Aisti logo

## The novel acoustic tile championing sustainability

A sought-after feature of any indoor space is the acoustics—in other words how peaceful and quiet it can really be. And this makes acoustic tiles a key element of modern construction. However, the solutions widely used today are highly carbon intensive. To add to that the end products (made of insulating materials like glass wool or rock wool) are non-recyclable and can cause irritability. All too much of a price to pay for silence. Now Aisti is stepping in to change that with their novel acoustic tile—a natural, healthy and environmentally friendly solution for modern construction needs.

Aisti combines wood fiber with a unique manufacturing process to create low density fibreboards without synthetic material. Not only is the result, Aisti® Teno Acoustic tile, all natural and 100% circular but also cost-effective to produce. Simply put, it’s the future of acoustics.

Investors

> Our goal is to rise alongside the world's largest acoustic tile manufacturers by offering sustainable products for the needs of today’s construction

Mikko Paananen
Founder and CEO of Aisti


## Making new standards of construction material

Construction is one of the most environmentally taxing industries—especially in terms of resourcing, manufacturing and disposing materials. It’s in urgent need of both alternative materials and processes that can bring sustainable solutions without compromising the quality. Which are also optimized for industrial scale production at a competitive price point. It just so happens that this challenge is what drives Aisti’s veteran founding team. So they are combining their expertise on bio-based material, fiber-based processes and property design to create novel solutions that are making new standards for construction material.

> Aisti’s technology is ready and scalable quickly. There is a huge potential in carbon-negative and cost-competitive new building materials

Pirkka Palomäki
Partner at Maki.vc

Aisti team

Making: All natural & 100% circular acoustic tiles
Round size: €1.6M
Invested in: 2022

Aisti

Alvar Pet intro image 

## Eco-friendly and personalized dog food, delivered directly to the customer’s door 

The growing pet industry is an area that has not reacted to sustainability challenges that the industry is causing, but Alvar Pet believes owning a dog should not be a choice against the environment. 

Alvar Pet has created a range of zero-emission meals by making sustainable choices in every step of the operational chain. That means choises such as using Nordic ingredients like Baltic herring, faba beans and oats, using recyclable materials, and delivering the food directly to the dog owner's front door. 

Investors 

> Alvar's value-led mission stands out from its competitors. The company's D2C business challenges the traditional, well-known brands and the often locally functioning distributors with its data-driven customer understanding and speed.

Pauliina Martikainen
Investment Director at Maki.vc

Alvar pet image 

## Alvar Pet found an uncatered space in environmentally-conscious pet owners

Being dog owners themselves, the founder group felt that these topics should be addressed and they founded Alvar with the mission to minimise the carbon pawprint. They started addressing the pawprint impact of food consumption that accounts over 50% of the emissions.

They currently offers a range of zero-emission dog foods made of Nordic ingredients such as Baltic herring, oats and faba beans and have delivered over 300,000 meals since their launch in 2020. 

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> As dogs become an increasingly popular and prominent part of our lives, their environmental impact must be addressed

Ilari Haataja 
Co-founder of Alvar Pet 

Making: Sustainable pet food home-delivered
Round size: €1M
Invested in: 2020

Alvar Pet

CarbonCloud hero image

## Building a platform to discover your climate footprint

CarbonCloud makes climate labelling feasible on a global scale and on full portfolio level for the food producers. Without a platform for calculating and sharing of data, the industry cannot work effectively on their climate footprints.

CarbonCloud's web service replaces expensive expert consultants while delivering a superior service. The digital platform lets food producers easily calculate their climate footprint and share their results with business partners and the public. Users become their own experts and identify improvement potentials in their value chains.

> We love investing in teams making products that help make sustainable choices a habit. CarbonCloud’s vision for how to make a change in the food industry is truly unique, putting keys into brands’ and consumers’ hands in ways we&#39;ve never seen before

Pauliina Martikainen 
Investment Director at Maki.vc

Carbon Cloud / Nude picture

## The science behind food and climate change is hard, but the decisions that have to be made to fight it are easy 

Founded in 2016 as a spinout from food and climate research at Chalmers University of Technology. Founded and run by leading researchers on food and climate change who dedicate their lives to provide you with accurate and comprehensible information about the climate impact from your choices. Regardless of whether you are a chef, a restaurant guest, a food producer, or an end consumer. We help you understand and help you learn that making climate-smart choices is easy.

The team behind CarbonCloud combines decades of cutting edge climate impact research with long business executive and entrepreneurship experience. The services are developed and provided using state-of-the-art cloud computing technologies.

> Food and agriculture are globally responsible for almost 25% of the climate problem and end-consumers increasingly realize that they can make a difference by purchasing food products with transparent climate labels

David Bryngelsson
CEO at CarbonCloud

CarbonCloud quote image 

Making: Climate footprint calculation platform
Round size: €600K
Invested in: 2020 

CarbonCloud

Its released intro - image

## Building a subscription-based fashion rental service

It's Re:leased is a subscription-based rental service offering access to premium scandi-fashion. The team wants to replace a broken consumer behaviour with one that provides more value and variation to wardrobes without exhausting neither users or the planets resources. 

By renting the parts of your wardrobe you would otherwise discard within the year, It's Re:leasead increases the number of uses per garment and creates the shift needed both for the retail landscape as well as our planet.

> Technology and new digital-first services reshape the way we live, work and consume brands – and fashion is one of the industries that’s most ripe for change.

Pauliina Martikainen
Investment director at Maki.vc

It's re:leased image 

## When the company launched in 2019, a fashion subscription service was unheard of in the Nordics

There were mainly only big players such as Rent-The-Runway in the US. Since then, the European market has seen a drastic increase in subscription services and consumer demand. It’s Re:Leased has been determined to shift a consumer behaviour, by being data driven and having a clear product focus, which
is why Annie Thorell has built the platform from scratch.

The two founders are now getting ready to grow their business, and attracted some heavy names for their first round. In addition to Maki.vc, they are joined in the round by Haflo - a family fund run by Martin Hauge, former general partner at Swedish VC firm Creandum that’s behind consumer companies like music streaming service Spotify.

> If this industry is going to be able to continue growing and thriving, we need a
new way of consuming fashion. Subscribing to the variation you crave and quality you want is the best
way forward 

Johanna Norrman
Co-founder of It's Re:leased

Making: Subscription-based fashion rental service
Round size: €300K
Invested in: 2020

It's Re:leased

Outshifter

## A single solution for online product data access and distribution

Every eCommerce system manages its product data in a unique way. This gives an unprecedented advantage to sales channels with access to product data. As a result, large international marketplaces like Facebook, Amazon and Zalando dominate the space. Leaving behind a long tail of companies struggling to scale and monetize with eCommerce. Outshifter is leveling the playing field by allowing suppliers to share access to their product data with multiple third parties at the same time, in one universal format.

Outshifter’s single API pulls and standardized product data from suppliers, then sends it to sales channels to customize and share as needed—without interfering with the frontend of either. The result – enabling more online surfaces to use ecommerce as a revenue stream and suppliers to radically scale their online distribution.

> We are excited to back Outshifter and the market making opportunity where smaller e-tailers can cost-effectively tap into new audiences by connecting them in a simple and efficient way with established web destinations, who in turn will get new means to monetize their existing audiences.

Pirkka Palomäki
Partner at Maki.vc

## Here to level the playing field and democratize eCommerce

Now is the perfect time for a solution that can standardize and synchronize product data between eCommerce systems and sales channels. Because, online payments are fast becoming the norm and barriers to setting up shop online are reducing. Meanwhile, consumers are already frequenting online surfaces like socials, apps and websites. Outshifter’s founding team is building on this momentum to lower the threshold for e-tailers to reach more customers through existing online sales channels — through universal product access.

> We believe the lack of a standard for managing product data, limits the ability to distribute it. By making it possible to access and synchronize product data through one universal format, Outshifter aims to create a more level eCommerce playing field.

Danielle Tschudi
CEO of Outshifter

Danielle picture

Making: Single API for product data access & distribution
Round size: €1.2M
Invested in: 2022

Pre-seed

Baseimmune upper image 

## Developing a variant-proof coronavirus vaccine

UK-based Baseimmune is a biotech startup founded to create vaccine that could provide immunity against all future coronaviruses and predict new variants. But how? Pathogens are evolving constantly to adapt and ensure their survival, meaning they are a constantly moving target for vaccines. Baseimmune uses deep learning to predict the direction that a pathogen will take to create vaccines that are many steps ahead and future proof.

Their unique platform is based on powerful technology, which generates antigens using a level of informatics depth not previously seen. This way they're able to tackle emerging and challenging pathogens, and most importantly able to ensure that vaccines remain effective even if a pathogen mutates.

> In January 2020, even when there was just a small amount of data available about the Covid-19 virus, we predicted the key variants that would emerge, like the South African one.

Josh Blight 
Co-founder at Baseimmune

Baseimmune / Wide picture 

## We keep missing the bullseye 

“Pathogens are a bit like dartboards and the vaccine the dart. The problem is that the dartboard keeps moving, sometimes we manage to hit them whilst others we can never hit in time. We are seeing this now with reduced vaccine efficacy against emerging COVID variants.” This is how Baseimmune Co-founder likes to explain the problem their team is tackling.

The founders met while working at the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, where they developed vaccines for a various of diseases. Baseimmune was founded in August 2019 and now manufacturing and testing of an ASFV vaccine is underway. They expect to deliver a vaccine against Africa Swine Fever in few years.

>  We call this vaccines with plasticity. Imagine only needing one flu shot instead of one every year, that's vaccines with plasticity.

Joshua Blight
Co-founder at Baseimmune

Quote image

Making: a variant-proof coronavirus vaccine
Round size: €860K 
Invested in: 2021

Baseimmune

Jennis 

## Building the go-to-app for cycle mapping

Every woman is different and they each go through a unique menstrual cycle. But there’s very little information on how to hack these hormone spikes. That’s why Olympic gold medalist Jessica Ennis-Hill teamed up with veteran sports agent Jane Cowmeadow to share their expertise on how to train, eat and sleep for optimised hormonal health with everyday women -  through an app.

Most training programs are made for the physiology of men and a 24-hour cycle. Jennis CycleMapping is on a mission to change this convention by creating a bespoke fitness programme that puts women in the driving seat of their own cycle.

> Only 6% of sport and exercise science research is done exclusively on women, so there is a huge gender data gap when it comes to knowing about women’s bodies and how to get the most out of them.

Dr Emma Ross
Head of Physiology at Jennis


Middle image Jennis

## A wellbeing plan that truly understands women

Jennis CycleMapping elevates the idea of a basic period tracker to develop training sessions that take into account the unique patterns and symptoms each woman experiences, and personal goals. The results include more efficient strength and fitness gains, a more consistent approach to training, reduced cycle symptoms (including hormonal headaches and hormonal insomnia), greater energy, more lean muscle and a more positive mood and body image across the cycle.


> We can help all women understand their bodies and
hormones in a way we&#39;ve never been taught to before.

Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill
Co-founder of Jennis

Jennis quote

Making: the go-to-app for cycle mapping
Round size: €1.4M
Invested in: 2021

Jennis

Volare 2nd image block 

## The circular approach for producing protein & lipids

Insect proteins can significantly reduce the environmental load of animal feed, pet food and cosmetics industries. With the purest form of circularity, Volare radically reduces the environmental burden of the food chain.

Volare uses food production side streams, such as non-edible parts of grains, to produce high-quality proteins and oils in order to replace other animal proteins, soy and palm oil. 100% new products, 0% new side streams.

> Volare can turn waste streams into valuable proteins without straining the environment, and their team is an excellent combination of research and customer expertise

Paavo Räisänen
Investment Director at Maki.vc


Volare middle picture

## 100% new products, 0% new side streams.

Volare is a spin-off from Finland's VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The founders came together while developing a highly effective process to make black soldier fly farming suitable for industrial scale.

Now this tech serves as a backbone for Volare’s process to utilize food side streams. Today, the team of engineers, agronomists, operators and researchers combine decades of experience in the industry and research - ready to build a truly circular food industry.


> Our production makes use of upcycling, which is circular economy at its purest. The value of the upcycled material grows without any waste.

Matti Tähtinen
Co-founder & CTO at Volare 

Making: Protein & lipids
Round size: €700K
Invested in: 2021

Aisti

Making:

All natural & 100% circular acoustic tiles

Round size: €1.6M

Invested in: 2022

Alvar Pet

Making:

Sustainable pet food home-delivered

Round size: €1M

Invested in: 2020

CarbonCloud

Making:

Climate footprint calculation platform

Round size: €600K

Invested in: 2020

It's Re:leased

Making:

Subscription-based fashion rental service

Round size: €300K

Invested in: 2020

Outshifter

Making:

Single API for product data access & distribution

Round size: €1.2M

Invested in: 2022

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