In Dagens industri’s interview series Mitt i bruset, BackingMinds co-founder Sara Wimmercranz explained the idea behind the firm. Sweden’s venture capital goes mainly to male founders in central Stockholm. Together with Susanne Najafi, she built a database from Swedish Companies Registration Office data and found how skewed the numbers were. That gave them an investment thesis: back the founders, sectors and regions that traditional capital overlooks. “We come in at lower valuations and get better returns, while changing the statistics.” By 2023, BackingMinds’ first fund showed an unrealised value increase of 500%, and a second fund of SEK 500 million was raised in 2021.

Sara also spoke about the customer focus she took from her upbringing in Älmhult, home of IKEA, and later brought to Footway. She named the areas BackingMinds is watching: climate, health for an ageing population, and cybersecurity.