Copenhagen-based venture capital firm Nordic Eye Venture Capital continued to grow its foothold in Silicon Beach last week, providing funding to back an acquisition of an auto brokerage alongside a separate investment in an online career planning service.
Nordic Eye, which made a $2-million investment in Santa Monica-based CarBlip Inc. earlier this year followed up by helping the mobile car-buying app acquire L.A. Car Connection, a 25-year-old broker in Westlake Village. The firm led a group of four investors, including Science Inc., a Santa Monica-based incubator and investment firm, in the deal.
Richard Sussman, a managing partner at Nordic Eye who has set up shop in an office in Santa Monica, said the deal for L.A. Car Connection and a separate investment in online career planning service EYP Ventures Inc. in Marina del Rey both came on undisclosed terms.
CarBlip helps customers search available cars in their geographic location, submit bids and view counteroffers, and then directs them to a dealership to make the final purchase.
EYP, also known as “Exploring Your Potential,” doesn’t take a traditional approach to career readiness with resumes, teaching interviewing skills and counseling. It aims instead to help younger people explore their “career potential in the context of global possibilities.”
Scores of universities already have relationships with EYP in hopes of helping students find meaningful work. The career-planning outfit’s online materials are geared toward Generations Y and Z, the group that follows the millennial generation, and includes individuals now around college and high school age.
Nordic Eye’s investment will help EYP expand in the United States and establish an office in the United Kingdom.
The U.K. presence is a key part of Nordic Eye’s strategy, according to Sussman, who said it’s integral to a concept called “bridging.” That means providing fledgling EYP with personnel and marketing and sales resources to take advantage of relationships established with dozens of colleges and universities here, and offering another team in London that could rapidly provide similar support to start up a satellite office there. Aiding in this “bridge” to new markets is a “sales accelerator” based in London that could give EYP or any other early-stage company quick and easy access to a salesforce without the trouble of registering legal documents in the United Kingdom, or even having to go through the process of hiring the right personnel.
Sussman cited the numerous high-tech accelerators and incubators closely aligned with major universities in Southern California as a calling card for its approach here, he said. He cited the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s early-stage incubator focused on internet, software and hardware companies, as well as a program dubbed Startup UCLA that runs an accelerator in the summer months.
Nordic Eye, which has nearly tapped out a fund of $50 million on its investments here and in Denmark, is in the process of raising a war chest of $300 million that will start allocating in the first quarter of 2019, Sussman said.
It hopes to expand its current portfolio of 14 investments to more than 20 in the first quarter of 2019, with some of that expected to fuel hiring at the Santa Monica office.
Sussman grew up in the United Kingdom and in Los Angeles, and has held a number of high-ranking digital media jobs with Tivo Corp., Interpublic Group of Cos. Inc., Nielsen Holdings and others.
Early hit
The CarBlip and EYP deals are not the first for Nordic Eye in the United States.
Its first was a $3-million investment for an undisclosed stake in Santa Monica-based cybersecurity company Weblife.io in the spring of 2017.
Weblife.io sold six months later for $66 million to Proofpoint Inc., a Silicon Valley firm that also deals in cybersecurity. Weblife.io’s client list included Amgen Inc. and post-hack Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. at the time of its sale, when it was planning to extend its email malware protection to users’ personal email accounts.
“This was our first deal, and it proved out our model that we could bridge Silicon Beach in L.A., California, with the rest of the world,” Sussman said.
Weblife.io’s fast growth was due, in part, to a “sales accelerator” in the United Kingdom that gave the company access to new clients. Nordic Eye has since acquired the sales accelerator, Sussman said.
Nordic Eye aims to grow staff to about 20 in Santa Monica in 2019, he said.
