Finnish growth fund company Voland Partners is making a private equity investment in the Finnish growth company Readpeak. Readpeak is a service platform specialized in native advertising for purchasing ad space, planning, and targeting distribution.
The company currently operates in nine countries in Europe. Readpeak’s revenue has more than tripled in three years. In the financial year ending in June, revenue will already reach 15 million euros.
Readpeak is a rare type of Finnish technology company that has rapidly risen to a leading position with its platform solution, which enables an easy way to target and time communications as part of news feeds on media websites.
“In addition to Finland, we have expanded organically and profitably into eight other countries. The international reception has been excellent. The usability of our platform and the extremely efficient machine learning models we have developed have created an advantage that our global competitors like Google have not been able to close,” says Tomas Forsbäck, CEO and entrepreneur of Readpeak.
The efficiency of the Finnish company’s platform is based on advanced machine learning models. The service ensures that the native advertising article prepared by a company is targeted to the right websites and audience. At the same time, the platform ensures that the ad article visually matches each website’s style and blends seamlessly into the site's news feed.
“Our advantage truly became clear to us only a couple of years ago, when we launched the service in Sweden. At that time, we realized that we might have actually over-polished our product before the launch. Less would have been enough.”
“Since Sweden, market after market has proven how much of a lead we have managed to build – not just in terms of technology, but also in terms of user experience,” Forsbäck explains.
Readpeak is the sixth investment target for Voland Partners, which invests from its first 57-million-euro growth fund. Voland invests minority stakes in profitable technology companies with growing businesses. A typical initial investment is 3–5 million euros.
“Readpeak has the qualities we look for in companies: technology-based competitive advantage and capable, growth-oriented people who are enjoyable to work with. Co-entrepreneurship often means offering the expertise of specialists in our networks, mentoring entrepreneurs and work communities along their growth paths, and developing strategy and board work,” says Marcus Blomqvist, Partner at Voland Partners.
In the investment model based on co-entrepreneurship, the Voland Partners team, as a minority stakeholder, supports and renews the company’s decision-making and structures and integrates the company into its networks. The funding also ensures that companies have the ability to sufficiently invest in technology, product, and service development.
“Discussions with Voland’s team made it clear what kinds of changes are essential as we prepare to open up even larger markets,” says Forsbäck.
“When the model for implementing change is clear, it is possible to maintain growth momentum and open multiple markets simultaneously while also carrying out reforms related to ownership, organizational structure, board work, and decision-making.”
Contact Information:
Marcus Blomqvist
Partner, Voland Partners
+358 50 581 0980
marcus.blomqvist@voland.fi
Tomas Forsbäck
CEO & Founder, Readpeak
+358 50 575 2083
tomas.forsback@readpeak.com
Readpeak founded in 2014 in Helsinki, first expanded into the Nordics and has since entered nine different markets, collaborating with over 1,000 publishers. Readpeak is redefining content-driven advertising, enabling brands to build a stronger connection with their audience while creating added value for both quality media and journalism. The company’s mission is to provide a premium-level digital self-service platform for programmatic native advertising, easily accessible to brands and agencies. www.readpeak.com