News

At the beginning of the year, Lisa Edgar joined our team as our Strategic Advisor. We sat down with Lisa for a Q&A to pick her brain and hear her unique perspective on various topics related to the startup ecosystem and venture capital industry. From her thoughts on the current state of the European venture capital market to her belief in the importance of ESG, Lisa offers invaluable insights for entrepreneurs and investors alike.

"Despite a difficult market, LPs remain bullish on the opportunity” – A Q&A with OpenOcean’s Strategic Advisor Lisa Edgar

Naureen Zahid

Investor Relations Director

Our portfolio company Supermetrics, , announced in early 2023 that it is moving to a shared CEO model – a practice used by roaringly successful companies like Netflix, Atlassian and Workday. To introduce the model, Anssi and Supermetrics better, we asked him a few crisp questions on the topic.

How Supermetrics, a company with 40% annual growth, leads with two CEOs?

Patrik Backman

OpenOcean welcomes Lisa Edgar as new Strategic Advisor to drive key initiatives and strengthen global footprint with extensive experience in venture capital and a passion for increasing diversity in the VC ecosystem.

Lisa Edgar Joins OpenOcean as a Strategic Advisor to Empower Leaders of the Data Economy

Naureen Zahid

Investor Relations Director

The final months of 2022 were a reality check for investors and tech companies due to the forecasted impending recession and falling valuations. Despite the challenging tone set for 2023, there are plenty of growth opportunities in fields such as ESG investments, AI, and enterprise automation. At OpenOcean have identified key technologies and developments to watch in the data, software, and technology spheres.

2023 Technology Forecast: OpenOcean Technology and Investment Predictions to Watch

Patrik Backman

Our Investor Relations Director, Naureen Zahid, has written a detailed article on the market turmoil of 2022 and how this has impacted the investment approach of both GPs and LPs. Geopolitical and macroeconomic factors caused significant financial market turmoil in 2022, triggering soaring global inflation, which has had a significant impact on both public and private market investments.

Where to find alpha in the post-covid era? Macro and market update Q4 2022

Naureen Zahid

Investor Relations Director

MariaDB's listing on the New York Stock Exchange is a milestone moment – our founding of the company in 2010, and our investments in the company are a milestone – representing the team's culmination of 12 years of hard work and innovation.

IPO: MariaDB lands on the New York Stock Exchange

Patrik Backman

Mikael Thunberg founded Supermetrics, a tool for extracting and importing marketing data, in 2010 despite lacking tech entrepreneurship skills. The company has grown to serve almost a million users and has reached over 50 million in annual recurring revenue with very little outside investment.

How product-led growth brought Supermetrics from 0 to 50M ARR

We are thrilled to announce our newest investment into api.video and take part in their $12M Series A.

Our investment into api.video

Tony Nysten

Principal

Uni of Oxford and OpenOcean unveil AI-powered startup ecosystem mapping platform

The O3 platform is designed for steady global expansion, with this version tested on the UK AI startup landscape. In this first phase, the project will help improve decision-making for leaders across the UK tech ecosystem, giving them unique, granular data on startups and their underlying technology.

StartupMagazine

Tech Nation to officially re-launch this October

Tech Nation, the startup growth network that closed its doors in March 2023, is gearing up for a relaunch during Birmingham Tech Week in October. The UK tech industry suffered a setback with Tech Nation’s closing, given its vital role in connecting entrepreneurs and providing grassroots support for startups.

BusinessLeader

Digital forensics firm Binalyze raises $19M for enhanced cybersecurity

Binalyze, a Tallinn-based cybersecurity firm specialising in digital forensics and incident response solutions, has raised $19 million in a Series A funding round. The capital will facilitate Binalyze’s further market penetration. Since early 2021 Binalyze has raised just shy of $31 million. The Series A funding round was led by Molten Ventures with existing investors Earlybird Digital East and OpenOcean, and new investors Cisco Investments, Citi Ventures, and Deutsche Bank Corporate Venture Capital participating.

Tech.eu

Just 7% of UK startups actively involved with AI

Less than 10 per cent of UK startups are using or facilitating artificial intelligence, despite Rishi Sunak pushing for Britain to become a global leader in AI. Out of nearly 17,000 UK startups, just 1,270 startups have been identified as clearly using or facilitating AI – just 7 per cent. The top sector for AI investment in the UK has been in health, with £3.4 billion of funding since 2011, according to research from Oxford University and venture capital firm OpenOcean.

InformationAge

‘World’s most accurate’ startup data platform to identify gaps in AI ecosystem

The platform is the result of three years of research from Oxford Saïd and 13 years of experience of data economy investing from OpenOcean. It leverages public and private data sources and is meant to help improve decision making across the UK tech ecosystem, through “granular data on startups and their technology stack, solutions, and go-to-market strategies.”

The NextWeb

£85bn EU Horizon programme reopens to UK companies

Ekaterina Almasque, General Partner at OpenOcean said: “The announcement of the UK’s re-entry into the Horizon programme is excellent news for the UK and wider European tech ecosystem. Research and Development (R&D) serve as the backbone of the UK tech economy, and prolonged uncertainty would have eroded confidence. In fields like quantum technology, where progress unfolds over decades, having a clear trajectory of funding is paramount to ensure innovation continues unhindered."

BusinessLeader

UK rejoins Europe’s Horizon R&D program after prolonged Brexit stalemate

"This renewed commitment to Horizon is not only a positive for the spinout ecosystem, but also bolsters the entire tech sector, making it more attractive to investors to back the next market leader. Research and development serves as the backbone of the UK’s tech economy, and prolonged uncertainty would have eroded confidence. In fields like quantum technology, where progress unfolds over decades, having a clear trajectory of funding is paramount to ensure innovation continues unhindered”, explained our General Partner, Ekaterina Almasque, in TechCrunch.

TechCrunch

Opportunities for European start-ups in the growing data economy

With an expected 463 exabytes of data created every day globally by 2025, businesses are prioritising data at the core of their operations. CEOs are doubling down on data-driven organisations, with a recent survey showing that 83% of them want to do just that. Our GP, Tom Henriksson wrote an article on Digitalisation World discussing how European startups can seize the immense potential within the growing data economy.

Digitalisation World