Tera Ventures closes €43M fund to boost seed-stage startups

Tera Ventures, one of the longest-running seed-stage funds in the Nordic & Baltic countries, brings its fund size to €43M with several global investors stepping in as limited partners.

Tera is an early-stage venture capital firm with more than 10 years of experience in propelling Nordic and Baltic founders to the global stage. It has invested in several prominent European startups, including the UK-based neobank Monese, business management software Scoro, proptech platform Rendin, and IP-licensing management platform Brainbase. Previous successes include GrabCAD (acquired by Stratasys) and Vitalfields (acquired by Monsanto).

Tera stands out for its supportive culture where founders benefit from a co-founder-like mindset from their investors at the seed stage. It also has a proven playbook to propel companies on to a global market and a network of top syndicate partners and strategic LPs that can facilitate commercial collaboration in new markets, specifically to the US and Japan.

Limited partners in the fund now include European Investment Fund, under the EstFund, LHV Pension Funds (Estonia), ITOCHU Corporation, Mistletoe Venture Partners International (Japan), Perot Jain, MasterBorn, Inc., Jonas E. Neihardt (USA), as well as other investors from the Nordics and Estonia. Stepping in as advisors are Pär Nuder, long term advisor to NorthZone and EQT, who also joins as an investor and Barbara Piette of Knightsbridge Advisers.

Ellex in Estonia assisted Tera Ventures in drafting and negotiating limited partnership agreement, registration of the fund manager as sub-threshold AIFM, preparation of internal rules and procedures and all related fund documents. The Ellex team was led by Counsel Antti Perli and included Tax Counsel Dmitri Rozenblat and Senior Associate Anneli Krunks.