# Kaarel Kotkas

> Kaarel Kotkas is a seed investor at Veriff backing Software, Gaming and E-Commerce. See 11 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [Veriff](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/veriff)
- Total investments: 11
- Last investment: Jul 2025
- Lead investor: 0%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaarelkotkas/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kaarel.kotkas

Kaarel Kotkas is a seed investor at Veriff focused on Software and Gaming. Kaarel Kotkas is based out of Tallinn, Estonia, and is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Veriff. Patrick previously worked at Sants as a CEO & Founder. Kaarel Kotkas has been awarded the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year in Estonia in 2020 and was recognized in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe and named one of the 25 most influential youngentrepreneurs in Northern Europe by Nordic Business Report.

## Round sizes

| Stage | Round size |
| --- | --- |
| Seed | $545k–$2.8M |
| Series A | $13M–$13M |
| Series B | $23M–$94M |

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Software | 3 | 27% |
| Gaming | 2 | 18% |
| E-Commerce | 2 | 18% |
| Video Games | 2 | 18% |
| 3D Technology | 2 | 18% |

22 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 5 | 45% |
| Series A | 2 | 18% |
| Series B | 2 | 18% |
| Angel | 1 | 9% |
| Pre-Seed | 1 | 9% |

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Estonia | 8 | 73% |
| Hungary | 1 | 9% |
| United Kingdom | 1 | 9% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Lightyear | Lightyear is a simple and approachable way to invest your money globally without unnecessary barriers and fees. | $23M | Series B | Jul 24, 2025 |  |
| Yaga | Yaga is designed for everyone who wants to sell items online in a convenient and secure manner. | $2.4M | Seed | Nov 10, 2022 |  |
| Yaga | Yaga is an e-commerce site that provides t-shirts, clothing, books, magazines, and accessories for men, and women. | $2.2M | Seed | Nov 10, 2022 |  |
| Yera | Yera is to boost team engagement in routine work with custom rewards and unique experiences. | $587K | Seed | Jul 20, 2022 |  |
| Yera | The AI-Powered Coach of Your Sales and Support Team.Convert the interactions between your people and clients, plus your internal knowledge, into valuable insights and coaching to help your team members develop their best selves.Besides saving you big time on onboarding and developing people, and guaranteeing quality, each individual gets dailyinsights and coaching in topics like:1. Tone, empathy, clarity, persuasion, and resolution. 2. Internal knowledge, value proposition, policies, scripts, and brand voice. 3. Productivity. | $544.7K | Seed | Jul 20, 2022 |  |
| SEON | SEON is the AI command center for fraud prevention and AML compliance. Thousands of companies worldwide trust us to stop fraud without slowing growth.Our platform powers smarter risk decisions by enriching customer profiles, flagging suspicious behavior and managing compliance workflows all in one place. Unlike competitors relying on stale,third-party data, SEON runs on 900+ proprietary, real-time data signals for broader coverage and higher precision.SEON's AI detects hidden fraud networks, builds rules and drafts suspicious activity reports. Teams can also connect their own AI tools, from ChatGPT to Claude to custom agents, directly to SEON's risk data to build their own agentic investigation workflows.We’re trusted by innovators like Revolut, Wise and thousands of others scaling securely into new products and markets. | $94M | Series B | Apr 19, 2022 |  |
| Ready Player Me | Wolf3D is a developer of 3D printing and scanning platform for virtual reality and games. Its platform offers 3D printing of human sculptures using ultrasound data and creates models of bones and organs for surgical planning and for use in games and virtual reality helping developers to integrate 3D models into existing games, game engines, or VRapplications. | $13M | Series A | Dec 28, 2021 |  |
| Ready Player Me | Wolf3D is a developer of 3D printing and scanning platform for virtual reality and games. Its platform offers 3D printing of human sculptures using ultrasound data and creates models of bones and organs for surgical planning and for use in games and virtual reality helping developers to integrate 3D models into existing games, game engines, or VRapplications. | $13M | Series A | Dec 28, 2021 |  |
| Woola | Woola uses leftover sheep wool to replace bubble wrap. These wool-based packages can be reused, repurposed, or returned by the end user, with the ultimate goal of making the solution “closed-loop” so nothing goes to waste. | $2.8M | Seed | Dec 21, 2021 |  |
| Lightyear | Lightyear is a simple and approachable way to invest your money globally without unnecessary barriers and fees. | $2.1M | Pre-Seed | Jun 03, 2021 |  |

10 of 11 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Specialist VC](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/united-angels-vc) — VC Fund, 5 deals together
- [IVP](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/institutional-venture-partners) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [Startup Wise Guys](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/startup-wise-guys) — VC Fund, 3 deals together
- [Trind Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/trind-ventures) — VC Fund, 3 deals together
- [NordicNinja VC](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/nordicninja-vc) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [RubyLight](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/rubylight) — VC Fund, 2 deals together

## About Veriff

VC Fund · Tallinn, Estonia

Veriff is an online identity verification company that protects businesses and their customers from online identity fraud. It is a highly automated identity verification platform connecting companies with honest customers.Veriff makes it easy to connect with people to trust. With the combined forces of machine learning and eagle-eyed specialists,Veriff is always two steps ahead of digital fraud. AI speeds up sessions with immediate feedback, while manual checks by their verification gurus nip risks in the bud.Veriff was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia.

5 contacts available at Veriff.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Tiit Paananen | VP, Engineering | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/tiit-paananen |
| Carly Brantz | Chief Marketing Officer | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/carly-brantz |
| Hubert Behaghel | VP of Engineering | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/hubert-behaghel |
| Jaanus Kivistik | CTO | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/jaanus-kivistik |
| James Lancaster | Senior Account Executive | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/james-lancaster-e443 |

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## FAQ

### What does Kaarel Kotkas invest in?

Kaarel Kotkas invests primarily in Software, Gaming and E-Commerce startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 11 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in Estonia. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### What is Kaarel Kotkas's check size?

Kaarel Kotkas typically joins rounds of $545k–$2.8M at Seed, $13M–$13M at Series A and $23M–$94M at Series B. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Kaarel Kotkas participates in.

### When did Kaarel Kotkas last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for Kaarel Kotkas closed in Jul 2025. Shizune tracks 11 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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