Oliver Molander, Founding General Partner of Inception Fund: Europe needs to build indispensable technology.

0:00Hello and welcome back to the Scaling Europe show. I'm Seb Jolson. Today I've got Oliver Molander. Oliver is a European goat of the tech ecosystem, investor, operator, builder. Your LinkedIn profile is so long. There's so many amazing things that you've done across Europe. But I suppose you're particularly well known for Insection Fund at the moment. It's a new fund that you launched at the end of last year, 21 million euros. Tell me about it, right? What was the thesis behind raising this fund?

0:25Oliver Molander:Yeah, no, it's actually now 30 million. So we decided to extend it a bit. It was quite heavily oversubscribed, which we were super grateful for naturally. And like I've been building startups myself for install.com for the past 10 years with an A &D infrastructure. And we did a, you know, PMF exercise with that fund also. And I think we found the validation in PMF quite fast. But I guess the gist of it then why I wanted to create this fund comes from my company building experience. So I still saw that there was a gap in the Nordics for a VC fund that truly dares to invest at inception, acts more in an American way, meaning that acts super fast with high conviction and super network oriented, meaning that we bring a high caliber of credible AI entrepreneurs to the table also.

1:16Oliver Molander:And my experience when building companies is that, you know, at the earliest stages, you don't need somebody to take a board seat. you know what you need help with is usually networks and and credibility and signaling value and that's something we bring to the founders we bring our networks we help them in a very no bs way in a quite american way to be honest in that sense and naturally bring a lot of the ai nordic ai fire firepower with us and a lot of global networks also so we work super closely with all the big u.s european tier one funds uh also but we act more like a super boosted angel so quick decisions, extremely high bar in who we invest in.

1:54Oliver Molander:And we love technical founders. We have a fundamental belief that at the end of the day, technical founders are the ones who build the true outliers. Like if you look at the trillion dollar outcomes globally in venture, pretty much all of them are founded by technical founders, you know, Facebook, Google, NVIDIA, et cetera. So that's the core background of the fund. And as you said, we officially launched it in November last year. and we've been investing now for about eight months. And when you said you move quickly, how quickly do you mean? So I think Paul Graham was a few weeks back here in Stockholm with Jessica Livingstone and Gustav Alström.

2:35Oliver Molander:And his talk is actually on YouTube. And one thing I laughed about that I felt that I could relate with so much was when Paul discussed the difference between European and U.S. investors and how much faster they are in the US in making decision in investing. And I guess that comes a bit from a culture of fearing the error of omission in the US, meaning that there's been so many big outcomes in the US and so many people who had the opportunity to invest in Facebook or Google early on and they didn't and it haunts them forever. And I think that's something that drives you as investors to make quick decisions when they meet somebody You know, it's a lot about pattern recognition.

3:18Oliver Molander:If they need somebody that they feel is great, they know that if I think this person is great, I don't have much time to make a decision now because everybody else will know soon also. And I think that's something we're bringing with the Inception Fund is that American mindset in terms of, you know, when you invest early on, at the end of the day, it's all about the founders. And, you know, to quote some old man, you know, you usually know within 15 minutes after talking with somebody at pre-seed stage, do they have spikes? Can this person actually build something truly big? And at the end of the day, we follow a lot our gut feelings.

3:53Oliver Molander:Naturally, we do reference checks through our networks, but I usually know within 15 minutes when talking with somebody, will I actually back them? And at the end of the day also, and this goes to all the founders out there, I've been a founder myself and raised a lot of capital. And I talk a lot about this with the founders is that if the VC is not chasing you, it's not going to happen. Just let it go. When somebody wants to invest in you, they move fast always. And I think at the end of the day, at the pre-seed stages, it's happening now in the Nordics and Europe where we actually see now new funds, next-gen funds coming in, acting much faster than we have historically done.

4:31Oliver Molander:And I think that's predominantly because of the big outcomes that we're having now. Eleven Labs, Synthesia, Lovable, Legora, all of these, they're spurring this mindset also of error of a mission. Like what happens if I miss the next Lovable? Yeah, I'm seeing like A16Z seems very present in the Nordics in a way that I haven't seen. Like they seem that they're definitely there. They're making investments quite regularly in super early companies. And I'm always so amazed by it because they don't have an office in Europe, let alone, you know, their closest office is like 1500 miles away and yet they're there they've got their networks they're moving quickly they're writing checks into like about two million dollar pre-seed rounds and i'm like wow that that to me says something if they're betting so big on it how do you think a firm like that has accessing you know is is that a type of firm that you work with and help introduce to people how does that work yeah well part of our promise is that you know we're super close with all the global t1 funds so naturally we know andreason super well we've done a few investments with the mad pre-seed here in Stockholm.

5:36Oliver Molander:And we know all the other big ones also. We're close with Sequoia, John, Catalyst, Lightspeed, all of these guys. And that's, you know, one part of our mandate is, you know, that we show the founders where the global maximum is. With this, I don't mean that we don't work close with the Nordic. This is also, we do that too. We've done investment with Crandom and et cetera. So we're in that sense, we are super collaborative by nature. But at the same time, we are also super realistic in the sense that information travels super fast today. you can't gatekeep founders or deals anymore. I was a bit naive.

6:10Oliver Molander:Even a year ago, before these USD1 funds started doing inception investing in the Nordics, I generally thought a few times when I met somebody truly amazing, I was like, okay, maybe I can do a quick deal here first and then I can start introducing them to all these big funds. Now I realize that information travels literally in five minutes. If I meet somebody great, it's going to come out there. So I just preemptively what we do is that we introduce the founders to these funds. We ask them, hey, we have this menu of all these funds, all these angels we know well. Who do you want to talk with? And I think that's part of how we also earn the rights to invest in these best founders because they know that we represent them.

6:49Oliver Molander:They know that we're not gatekeeping them. To the contrary, we are actually providing them signal by us telling other funds, other strong angels, hey guys, we're looking at this team. They're super strong. You should do that too. So I think that's like part of our strategy and something that's highly appreciated by the founders also. And talking about your network, can we touch on the LP base? The LP base is like you've almost put like the Avengers of the Nordics to get them on your LP. Can you talk about who some of them are and why they came on board? Well, I don't know if I can specifically talk about all the LPs we have.

7:26Oliver Molander:But, you know, I think we have like everything from like more legendary founders, investors from the Nordics that have backed the fund. You know, people have done bigger exits like Sebastian Knudsen from King, like John Lindforce, who is the managing partner at DSD Global, Staffan Trouvé, who found a recorded future, etc. We have plenty of those. We also have a lot of heavyweights from the Nordic private equity sector, etc. it's super important for us also to build bridges between the venture capital and private equity sector. But most importantly, looking where I come from, we have as small LPs, a lot of the next-gen AI founders and next-gen researchers from DeepMind and OpenAI, for example, with Nordic Connections.

8:11Oliver Molander:And that was something I was super clear about, given that our name is Inception Fund. We bet on the future. We invest at Inception. It also means that on the LP base, we should also take in people who we know are going to be one of the big heavyweights in a couple of years here. We're already going to take them into the fund as LPs. So we have the founders from Lovable, founders from Tandem, founders from Legora, founders from Sana, et cetera, as small LPs in the fund and many more. Those are just few. We have researchers from OpenAI and many other places and i think like one core premise also when building this and something which is quite fun to discuss with the founders we back especially the younger technical founders is that you know our goal at the end of the day is that they will become lps in our fund also um so like when we backed dentio with with andreessen i love the dentio guys you know super strong technically high grit high agency but one thing i love what they said after our second meeting when we decided that we're going to back them.

9:16Oliver Molander:The guy said, by the way, Oliver, within a few years, we're going to be LPs in your fund. And I said, absolutely. That's completely aligned with what we do because we're naturally doing everything we can in the background to help these guys succeed. That's amazing. Yeah. And when you started this fund, you obviously had a lot of experience behind you raising and investing. What was it that gave your LPs conviction? Was it a previous track record in investing? Was it your operational experience? Was it the network? what was the real selling point that you were pitching to the LPs? Yeah, no, it depends always on the LP.

9:51Oliver Molander:And actually, like with many of the next-gen AI founders, you know, many are backed as an angel. I've known these people for a long time. So there's a lot of trust. Like they've seen how I work for the community and, you know, that I'm super genuine as a person. And I think that's maybe my Finnish nature. I lived in Stockholm for over 10 years, but what you see is what you get. And that's something that's super important for me. So I try to be very like high integrity, very genuine in who I am. And I think that's, you know, plays well in terms of, you know, asking people to put their money into something you're building because they're like, Oliver is not, you know, overselling or trying to BS anything.

10:29Oliver Molander:Like he's going to tell us the way it is. And naturally, like, you know, what I've done here helps a lot with, you know, more maybe bigger LPs. They've seen the reach I have in terms of like social media platform. They see naturally some of the angel investments I've done, so they know I have access. But at the same time, you know, I'm super humble to my LPs. It's unlike, I'm still under 40. You know, I'm the beginning of my investment career. And, you know, it's maybe a bit corny, but we have this like mantra in the fund, which is that we're always at inception ourselves. And we try to stay super humble.

11:07Oliver Molander:And that's something I've been very clear to my LPs is that, yeah, you know, I've done some things you know i've been building the air community here in stockholm for the past 10 years but i still feel that i'm super early and i'm super hungry and i think that's something that lps good lps at least you know over index when they invest in emerging managers is the hunger uh and naturally the substance and sector specific understanding and networks but at the end of the day i think it's a lot about the hunger and you know feeling that trust in in the in the counterparty yeah when you talk about access you know looking at the portfolio there are that there's a lot of very strong Nordic companies there's a lot there's like a quite a strong contingent of YC companies and there's also these like amazing frontier AI companies that you've got like Bottlecap AI, Recursive, AmiLabs I mean these are some of the most exciting biggest deals can we just take one like Recursive I guess is the most recent yeah why did you decide to get involved in that deal yeah no i think like at the end of the day we we have a flexible mandate and i think that's that was one thing you know i there were many things i pushed to my lps that we need and and and you know our our slogan is change will never be this slow again uh which i'm super happy now that we chose because literally when you look at everything that's happened during the past 12 months especially since november last year change really never will be this slow again and i think like in order to find I'll find this market you need to have a flexible mandate and what I told the LPs was that I'm building with my partners a fund where we can get access to the best founders that's our core mandate and and I guess recursive reflects that like they're remarkable completely remarkable and it also reflects our flexibility because we can do you know inception rounds at you know four billion dollar valuations at the same time we do inception rounds in young technical founders at, you know,$10 million.

13:02Oliver Molander:And I think, you know, that score today, like, I think VCs who are too strict in terms of, you know, ownership mandates, in terms of, you know, what they can and can't do, I think it's super hard for them in this world we're living in right now. And I also believe, you know, that you need enough diversification in your portfolio, especially when you do super early stage investments, like we do. I think on the like Neo Labs that we've done now, recursive. We had a discussion about it, like how should we approach it? And also there, intellectual honesty is something that's super core to us in how we operate.

13:38Oliver Molander:And we just concluded that one, this is super important for Europe, that we actually support frontier AI from Europe. Let's be honest, we dropped the ball on LLMs, but we believe that there is opportunity because if you look at most of the core people behind transform architecture, behind actual LMs, most of them are Europeans. And I think it's like in our mandate, we need to back this like people who are doing it at the end of the day. But at the same time, we need to be intellectually honest in the fact that can we pick one which is the right one? No, we can't. So we just concluded that we're going to invest in all of the neo labs with a European connection that we believe in and that we naturally can get access to.

14:23Oliver Molander:And that's essentially what we're doing now. And if one of them can become a, you know, next Antropic, naturally, you know, then the math works for our fund. So we have a fund returner calculator on our website also. So like with the recursive, you know, 4 billion, 5 billion entry points, we know what's required to be a fund returner. At the same time, you know, we believe it's possible if things go right, then it's an amazing team. And we also believe that if we are invested in early in one of these companies that become the next Frontier AI lab, it's going to also be super helpful for our fund.

14:58Oliver Molander:Because that means that we will have access for our portfolio companies also to these labs. So I think with the Neo labs, it's like dual strategy in the sense of, yeah, we naturally want to see that they can return the fund, that they're ambitious enough. At the same time, we also see that there will be a huge value add for our broader portfolio if we're already invested in these companies that can become the next Antropic Core OpenAI. Super interesting. I never thought about that kind of like strategic angle before. Yeah, super interesting. Yeah, Recursive Family Labs. I met the Recursive team this week.

15:32They were like, I met the London team. I was so impressed.

15:35Oliver Molander:I thought that absolutely, I don't know, so interesting. and then what do you think about the nordic region because often when i think when i look at the new nordics the baltics there's like a heavy and maybe i've got this wrong but there's like a heavy skew towards foundational layer companies and it also seems quite consumer focused when we look at some of the big winners maybe it's spotify or clan or lovable i know lagora is probably not not true but there does seem to be so good at building at least some sort of consumer facing companies and really dominant at the ai application layer why do you think that is?

16:10Oliver Molander:So I think like reflecting on like my journey in the Nordics, especially in Stockholm startup ecosystem, and I've discussed this with many, but like we had a decade where I wouldn't say we were lost, but you know, we didn't produce super big outcomes. Like between 2015 and say 2025, you know, Stockholm, I think Stockholm especially was recalibrating a bit back then. So there was a history as you mentioned in consumer, a lot of consumer facing companies It's like Klarna, like Spotify. And Klarna, you can also naturally say it's also business-facing. Like everybody becomes business-facing at the end of the day when you become big enough as a consumer-facing company.

16:48Oliver Molander:But still, like Stockholm had a long history in gaming, in consumer-facing. And then I feel like during the 10 years between, like, say, 2015 and 2025, Stockholm and Sweden, we recalibrated more towards business-facing. And I think, you know, at the end of the day, that's what we've seen happening now. So most of the companies we see, Legora is a prime example, Tandem Health, etc., they are business-facing right now. And looking at YC stats, something like over 80%, 90 % of the companies in these YC batches are business-facing. And Branceschi has urged that we need more consumer-facing. And National Lovable is in between.

17:28Oliver Molander:It's prosumer. They sell both to business and they do consumer. but you know I think the success there comes from you know the legacy that we have in Stockholm in consumer and design product taste you know it's a cliche but you know super strong product taste but we're seeing that converting now more into business facing applications and what about Finland you know Finland seems to have a much younger more nascent tech ecosystem than kind of Stockholm and Sweden but it seems slightly more skewed maybe towards deep tech or hardware like or is an amazing company, sort of, you know, consumer hardware, ICI, IQM.

18:06I don't know, it feels like that's more, I don't know, again, if my reading is correct, but all the big companies seem like they're maybe deeper or more technical. Why do you think that is?

18:16Oliver Molander:I think, one, it's cultural, naturally. You know, Finns are maybe as, they're not as vocal and not as good communicators to be super transparent as, for example, Swedes. Finland doesn't have a long consumer. Sweden has produced companies like H &M, IKEA, Skype, Spotify. It's been quite a lot of still consumer facing both in retail and in technology. Finland at the end of the day has always been a quite engineering heavy country by nature. Like doing more and talking less, let's put it that way. And I think that fits the deep tech and hardware tech narrative maybe a bit better also. At the same time, I'm urging my Finnish friends all the time.

18:57Oliver Molander:We need to get better at thinking more globally. We need to get better communication, distribution, marketing, all of that stuff. But I think at the end of the day, what I've been also preaching quite a lot is that, you know, I'm born and raised in Helsinki. I lived in Stockholm for over a decade. I speak Swedish as my mother tongue and Finnish as my second language. And there's always been this sibling relationship between Finland and Sweden, where Sweden is the older sibling and Finland is the younger one. And I think right now I've been saying to the Finns also, like, stop chasing Sweden. Stop like, you know, trying to compete with Sweden on the AI application layer and, you know, trying to become the AI application capital of Europe like Stockholm.

19:37Oliver Molander:No, no, no. Like we need to build our own thing. Sweden is that. Finland needs to be, you know, really double down on our core strengths. And at the end of the day, I think the core strengths are in, as you said, it's in deep tech, it's in hardware tech, it's in defense tech, and it should be in cybersecurity also. I think that's where Finland could really shine. I think there's a great story to be told there about Finland. Just realizing the fact we share over a thousand kilometers of border with Russia, that forces Finland to act in a certain way. And I think that's where Finland's biggest opportunity is.

20:10Oliver Molander:And I think that's where Finland should double down right now. And naturally, I don't mind if Finland produces a lovable on the application layer. That's completely fine. but I still think that we shouldn't try to chase that in Finland by default we should instead more double down on the core strengths in the ecosystem yeah it's how I feel more broadly about Europe like everyone is always talking about Europe compared to the US and I'm always like forget about the US there's there's things that we can learn whether it's like speed and ambition but we just got it we've got to carve our own path and do our own thing and trying to look for them for inspiration is kind of we're losing before we start if you're trying to copy uh yeah i want to ask one one final question we saw eqt has been decided for uh the five billion euro scale-up fund eqt is obviously one of i don't know probably one of europe's biggest investors across you know it sits across venture and other private equity but it's very overwhelming the biggest investors multi-partic equity and venture yeah well it's massive absolutely massive and a great investor invested in a whole roster of fantastic companies.

21:17What's your view as somebody from that region of EQT winning, I guess, or being given the 5 billion scale-up fund? Being chosen, I guess, is probably the more appropriate phrase.

21:28Oliver Molander:Yeah, no. First of all, I thought I'm representing the Nordics, and I thought it sends a signal when the two funds that were the two last ones are both founded by Swedes. So I think that speaks again volumes about the momentum we have. At the same time, we shouldn't become arrogant. We're still early. We have a lot of work to be done. But I think that still says a lot. And I have a lot of respect both for Atomic and EQT. I think any of those would have been a great choice. And the fact that it became EQT, we literally sit five minutes from EQT here at Inception. And I think that's one of the core strengths of the Stockholm ecosystem.

22:05Oliver Molander:Everybody are so freaking close. But I think it's great. I think we need more growth capital from Europe for sure. Like, you know, I think something like 80 % of the growth investments in Europe comes from US funds. So it's like a no brainer when you look at the data. I think also the mandate is super good because like I naturally also have a lot of discussions about sovereignty and all of that stuff. And like, I have a pretty, you know, clear view. And, you know, I think the whole sovereignty discussion is complete bullshit. I think there's a lot of sovereignty. washing going on. I think we shouldn't in Europe focus on sovereignty.

22:43Oliver Molander:I think we should focus on indispensability. How do we build indispensable technologies from Europe? Like I talked with somebody and somebody said like if Finland would say tomorrow, hey, we're going to be sovereign, everybody would probably clap me on the head and say, good Oliver, very nice for Finland. Nobody would care. If the Netherlands would say tomorrow, we're going to be sovereign, people would be shitting their pants. Why? Because they have this one company called ASML which is completely pivotal for the whole AI ecosystem. So I think that's like the key thing now with Europe is that, you know I think sovereignty is like a sign of weakness.

23:19Oliver Molander:Like, yeah, we want to build B-class technologies that are sovereign. No, no, screw that. We want to build the best technologies in the world. That's how we become sovereign. And, you know, I think we should focus on indispensability. And I think that's something with the new fund that EQT is managing. That's the mandate. Like they have a mandate to swing big now, to back European companies with crazy ambitions who want to be indispensable, not just sovereign. And I think that's super great for the ecosystem. Amazing. Love it. I completely agree. Sovereignty is just like such a, yeah, it can be a good way of getting what you want if you can leverage the sovereignty angle.

23:59But it's nonsense, right? The best thing that we can do is build technology that other people are dependent on. It's like strategic interdependence. And then we're powerful. If we want power, the way to be powerful is to have something that the Americans can't live without, that the Chinese can't live without. And then they don't hold that power over us. But Oliver, out of time, thank you so much. It's been great fun chatting. I'm a huge fan of what you're doing.

24:20Oliver Molander:Thanks, Seb. Love what you're doing. And talk to you soon again.

24:30Michelle