Our investment in ArK

Our core belief is that the next Fortune 500 companies will need to access a broad range of financing options, where equity financing represents only one route and where lending and traditional underwriting models need to be reimagined.

Having seen many revenue based financing companies, we believe ArK’s precision financing offering is truly differentiated:

1) Structure of loans. ArK looks at each investment decision on a case by case basis — both taking into account company metrics and external data, and offering €1–10m long-term loans up to 7 years based on projections of a company’s future revenues. These longer payback periods are critical in giving companies time to grow.

2) Data platform. Companies connect their data to ArK’s Intelligence Machine (AIM), which not only helps inform a financing decision, but from speaking to Founders, it’s a phenomenal resource in its own right, helping Founders inform and manage their businesses.

But as always this is all about the surfers: this is an absolute all-star team in Stockholm with deep company building, fintech and lending experience coupled with world leading data product expertise:

Oliver (CEO) — has built and scaled 6 companies, 4 of which are fintechs,

Henrik (CPTO) — built Spotify’s analytics team, Motherbrain, EQT’s leading AI-investment platform, and EQTs data driven VC funds, and

Axel (COO) — built the first debt driven startup unit within Nordea and has experience lending to over 250 companies.

This team has been attracting phenomenal world-class talent across product, engineering and finance to join the journey.

We’re incredibly excited about ArK’s potential to help unlock financing for fantastic Founders looking for optimal ways to finance their businesses, both in terms of debt vs equity dilution, and in debt vs existing highly manual debt providers — all while accessing world class data and benchmarks to help optimise decision-making.

Traditional underwriting models are inherently biased, particularly for longer-term, larger tickets. ArK’s approach will inherently remove these biases.

Today, ArK has announced a €165m round including €15m equity and €150m in debt, including a loan guarantee from EIF.

Thank you to our friends Hjalmar Winbladh and Jacob de Geer who introduced us to the company. It’s amazing to be working with you again.

And Remus and I and everyone at LG are very excited to partner with our friends at Creandum, and alongside phenomenal angels Ilkka Paananen, Sebastian Knutson and Riccardo Zacconi.