Inka MeroFounder & Managing Partner
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I am the Founder and Managing Partner of Voima Ventures deep tech venture capital fund (backed by VTT and EIF and institutional/family offices). We invest into pre-seed and seed stage Nordic and Baltic deep tech and science originated startups and top scientific entrepreneur teams with global potential. Our purpose is to solve big global problems by combining science, entrepreneurship and smart capital.
Prior to founding Voima Ventures, I worked over 10 years as full time early stage investor (and prior to that as entrepreneur and business executive) and advisor / board member for multiple corporations and close to 15 years in operational track as CEO / Director, co-founder and VP Sales.
My board work at Fiskars Plc, Nokian Tyres Plc and earlier YIT Plc has enabled me to bring in my strategic and international expertise on digital transformation, innovation, new business models and technologies and driving entrepreneurship and fast execution to the context of big corporations.
“Think-Build-Execute” is my motto. I enjoy building and leading global disruptive strategies, while implementing growth and “hands on” new solutions, businesses and products. I believe in tangible customer value creation via focused, rapid and agile execution (lean) and core metrics and KPIs (sales, users, conversion). And to succeed, you always need a great team.
During my 25 year career I have:
* Co-founded 7 and invested in 30+ companies in Medtech, Optics, Electronics, Consumer Internet, AI, Mobile, Analytics / E-commerce space. Raised several funding rounds from 50-100kE pre-seed and300-1M€ seed rounds upto 30 M Euros of Series A/B.
* Succeeded big time with multiple startups/companies, failed with one startup as a founder. I know what it takes to make it to the black numbers, and grow business from 30 people to 500+.
* Worked as Executive Chairman, CEO, Chief Product Officer and VP of Sales/Marketing with full P&L, team, strategy and execution responsibilities in leading edge global companies.
* Lead business development, investment and/or partnering strategies and teams in multi-billion revenue companies.
* Held several board seats in companies from pre-revenue stage to global public companies with 1.5 Bill+ Euros in turnover or balance sheet.
* Worked in and with my own Helsinki – Silicon Valley – Tel Aviv – New York teams and organizations.