Vienna/ Helsinki — Round2 Capi­tal, the leading Euro­pean reve­nue-based finance provi­der, is further expan­ding its commit­ment to the Nordic tech market by inves­t­ing a total of EUR 4 million in the Finnish SaaS company Vainu in seve­ral tran­ches. The invest­ment fund, based in Vienna, Berlin and Stock­holm, has alre­ady been working with Vainu since 2019 and has provi­ded both reve­nue-based finance and equity in the current round. With the fresh capi­tal, Vainu was able to trans­form its busi­ness, doubling its annual average custo­mer value (ACV) while syste­ma­ti­cally moving away from the small and stan­da­lone custo­mer segment.

Vainu is a leading soft­ware-as-a-service (SaaS) provi­der that offers its custo­mers an enter­prise infor­ma­tion plat­form that enables them to achieve compre­hen­sive sales and marke­ting perso­na­liza­tion through real-time enter­prise data.
The Helsinki-based company curr­ently employs 130 people and has alre­ady part­ne­red with Round2 Capi­tal in 2019. The fast-growing Euro­pean invest­ment fund, which supports the growth of leading SaaS compa­nies through reve­nue-based finan­cing and selec­tively with equity solu­ti­ons, has since inves­ted a total of €4 million in Vainu.

“Over the last three years, we have inves­ted a lot of time and effort in buil­ding solu­ti­ons that are needed by mid-market and large custo­mers as well as large enter­pri­ses. At the end of the day, it comes down to the reach and quality of the data and our ability to deli­ver proprie­tary infor­ma­tion in a modern way. Some­ti­mes it’s our native CRM connec­tions, some­ti­mes it’s our online plat­form, and some­ti­mes it’s the APIs we need. A good exam­ple of our capa­bi­li­ties in the enter­prise space is our new Vainu deve­lo­per portal that we are laun­ching today,” explains Mikko Honka­nen, one of the co-foun­ders of Vainu.

“Vainu plays a criti­cal role in enab­ling sales and marke­ting teams across Nort­hern Europe to keep their custo­mer data up-to-date and ready to use. I am convin­ced that the finan­cing struc­ture offe­red by Round2 fits very well with the needs of the company and crea­tes a solid basis for the next phase of Vainu’s deve­lo­p­ment,” said Jan Hille­red, Foun­der and Mana­ging Part­ner of Round2 Capital.

Fore­cast: 40-fold growth in reve­nue-based financing

Sales-based finan­cing has been growing rapidly for years and is regarded as a fast and compa­ra­tively simple form of invest­ment that enables compa­nies to expand sustain­ably without having to dispose of company shares. Accor­ding to a recent study by Allied Market Rese­arch, the market for reve­nue-based finan­cing is expec­ted to grow 40-fold over the next five years, to more than $40 billion. An important factor for this is that a new market is deve­lo­ping in Europe for forms of finan­cing that repre­sent an alter­na­tive to tradi­tio­nal equity. Reve­nue Based Finan­cing is an inno­va­tive form of finan­cing that takes advan­tage of the unique charac­te­ristics of soft­ware compa­nies, recur­ring reve­nue and intan­gi­ble assets.

About Vainu

Vainu is buil­ding an enter­prise data plat­form that helps B2B compa­nies perso­na­lize sales and marke­ting at scale. The company coll­ects and analy­zes a vast amount of struc­tu­red and unstruc­tu­red online infor­ma­tion and makes this real-time busi­ness insight easily actionable directly within its custo­mers’ exis­ting systems.
Head­quar­te­red in Helsinki, Finland, the company laun­ched in 2014 and now helps more than 10,000 sales, marke­ting and data profes­sio­nals better under­stand their custo­mers and pros­pects and create targe­ted busi­ness profiles and segments.

About Round2 Capital

Round2 Capi­tal is a fast growing Euro­pean invest­ment company with offices in Vienna, Berlin and Stock­holm. It is a strong part­ner for Euro­pean compa­nies with digi­tal and sustainable busi­ness models. Head­quar­te­red in Vienna since 2017, Round2 Capi­tal is the pioneer of reve­nue-based finan­cing in Europe. The company is active in seve­ral Euro­pean count­ries and has a focus on Germany, Switz­er­land, Austria and Scan­di­na­via. To date, Round2 Capi­tal has inves­ted in 23 compa­nies. With the invest­ment in Vainu, Round2 Capi­tal further expands its market posi­tion in Finland. www.round2cap.com