The Inner Foundation invests in Unconventional Ventures and their first Fund to accelerate the funding for underrepresented founders
Unconventional Ventures launches a €30m fund to invest in underrepresented founders in Europe. The Inner Foundation is backing this new Fund with the intention to increase inclusion and diversity within the startup community and venture capital.
Thea and Nora have proven the ability to reach great founders in many locations and connect them to capital, competence and networks, key components to build strong fast growing companies. We are looking forward to partnering with UV and combining strong returns with the emergence of a new category of founders, says Pär-Jörgen Pärson, Co-Founder, The Inner Foundation and with extensive experience from investing in the very best technology startups in Europe and US.
Unconventional Ventures invests in startups in the pre-seed and seed stage led by diverse founders identifying as women, people of color, immigrants and/or LGBTQ+, building scalable impact tech companies in the Nordics and beyond. The founders, Thea Messel and Nora Bavey have been building an ecosystem supporting diverse founders across the Nordics and beyond, through their early investments, accelerator and their widespread reports taking the temperature on the funding gaps in the Nordics.
“The Inner Foundation has been crucial and catalytic for us, as an emerging, underrepresented fund manager. As we are channeling our investments towards founder segments that have traditionally been underfunded and underestimated in the VC industry, we are particularly proud to be backed and supported by The Inner Foundation”, says Nora Bavey, GP at Unconventional Ventures.
Thea Messel, GP, at Unconventional Ventures adds:
We are looking forward to accelerating change together going forward and hope that more investors and foundations will follow The Inner Foundation’s footsteps in being a true enabler and catalytic force in the ecosystem"
For further information, please contact:
Nora Bavey
GP, Unconventional Ventures
nora@unconventional.vc
+46 703 880 638
Precious Jocson
Chief of staff, The Inner Foundation
precious.jocson@theinnerfoundation.org
+46 73 714 94 63
About UV
Founded in Denmark 2018, UV is run by General Partners, Thea Messel and Nora Bavey. UV is backed by a diverse pool of investors and advisors with extensive experience and a broad range of perspectives. UV works to unlock the potential of diverse founding teams building impact tech companies. UV has been creating investment vehicles to invest in impact-driven companies with diverse founding teams since 2019. UV’s annual reports on the funding gap in the Nordic investment landscape are widespread and in early 2021 they launched the first digital European accelerator program targeting underrepresented founders.
About The Inner Foundation
The global social crisis is fundamental and requires a radical shift. The Inner Foundation (founded by Annika Sten Pärson and Pär-Jörgen Pärson) invests in both for-profit and non-profit organizations that are ready to scale to improve the inner health of the many and strengthen inclusiveness, equity and diversity in society – uniting public, private and non-profit efforts to make sustainable human development happen.
We are witnessing a large gap between academic insight, best practices, and street-level action in the field of mental health and DEI. The Inner Foundation was created as a significant force for good – equal parts impact investor, grant giver, and thought leader. We consider ourselves part empowerers, part activists. We recognize the complexity and still, we aim for solutions that are simple, doable, and powerful. We set out to build an ecosystem of positive change agents with people and organizations that share our philosophy and theory of change. There are thousands of innovative solutions out there that carry the potential for counteracting the problems of loneliness, loss of direction, exclusion, and lack of diversity. Debilitating issues that are not getting addressed for real. We won’t rest until that happens.
For press and other inquiries
www.theinnerfoundation.org
hi@theinnnerfoundation.org