# Top 50 Education Startup Investors in Finland in June 2026

## Gorilla Capital
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 5
- Stages: Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, SaaS, Information Technology

Gorilla Capital helps ambitious startups grow with smart funding and support. Discover how our team invests in early-stage companies.

## Business Finland
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 4
- Stages: Grant, Seed, Debt Financing
- Focus: Software, Biotechnology, SaaS

Business Finland finances business R&D projects and public research projects at universities, research institutes and universities of applied sciences. Read more about R&D and business funding.

## Superhero Capital
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 4
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Software, Information Technology, Internet

Some call you founders. We call you Superheroes. Seed stage VC investing in insight-driven startups in Finland and the Baltics. Tickets 100 K€ - 1000 K€.

## Inventure
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 4
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
- Focus: Software, Information Technology, Health Care

Since 2005, Inventure has backed over 90 companies including Wolt, Swappie, Jobbatical, aiMotive, and more.

## Sparkmind.vc
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 4
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Education, E-Learning, EdTech

Sparkmind.vc is the first Nordic venture capital company focused on the learning sector. The company invests in teams transforming early childhood, K12, higher, secondary and vocational education as well as corporate and lifelong learning. The investment sweet spot of the company is from seed to international growth phase with single investments upto €5m.

## Lifeline Ventures
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 3
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, Health Care, E-Commerce

Lifeline Ventures Oy is a venture capital firm specializing in startups, growth capital, and early stage investments. The firm seeks to invest in healthcare, games, web based and general high technology sectors. It seeks to invest in Finland with a few investments made outside Finland as well. The firm targets investing between €0.5 million ($0.66million) and €1 million ($1.32 million). It seeks make inception to Series A investments. Lifeline Ventures Oy was founded in November 2009 and is based in Helsinki, Finland.

## Ali Omar
- Type: Angel
- Location: Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 2
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed, Angel
- Focus: Software, SaaS, Artificial Intelligence

Ali Omar is a Member of the Finnish Business Angels Network. He attended Aalto University and the University of Oulu.

## Reaktor Ventures
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 2
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed, Series A
- Focus: Internet, Software, E-Commerce

Reaktor Ventures has moved to the next phase by focusing its efforts to actively supporting current portfolio companies. This means that the fund has ended its investment period and is not investing into new companies. Between 2013 and 2018 we have invested into 42 different companies and one early stage fund. We will naturally keep makingfollow-up investments to current portfolio companies.

## Zanichelli Venture
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Bologna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy
- Relevant deals: 2
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Education, E-Learning, EdTech

Zanichelli Venture is looking for nascent companies who are tilling daring ideas about education and technology and searching for pre-seed or seed funding to grow these ideas into products to empower anyone – from children and parents to adult, professional lifelong learners and their mentors and coaches – to learn and teach better.We willsupport and finance ideas with the potential to have a positive impact on our future through education at every stage of our life. We will respectfully, discreetly stand by the entrepreneurs believing in these ideas, from the beginnings and at least since that impact leaves its first dent.We care about each startup in our portfolio getting the full value a hundred years old education company like Zanichelli can offer, wherever our expertise can be a lodestar because of our history, our mission, our network, our resources; and we believe in getting out of the founders’ way otherwise, if we don’t add value.We care about financial returns and self-sustainability and about bringing collaboration opportunities, insights, innovative thinking and entrepreneurial energy back to our company digital products designers, editorial staff and IT, searching for mutual advantages. Only in the long term, as we and the founders build trust through intense collaboration and shared stakes, and after a startup fully spreads out its potential as a maturing company, we believe in searching together for possible paths to a deeper partnership. We co-invest globally, following trusted, local lead investors.

## Marten Mickos
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 2
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Convertible Note
- Focus: Software, Enterprise Software, Internet

Marten Mickos is the CEO of HackerOne, Inc. the leading vulnerability coordination and bug bounty platform.  Previously Marten was the CEO of Eucalyptus Systems, acquired by Hewlett-Packard where he served as head of the cloud business. As the CEO of MySQL AB from 2001 to 2008, Marten grew that company from a garage start-up to the second largestopen source company in the world. Marten holds a M.Sc. in technical physics from Helsinki University of Technology in his native Finland.

## TukkuHeino
- Type: VC Fund
- Relevant deals: 2
- Stages: Pre-Seed
- Focus: Cooking, Children, Education

TukkuHeino

## Leena Niemistö
- Type: Angel
- Location: Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 2
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Health Care, Software, E-Commerce

Leena Niemistö

## Ascend Capital Partners
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Hong Kong, Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Series A, Seed
- Focus: Health Care, Medical Device, Software

Founded by two Wall Street professionals in 2002 with the goal of making companies successful by helping them raise capital and improve their management standards. This was done by taking an active role in running these companies (at the Board level and operationally) and helping to secure strategic partnerships.Over USD 100 million in assetsgenerated from successful investments in China, and more recently in Europe. All invested funds come from our partners; no 3rd party money is managed. Since the partners are investing their own capital, they are dedicated to making their investments successful.Led by Monita Mo, one of the founders and a serial entrepreneur. Our partners have decades of experience across a wide range of industries and geographical regions. All investment partners have done business in Asia and bring an extensive network of contacts for our investments. Additionally, they have started, managed, and sold businesses and understand the challenges involved.See the need to share more developed technology to other markets, especially in China, where growth opportunities may be greater. That is why we are currently focusing on companies in Europe and other developed markets that have unique technologies that can be commercialized in their home markets, Asia, and the US.

## Practica Capital
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Vilnius, Vilniaus Apskritis, Lithuania
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed, Series A
- Focus: B2B, Software, Information Technology

 Practica Capital 

## Almaral
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Kaarina, Western Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed
- Focus: Medical Device, Software, Education

Almaral provides risk management advice long-term strategy development budgeting operational function setup legal support early-stage sales and marketing function setup, and commercialization.

## Timo Hentunen
- Type: Angel
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Pre-Seed
- Focus: Training, Education, Human Resources

Timo Hentunen

## Redstone.VC
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Software, Information Technology, Health Care

The Redstone team is an international and diverse group of serial entrepreneurs, investors, investment professionals, tech analysts and data scientists.

## Takeoff Partners
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed
- Focus: Software, CRM, Sales

Takeoff Partners are experienced growth advisors and private investors. 

## Jukka Tapaninen
- Type: Angel
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed
- Focus: Medical, Software, Education

Jukka Tapaninen is an experienced IT business executive and a board member at Fimmic. Jukka also holds board positions at weVision, Addoro Ab, Findity and MeshWorks Wireless Oy.Jukka has a strong background in the IT industry on managing companies and business units globally. His leadership experience, from large companies like SAP and HP, aswell as from strong midsize companies has given him industry knowledge and excellent network within the strategic ecosystem and major customers. Jukka has experience in working in the United States, Singapore and multiple locations in Europe that have given him a good understanding on how business is done in different parts of the world.Jukka holds a M.Sc. degree from the Helsinki School of Economics.

## Liquido.VC
- Type: VC Fund
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed
- Focus: Energy, Software, Education

We help startups in building pre-seed and seed financing rounds from designing the pitch deck to closing the round. We also build our own startup portfolio by investing and supporting the carefully selected growth companies.

## Dirk Freise
- Type: Angel
- Location: Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed, Series A
- Focus: Education, Software, TV

Dirk Freise - Managing Director @ non olet

## Butterfly Ventures
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Oulu, Oulu, Finland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Health Care, Software, Information Technology

Butterfly Ventures is a seed-stage focused VC in the Nordics, investing in deep tech, hardware, and hardware interfacing software. The company prefers to get involved with companies early on; 80% of Butterfly Ventures portfolio companies don't have any revenue at the time of their entry. Butterfly Ventures was founded in 2012 and ever sincethen it has been one of the most active early stage VCs in the region. The company has offices in Oulu, Helsinki and Stockholm.

## PINC
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Stockholm, Stockholms Lan, Sweden
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed, Series A
- Focus: Biotechnology, Agriculture, Food and Beverage

PINC was launched as Paulig Incubator in 2018 to help Paulig stay in the forefront of relevant innovations, as well as to contribute to a tastier, healthier and more sustainable planet. Today, our ambition is the same, but we have developed into a corporate venture arm. We aim for strategic, financial, and societal impact in our investments,fostering a sustainable food system for tomorrow. We are investing across the agrifood value chain in three primary impact themes:   Improve planetary health and diet within the current food system: This includes innovations in agriculture and food security, such as advanced crop breeding or green fertilizers, innovative ingredients and next generation healthy foods, as well as solutions for tracking and improving climate and nature. Novel technologies to feed 10 BN people by 2050: Technologies needed to sustainably produce enough food for our growing population. This includes food production without land use change, such as precision fermentation and cell-culture.  A circular system for food & materials: Regardless of whether we grow our food in soil or in bioreactors, the system needs to be circular. Some examples are upcycled ingredients, food from unused sources, new coating and packaging solutions, as well as technologies to prevent or make better use of side streams. We are looking for entrepreneurs in an attractive market space with an intrinsic drive to find a solution to the problem they are addressing, a clear and scalable plan for success, a reliable team and partners whom we can trust and work closely with.

## Martin Ostermayer
- Type: Angel
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed, Series A
- Focus: Education, Apps, Software

CEO of Shortcut Ventures GmbH in Hamburg, Germany.Martin Ostermayer is one of the CEOs of the venture capital firm, Shortcut Ventures, located in Hamburg, Germany. After graduating in Business Administration from the University of Hamburg, Ostermayer received his MBA from the University of San Francisco in 1998, majoring in telecommunicationsand business strategy.In 1999, he set up handy.de, which became Europe’s largest provider of mobile entertainment services with business partners Thorsten Rehling and Dirk Freise. They also created blau.de, the first independent wireless service discounter in Germany, in 2005. They led the company until 2011.

## Omar Rebhan
- Type: Angel
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Internet, Apps, Coffee

Early Stage Angel Investor, Market Entry & Growth Strategist

## KSI Education
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: London, England, United Kingdom
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed
- Focus: EdTech, Education, E-Learning

Support students to develop knowledge, wisdom and skills

## Terhi (TJ) Vapola
- Type: Angel
- Location: Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Series A, Seed, Series B
- Focus: Biotechnology, Energy, Software

Terhi J. Vapola is an experienced venture capitalist, entrepreneur and international business executive, with proven track record in creating new tech businesses and driving growth through board work.  
Her experience spans from managing high tech start-ups and growth companies to venture capital and corporate venturing. Currently she is the leaderand founder of Helen Ventures, the investment arm of Finnish energy company Helen Ltd. She has also worked as a CEO of leading Finnish early growth phase investment firm and as a managing director of a seed VC firm. A startup that she co-founded won the coveted Red Herring Europe and Red Dot Design awards. Whilst at Nokia she participated in bringing WCDMA to the global markets (the technology that enables us to bring internet into our mobile phones), and orchestrated setting up two mobile startup funds with Silicon Valley and Seattle based partners.
Through her Ph.D. dissertation and work experience, she has a profound understanding of how to successfully manage the partnering between startups and multinational corporations in global innovation ecosystems.

## Courage Ventures Management
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Health Care, Apps, Shoes

Courage Ventures is a seed investment fund with global networks.
The fund focuses on health, education and environment verticals where its partners and advisors can add significant value to the companies’ growth. 

## Aristo-Invest
- Type: VC Fund
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Pre-Seed
- Focus: Cooking, Children, Education

Aristo-Invest is a family office of CapMan founder Ari Tolppanen.

## Juha Harju
- Type: Angel
- Location: Jyväskylä, Western Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Convertible Note
- Focus: Internet, Software, Education

Mr. Juha Harju is a Co-Founder and serves as Chief Executive Officer at Woolman. He is an angel investor.

## Nordic Venture Partners (Sweden)
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Copenhagen, Hovedstaden, Denmark
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Series A, Series B
- Focus: Software, Information Technology, Gaming

Nordic Venture Partners (Sweden) is a venture capital firm with a portfolio of investments in the Information and Communications Technology.

## Markko Vaarnas
- Type: Angel
- Location: Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Convertible Note
- Focus: Internet, Software, Education

Markko Vaarnas is specialized in internationalizing B2B software and service companies. His experience accumulates from Global Intelligence Alliance Group (GIA), a company he co-founded in 1995 and successfully exited in late 2014. At the time that the company was sold, GIA had 10 offices across 4 continents, and a vast majority of the 15 mEURrevenue came from outside its home market, Finland. In January 2015, Markko co-founded Takeoff Partners with the mission to create positive impact to people and the society by helping business owners to grow their businesses internationally. He executes this mission through serving as a part-time advisor, coach and angel investor for growth companies, as well as a consultant and interim leader for targeted internationalization projects and programs.In his various roles, he wants to share his experiences on how to internationalize B2B software and service business, and more specifically help companies to build strategic business plans, conceptualize offerings, improve customer experiences, raise finance and facilitate the implementation of new market entries.During his time at GIA, Markko became one of the global thought leaders in Market Intelligence. He is the author of the book “The Handbook of Market Intelligence” published by Wiley in September 2011, and has presented and facilitated workshops in numerous international conferences. http://bit.ly/HandbookMIMarkko graduated from the Helsinki School of Economics with a Master's degree (International Business). He is married with three children, and speaks fluent English and Finnish, and is also able to converse in German and Swedish. In his free time he enjoys playing soccer and coaches a junior soccer team.

## Lennu Keinanen
- Type: Angel
- Location: Jyväskylä, Western Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Convertible Note
- Focus: Internet, Software, Education

Lennu Keinanen is a Co-founder of Flashnode. He attended University of Eastern Finland.

## Midinvest Management
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Jyväskylä, Western Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Convertible Note
- Focus: Software, Information Technology, Internet

Midinvest Management is a Finnish private equity firm specialized in ownership arrangements for small- and medium-sized enterprises.

## MPA Education
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: London, England, United Kingdom
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed
- Focus: EdTech, Education, B2B

MPA Capital is looking for mission-driven entrepreneurs developing inclusive EdTech solutions to tackle the challenge of human talent shortage (labour & skills shortages, mental health crisis).

## Tomi Hilvo
- Type: Angel
- Location: Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Convertible Note
- Focus: Internet, Software, Education

Tomi Hilvo

## Excedea Capital
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Focus: Software, Education, E-Learning

Excedea Capital is a private investment company. It finances growth companies and special real estate opportunities.

## AngelList
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Software, Artificial Intelligence, FinTech

Apply privately to 130,000+ remote jobs and startup jobs near you with one application. See salary and equity upfront. Find the latest tech jobs, company overviews, benefits and more at AngelList Talent.

## SanomaVentures
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Hoofddorp, Noord-Holland, The Netherlands
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Internet, SEO, Finance

SanomaVentures is the venturing arm of European media company Sanoma Corporation (SAA1V), aiming to support innovative start-ups in digital information, entertainment and education by providing them with capital, media exposure, expertise and access to Sanoma’s business network.SanomaVentures focuses on early stage investments in start-ups activein online consumer services, e-commerce, mobile, video, online advertising and education. SanomaVentures has offices in Amsterdam and Helsinki.

## Eqvitec
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Series A, Seed
- Focus: Software, Enterprise Software, Information Technology

Eqvitec Partners is a privately owned and independent Nordic private equity firm, advising six funds with a total capital base of over €500 million. Equity funds invest in technology companies in all phases from early-stage to buyouts. Mezzanine funds focus on buyouts and expansion financing.Eqvitec Partners offers a combination of experienceand expertise to companies with an attractive business model and solid growth potential. They spend a lot of time with the portfolio companies working closely with the management on a board level. Their aim is to add significant value, particularly via intellectual capital, with a focus on strategy implementation and business development. In addition, they bring a significant network and financial know-how to their portfolio companies. Eqvitec funds typically exit the investments after 3-6 years through a trade sale or a stock exchange floatation.Eqvitec Partners was established in 1997 and currently has 15 employees in the Helsinki and Stockholm offices.They are a member of the Finnish Venture Capital Association (FVCA), Swedish Venture Capital Association (SVCA), European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (EVCA) and Nordic Venture Network (NVN).

## Ali Ömer Horzum
- Type: Angel
- Location: Istanbul, Istanbul, Turkey
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed
- Focus: EdTech, Education, Primary Education

Ali Ömer Horzum

## LähiTapiola
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Espoo, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Debt Financing, Seed
- Focus: Manufacturing, Software, Apps

LähiTapiola is based on mutual company form, a group of companies owned by its customers, serving the personal, farm, entrepreneurial.

## Reetta Rajala
- Type: Angel
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Pre-Seed
- Focus: Training, Education, Human Resources

Reetta Rajala

## Point Nine
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
- Focus: Software, SaaS, Internet

Point Nine Capital is a Berlin-based venture capital firm focused exclusively on early-stage Internet investments in areas like Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), online marketplaces, and mobile.The fund and its managers, Pawel Chudzinski and Christoph Janz have backed a number of highly successful Internet companies such as Delivery Hero, Clio,Shiftplanning, Vend, Typeform, and Zendesk from their earliest stages.

## Oppiva Invest
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Focus: Software, Education, E-Learning

Oppiva Invest offers capital-based loan financing to companies, especially for business activities related to the development of vocational training learning environments and teaching aids, and for export promotion.

## Ria Parppei
- Type: Angel
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Pre-Seed
- Focus: Training, Education, Human Resources

Ria Parppei

## Bryant Chou
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Angel
- Focus: Software, E-Commerce, SaaS

Bryant Chou - Co-founder & Chief Architect @ Webflow

## daFUND
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Ljubljana, Ljubljana Urban Commune, Slovenia
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed, Convertible Note
- Focus: Hotel, Banking, FinTech

daFUND is a venture capital fund which invest in early stages  propelled by software.

## Antler
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Singapore, Central Region, Singapore
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, Artificial Intelligence, Information Technology

Build your next company with Antler, a global day zero investor enabling exceptional founders to start great companies, from the very beginning. Apply now!

## Tesi
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Series A, Series B
- Focus: Software, Manufacturing, Health Care

Finnish Industry Investment Ltd is a government-owned investment company. It invests the proceeds accrued from the privatisation of state-owned companies in stimulating the growth and internationalisation of Finnish businesses.Finnish Industry Investment invests in venture capital funds and directly in growth companies, together with privateco-investors. The targets are in all sectors. Capital investments are needed for financing the growth of investee companies, and for spin-offs, major industrial investments, and sector and corporate restructurings.The investments of Finnish Industry Investment amount to over MEUR 570

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