Thorgate Ventures Invests In Norwegian Tech

Founded in 2017 by a team with a strong design industry background, Brandpad has clients including LEGO, IKEA, MoMA, IDEO, Ueno, and Designit. Multinational companies use the platform to host their brand in the cloud.

Investment was made through Thorgate Ventures III, a joint fund by Thorgate Management and Alesco Ventures. While Thorgate and Alesco have roots in Estonia and Japan, the other investors in current round – Startuplab and Sagene Tech Ventures – are from Norway.

Espen Getz Harstad, Brandpad CEO, explained the problem they are solving by stating, "Even though 100,000 new brands are born every day, brand management is one of the most inefficient processes in the modern workplace. This is where Brandpad comes in”. Espen adds that they are very fortunate to be able to provide services to companies that are world leaders in their respective industries.

"When we decided to fundraise, we knew that we would gain the most from investors experienced in building global SaaS companies. That is why we are very proud to continue our development with the backing of Thorgate, Startuplab, and Sagene Tech Ventures. The advice that we get from these great mentors is actually more valuable than the capital itself." explained Espen while talking about Thorgate’s experience in building SaaS companies. Thorgate Ventures led by Raido Pikkar, has helped scale many SaaS companies including GateMe, Waybiller, Leansite, Moderan, GlobalReader, and Eziil.

“We are glad we can bridge the gap between Japan and Norway. Historically, Estonia was the gateway between East and West, and I am happy to see that history is repeating itself. We have kept our eye on the Norwegian tech industry for a while now and it is really picking up speed. While the startup ecosystems in Estonia, Finland, and Sweden are quite mature, in Norway, everything has yet to happen,” said Raido Pikkar.

“Thorgate Ventures III is our first investment in the region. We believe that the Nordics and particularly Estonia, offers a unique opportunity with its talented people, e-government, and favourable business environment. More investments will follow soon!” added Richard Kobayashi, CEO of Alesco Ventures.

Thorgate Ventures is a boutique venture capital firm investing mostly in scalable B2B solutions. As a hands-on seed stage investor, with a mission to use technology to make the world a better place, Thorgate Ventures takes pride in its international partnerships.

The Tokyo based management team of Alesco Ventures also founded Mongolia’s largest non-banking financial institution Investcore, which launched its IPO on the Mongolian Stock exchange in 2019. Previously, the firm mostly invested in real estate related startups in the APAC region.

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