Nordic Angel Program is an international training and investment program for business angels from the Nordics, Baltics and Russia. The goal is to make more cross-border investment with an experienced group of angels into the best startups that the region can offer. Thus, a perfect chance for Slush and NAP to collaborate!
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From over a hundred companies, which applied for Nordic Angel Program at Slush, 96 passed pre-screening, after which the angel syndicate took over. Lead angels for this year’s syndicate were the superheroes Kim Väisänen and Annukka Mickelsson. After months of evaluating, coaching and negotiating, there was a clear number one in the batch: FeelingStream,a speech-to-text tool to help contact center automate their processes with intelligence: thus, enabling customers to detect leaving customers and cutting the working hours of employees. Their main markets are the Nordics and Baltics, which aren’t attractive to the big players due to the complexity, and frankly, small size of the market for English-speaking market dominators.

“We had over 90 excellent candidates to choose from, but FeelingStream was the clear winner. This time one star was definitely shinier than the others”, comments Kim Väisänen. Strong traction, clear go-to-market plan and entrepreneurs convincing backgrounds were the key factors in choosing FeelingStream as the investment target. “Feelingstream was in many aspects more mature than the others. Although there is still work to be done, as always in startups, they have been able focus effectively. Feelingstream is at right stage for an angel investor syndicate which is looking to invest in many ways to pave the way to a success”, colead Mickelsson continues.

​So why NAP at Slush, Terje Ennomäe, CEO of FeelingStream?

“We planned to raise money at the end of the year, and we were looking for investors with a vast network. Basically the reason why we approached Finnish NAP was the connection within the Nordic countries and close understanding our target markets”, Ennomäe describes. And how will the 400 000€ investment be spend? “With the investment we accelerate our growth in the Nordic market. We’ll build a product for banking, telecom, insurance, and other relevant sectors. For our team, we need sales executives and people who love data (data analysts and data scientists).”
Best of luck to FeelingStream- we feel you!

Nordic Angel Program is cofinanced by European Commission’s Startup Europe initiative under the Horizon 2020 programme