Seppo Savolainen

Seppo Savolainen is a Co-Founder and Partner at Straightforward Capital, an early- and growth-stage technology venture capital firm based in Helsinki, Finland and founded in 2016. He holds an MBA and brings more than 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur and business angel across software, hi-technology and, more recently, renewables. Over that period he has been hands-on in founding, financing, developing and exiting various companies in a global setting.

He co-founded Straightforward Capital alongside Andrej Srsen (CFA), a corporate finance, investment banking and M&A specialist; the firm's analyst team has included Silvia Ozorovska. The partnership pairs Savolainen's operating and angel-investing experience with Srsen's finance background, and the firm positions itself around hands-on, post-investment cooperation with founders rather than passive capital. Straightforward Capital's stated mission is to help technology companies "with scalability potential and global vision to unleash their growth potential," addressing what the firm describes as Finland's gap between talented, globally ambitious entrepreneurs and a limited domestic market and capital base.

Beyond writing checks, Savolainen takes active board and governance roles in portfolio companies. For example, he served as Chairman of the board of Carbodeon Ltd Oy, a Finnish nanodiamond materials company that Straightforward Capital backed. The firm has articulated an ambition to "unleash €1B of global growth in the next 10 years," reflecting Savolainen's growth-and-internationalization orientation.

• Invests in technology companies with scalability potential and global vision, helping Finnish founders expand into larger markets including the US.
• Firm-level initial check sizes of €500,000 to €2 million, spanning seed and early-growth stages.
• Sector interest centers on software, hi-technology, cleantech/renewables, deep tech, and enterprise applications/infrastructure.
• Emphasizes hands-on, post-investment partnership — the team leans on its corporate-financing and entrepreneurship backgrounds to support founders through multiple development phases (business planning, financing, scaling), including board-level involvement.
• On what makes him say yes: in the Carbodeon deal Savolainen cited a team's "understanding of the market needs and their capacity to build client solutions which are cost-efficient and scalable" as decisive investment factors.