS growth - where adaptability, intelligence, and innovation are the key differentiators. If you’re wondering how to navigate this AI-driven future and what steps you can take to stay ahead, don’t miss this episode! https://lnkd.in/dwa8AKNV #AI #SaaS #SaaSiest #software

Today we welcome Sitoo, the leading unified commerce platform vendor in Scandinavia, to the Verdane portfolio! Press release: https://lnkd.in/dBKux9wy The partnership is aimed at accelerating Sitoo’s ambitious global expansion plans, while reinforcing its leadership position in the Nordics and UK. With leading global brands like Levi’s, Skechers, Nudie Jeans, and Rains, as well as global compliance capabilities in over 40 countries, Sitoo is well-positioned to expand its operations and be a trusted partner to retailers globally. “We have seen Sitoo deliver on its growth ambitions with best-in-class execution by Jens and the team since we first met in 2019. Back then they were a local Swedish player with big ambitions and has now become the clear market leader in the Nordics and we look forward to partnering with the team to help build the business into a global category leader” said Pål Malmros, Partner at Verdane.  Sitoo offers a digital operating platform for mid-market and enterprise retailers with a significant physical store footprint and complex operations across multiple channels and countries. Its flagship product operates as a system of records for its customers, taking over workflows traditionally fulfilled by Enterprise Resource Planning systems, as well as enabling new use-cases that improve the in-store experience. Please join us in a warm welcome for Jens Levin (pictured below) and the Sitoo team! #software #saas #privateequity #growth #technology Paula Ruiz Azcue Diogo Ribeiro

Verdane has been distinguished as Best Pan-European Growth Equity Fund at the Private Equity Exchange Awards! Thank you to jury for this recognition, to our investors, and to our team turning our ambitions of excellence into reality every day. We are proud of the outstanding performance to date as we seek to continue to be the preferred European growth partner within the megatrends of digitalisation and decarbonisation. #privateequity #technology #growth #PEX Décideurs Corporate Finance

How do you get marketing, sales and product to align in B2B SaaS? Johanna Fagerstedt, CMO at Mentimeter, joined the Verdane Sales, Marketing and Product communities for a session where she shared her "Sparketing Checklist", a proven recipe based on her experience at Quinyx, Lime Technologies and Mentimeter.   Common challenges faced in creating "sparketing" include collaboration frameworks, speaking the same language, uniting around the customer journey and actively driving collaboration plus identifying pain points through shared challenges. Valuable best practices to resolve these include forming a revenue trio at the CXO level, ensuring top level goals align, setting up meeting cadence to iron out friction over time, using models like the Bowtie to create a common language between teams and harnessing product launches to drive true collaboration between teams.   Many thanks to everyone who took the time to listen in, and to our community moderator Birte Steen for facilitating the session.   #privateequity #saas #sales #community #technology #growth

Verdane is thrilled to announce the successful final close of Verdane Idun II at its €700 million hard cap! Press release: https://lnkd.in/dwE9s7Uf Idun II will invest in decarbonising the economy, focusing on energy transition and resource efficiency. This milestone more than doubles the size of its predecessor fund, Idun I, and underscores our commitment to backing companies that drive a sustainable future. Key highlights:  - €700 million hard cap reached  - Investments between €20-100 million  - Strict sustainability criteria with a carbon avoidance target of 5,000 tonnes of CO2 per €1 million invested Idun II includes commitments from leading investors including Nysnø Climate Investments, Norway’s state climate investment fund; Banque de Luxembourg; the European Investment Fund (EIF); MN, a provider of fiduciary management services for Dutch industry pension funds; Finnish capital investments company Tesi and Carbon Equity, which enables private and professional investors to invest in a diversified portfolio of the world’s best climate funds.  Frida Einarson, Partner, Investor Relations at Verdane commented: “The mobilisation of private capital at scale in 2024 to help create a more sustainable economy is a positive development for both our industry and the planet. We are grateful to welcome existing and new investors into Idun II and look forward to delivering both strong returns and positive climate impact, which they can quantify and track, for their programmes.” Bjarne Kveim Lie, Founder and Managing Partner of Verdane, commented: “With Idun II, we seek to demonstrate that it is possible to generate world-class returns for investors while making a meaningful contribution to the decarbonisation of our economy. As structural growth investors, we are convinced that the quest to decarbonise is a generational megatrend. Our goal is to be the preferred growth partner to the companies best positioned to take advantage of that trend, and to help them reach their full potential.  Our decarbonisation team at Verdane is now one of the largest in Europe, with 13 dedicated investment professionals. They are supported by an in-house operations team 35 strong, and benefit from the entire organisation’s deep networks and experience helping scale sustainable European growth companies over the last two decades. This enables us to not only deep dive into the structural growth trend of decarbonisation, but also to support our companies with on the ground presence across core Northern European markets to support companies in their growth. We remain humbled by the continued trust placed in us by our investors and will do our utmost to deliver against their high expectations.” #sustainability #privateequity #technology #growth  

Spotlight on Culture and Leadership at ARRtist’s Annual Conference Ellen Marie Nyhus, CEO of Verdane Elevate, recently spoke at ARRtist’s annual conference for the DACH B2B SaaS community, hosted in Berlin. Ellen discussed the crucial role of culture in driving business success, offering practical insights on why leadership and culture matter to anyone seeking to build an enduring business, including: - Leaders, great and bad, create feelings based on behaviours and behavioural patterns. For talent, that means you should focus on finding the right leader more than the right job; 75% of talented high performers who decide to leave do so due to poor leadership. Meaning they don’t leave the company, they leave the leader. - One way to define great leaders is to look at the characteristics of the employees reporting to them. High intrinsic motivation – emotional and personal attachment to the job, and working because they genuinely want to deliver – is the key hallmark of these employees. Leaders of such employees stand out in two respects: result orientation (“what you do”) and interpersonal effectiveness (“how you do it”). One fosters respect, the other trust. With the advent of AI, the new “smart” has been redefined from cognitive intelligence to social intelligence - the quality of your listening, collaborating, communicating – promoting emotional engagement. With most leaders today rising to their positions due to a high degree of result orientation, there is significant potential to improve on interpersonal effectiveness and soft skills. - Therefore, make a habit of recognising the contributions of your team. Recognition is one of the top three things that European businesses fail to deliver to their employees, making it one of the biggest lost business opportunities today. Employees who don’t feel seen or recognised are twice as likely to leave, and it holds to reason that someone who doesn’t feel important won’t consider their work important. In turn, that impacts business outcomes. What accomplishments are most significant to your wanted business outcomes? And what behaviours are contributing most significantly to the culture you want to create? Define these, recognise and celebrate them, and you will make the right people and the right kind of work seem important. Ask other leaders “Who has impressed you the last week”, or “Who on your team has made an extra effort”? Then act on it. Across teams, this is a collective effort. For more insights, don't miss Ellen's sessions at future conferences we'll market here on Linkedin! Through our Elevate team, Verdane actively support our portfolio companies in achieving the competitive advantage and team development potential that each company’s unique culture possesses.   Many thanks to Julius Göllner, Matthias Ernst, Julia André and the ARRtist team for an excellent conference!   #Culture #Leadership #SaaS #software #privateequity #technology #growth

We are thrilled to announce our partnership with Cropster, the leading software platform for the coffee industry. Together, we aim to expand Cropster’s software offering and drive its international growth, solidifying its position as the coffee industry’s operating system. This collaboration will help stakeholders produce and trade coffee with consistent quality, reduce waste, and transition into a fairer industry. Dominik Schwarz, Partner at Verdane, commented: “Andreas, Norbert and Martin as well as the entire Cropster team have demonstrated how to develop a successful software tool for the benefit of their customers and how to adapt it to the needs of more and more market participants along the value chain in the coffee market. From day one, we have been impressed by the customer love, loyalty and community Cropster has built in the global roaster and coffee ecosystem as well as the strong value driven culture within the company.” Ralph Karg, Director at Verdane, added: “We look forward to working with the team, contributing our in-house functional specialists, ecosystem, and expertise to build on Cropster’s achievements evidenced by its sustainable market-leading position, and to jointly write the next chapter of this remarkable growth story.” Andreas Idl, CEO and co-founder at Cropster, said: “Verdane outshines the market. We are extremely happy to have found a new partner that shares our same values and who will join us as we take Cropster to the next level. We are confident of their expertise in software and their ability to work in international markets, as demonstrated by their excellent buy-and-build track record. Also, they fell in love with coffee really quickly.” As B-Corp certified businesses, both Cropster and Verdane are united in driving the coffee industry’s transition into a more socially fair, economically sustainable, and environmentally responsible model. Here’s to building a better future for the coffee industry! Click the link to read the full press release: https://lnkd.in/dhXjwVPA Learn more: www.cropster.com | www.verdane.com #coffee #privateequity #software #saas #growth #technology Norbert Niederhauser, Martin Wiesinger Gregor Leshel Jonas Vondenhoff James Cook Lukas Strömberg Kristoffer Cedfors Anna Thostrup Adarsh Ankush Cristina-Tamara Grigorie Daniel Vadet Hansen Ellen Katharina Köhler Henrik Berg Joe Burns Nicolai Stang Hagen Nicola Mann

Many thanks Private Equity Insights for a productive conference in Munich! Katja Schwarz (geb. Hengstermann), Principal at Verdane, and Martina Pfeifer, member of Verdane's advisory board, joined the stage for the panel discussions on "Future Opportunities and Challenges in 2024 and Beyond" and "How to Create A High-Performance Board", respectively.    Some key takeaways from their contributions: - Decarbonisation and ESG investing is not a trend but a compelling busines case with a solid purpose and greater returns over time, based on Verdane's own track record.  - The lack of common ESG standards make ESG regulations a simultaneous opportunity and challenge. Verdane includes potential taxes on carbon emissions as a 2040 Test scenario in every deal assessment, and our team closely monitors standard carbon accounting practices. - AI is a great enabler for decision making, but all actors need to pay attention to the responsibilities involved. Verdane runs its own Large Language Model (LLM) to ensure data and confidentiality compliance, and while there are already clear and visible progress there's work to be done to ensure consistent data as a single source of truth.    Many thanks to Max Fowinkel (Warburg Pincus LLC), Jannick Hunecke (Deutsche Beteiligungs AG), Gregory E. Schmitt (MEAG), Johanna Struthmann (Vidia Equity), Martin Spirig (Invision AG) and Joakim Notö (MIMIR) for great contributions during the day and to Hasan Qaiser and his team for making the day possible. #privateequity #technology #growth

Christina Levin-Rylander and Daniel Ahlstrand joined the Real Deals Nordic Forum last week to discuss the impact of the green transition and the evolving private equity landscape in the region. Moderated by David Ringmar and joined on stage by Jonatan Lund Kirkhoff (Altor Equity Partners), Eirik H. Wabø (FSN Capital Partners) and Emelie Norling (Trill Impact), Christina discussed our commitment to neutralise residual emissions through Njord Carbon, selecting measurable KPIs and the positives and negatives of political interference in driving the green transition forward. The group further discussed the impact on the green transition on the economy, how to decarbonise and the implications for private equity-backed businesses. Over on his end, Daniel discussed the outlook for market activity and how investors can prepare for 2025 in light of interest rates and tightening liquidity with Alexandra Kellert (Control Risks), Björn Larsson (Axcel), John Gustafson (Baker McKenzie) and Johan Nord (Cubera Private Equity). Key insights from the panel, put together by Alexandra, included: - Nordics: A Relative Safe Haven with Caution: The Nordic region offers relative stability within a Europe facing geopolitical risks and political instability, but it is not immune to external pressures. Investors should be mindful of growing complexities in the global political landscape, including regulatory changes and shifting alliances that could impact the region indirectly. - US Elections & Trade Uncertainty: In the coming months, the uncertainty surrounding the US elections may lead to decision paralysis, with investments delayed until the political climate is clearer. Post-election, the primary concern will be how the US approaches trade policy. Like the rest of Europe, the Nordics could be swept into escalating trade conflicts, affecting supply chains and investor confidence. - Due Diligence in a Complex World: The increasingly intricate political and regulatory environment means investors must conduct robust due diligence. Even for those focused solely on Nordic assets, global supply chain exposure can introduce unforeseen risks. Thorough analysis of political, economic, and regulatory conditions is essential to avoid costly surprises. Thank you to all the participans for great thoughts and contributions, and to the organisers for a productive event! #privateequity #technology #growth