Editor’s note: This article by Dmitri Sarle originally appeared on ArcticStartup, an independent tech blog that reports on digital startups and growth entrepreneurship from the Nordic and Baltic countries.
Last month we were kidding about Reaktor POLTE investing into a startup per week, but they are definitely keeping up the pace and this month they announced a EUR 100,000 (roughly $130,000) investment in MyNextRun.
The total round size was 150,000 euros ($193,000).
The startup allows anyone to find running events all over the world and to enroll directly through their service.
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This is a niche proposition, but something that has definitely been a problem for the running community, especially when it comes to finding and registering for foreign events.
The company already has over 10,000 users and are just waiting for the snow to melt to start the ‘exponential growth stage’.
According to Oskari Kettunen, the man behind Reaktor POLTE, the company will also be helping event organizers who seldom have experiences in the digital world. Basically they will be able to outsource the whole ticketing and event management to MyNextRun.
This is also the main monetization solution and they have already closed a number of deals. That being said, the service will remain free for the runners, while offloading the burden of digital management from event organizers. Kettunen commented that:
“Organizations putting together these events have limited expertise in providing online services. So they are happy to get help from MyNextRun.”
We also wanted to talk to Reaktor POLTE about their overall plans and ambitions, so here is a brief summary from our interview:
AS: How many companies do you expect to invest into this year?
Kettunen: We do not have a schedule, as we are new to the field. It might look like we are investing at a fast pace, but in fact we are rather cautious. The bottle neck is actually in finding good cases.
AS: What type of startups are you looking for the most right now?
Kettunen: Good ones. We are not ruling anything out but it seems that investments into companies such as MyNext run are in the sweetspot. There is a need for a component of an online digital service.
For practical reasons, Helsinki based companies are more likely to end up in our portfolio. There arent any rules though.
AS: What was the main driver for choosing MyNextRun?
Kettunen: Well-balanced team, a focused business model and empirical proof of some key metrics as well a good story of where it is going.
AS: Is POLTE only aiming to make smaller seed investments or do you have plans to make larger rounds in the future?
Kettunen: Because of who we are, the seed investing comes naturally to us. Any good investment is always interesting, so it could well get bigger.
At some point we will be looking at some of our portfolio companies raising series A and we are going to decide if we will double down on them or let someone else carry them further.
Image credit: Josiah Mackenzie / Flickr
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