News January 16, 2023: Radinn, Mantle, Sigrid Therapeutics, Dropmed, Klarna, Alva Labs and more

Here are today's news from Sweden's startup and tech sector, exclusively for subscribers of Swedish Tech News.

Mergers & acquisitions

• Hexagon (Stockholm, publicly listed provider of digital reality solutions), acquired US-based SaaS for enterprise construction project management Projectmates. The amount of the deal was not disclosed (English).

Funding news

• Radinn (Malmö, maker of electric boards for water sports): SEK70M (€6.2M, $6.8M) from unspecified existing investors, at a post-money valuation of SEK144M, which is about half of what the company was valued at in 2021 (Swedish / Breakit paywall).
• Mantle (Stockholm, D2C wellness brand for CBD products): SEK23M (€2.1M, $2.2M) from new investors Bust and Tuva Palm, as well as other undisclosed investors (Swedish, machine translation).
• Sigrid Therapeutics (Stockholm, health tech company aiming to prevent and treat chronic lifestyle diseases): SEK10.6M (€940K, $1M) from undisclosed new and existing investors (English).
• Dropmed (Stockholm, online marketplace for medical equipment): undisclosed amount from new investors Diamond Head and Mainly AI, and existing shareholders (English). The round was announced in late November, but not widely reported until now.

>> Daily updated, subscriber-exclusive Google sheet with all funding rounds raised by private Swedish startups and scaleups.

News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs

• Only 0.6% of institutional VC funding raised from 10 major firms in Sweden between 2015 and 2022 went to companies with roots in the suburbs. 66% of the capital was invested in startups based in central Stockholm, 74% in companies based in the greater Stockholm area (Swedish, machine translation).
• The US is "finally Klarna's largest market by revenue followed by Germany", writes Sebastian Siemiatkowski in a tweet (English).
• Malcolm Burenstam Linder, CEO and co-founder of Stockholm-based data-driven recruitment platform Alva Labs, shares how coaching changed his thinking as CEO. One action he took after his own experience: He decided to implement coaching company-wide as an option for all employees (English).
• Stockholm-based VC firm and venture builder Wellstreet shares its view on the importance of integrating ESG into the DNA of its company portfolio (and of startups in general): "We help our portfolio companies understand that ESG is a layer in each business process as opposed to a separate (siloed) track in building a company" (English).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• JPMorgan Chase acquired US-based fintech Frank for $175M. Now the financial services company is suing the founder for allegedly lying about its scale and success by creating an enormous list of fake users to entice the financial giant to buy it (English).
• On VCs doing secondments at portfolio companies (English).
• Fascinating hypothesis: Low cost of living in a city/region might have an adverse effect on a startup ecosystem, as it allows entrepreneurs to spend years on startups that have no product market fit just because the costs are low (English)

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• Swedish forest industry group Södra is testing a timber truck that is controlled through Virtual Reality (Swedish, machine translation).

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That's it for today.