Sanoma Ventures has come to an end. The fund lasted more than three years, in which Sanoma invested in 18 startups, most of them Dutch and some of them Finnish. Now the board of the corporate has decided to stop investing again.
Fund manager Antoine Hendrikx “doesn’t necessarily have to repel the portfolio companies directly”, Emerce wrote.
Sanoma Ventures made some notable investments in Dutch startups like Peerby, Springest, Fosbury, VirtuaGym, Scoupy and SendCloud. In terms of success, the startups funded by Sanoma did so so. Fosbury got acquired, Springest does just fine and Scoupy was heavily plugged.
On the other hand, we still have to see if Peerby has a fruitful business model and the plug was pulled from ‘Netflix competitor’ WappZapp.
It remains unclear why Sanoma Ventures decided to stop investing in startups. But luckily, Emerce wrote: “the investments don’t have to be cashed quickly.”
Blow to corporates
Still, the news is another blow for corporates working with innovation and startups. Prior, Sanoma had to kill their Innovation Lab due to a reorganization and their intrapreneur startup Hubly failed to generate traction.
Also, another Dutch corporate, TMG, had to end their incubator TMG Startups after just one year, mainly due to a cultural misfit.
Image by Aaron Muszalski