Aleksi Partanen

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“The majority of our community’s pre-founders are working long hours at their current jobs,” says Aleksi Partanen, also a co-founder and Partner at Icebreaker. “Once they have the idea and at least part of the team in place our investment enables them to start developing their startup full-time while they are able to pay their bills as well. The support does not end after the investment but the teams can accelerate their development through our community”. [...] “We also put our experience and contacts in play to get them on a solid path towards their Series A. The support together with our investment increases their chances of success and in turn we get great results,” adds Partanen. Topics Steve O'Hear Writer Steve O’Hear was best known as a technology journalist at TechCrunch, where he focused on European startups, companies and products. He first joined TechCrunch in November 2009 as a contributing editor for TechCrunch Europe, where he worked alongside longtime TC veteran Mike Butcher to help build TechCrunch’s coverage in Europe. [...] Icebreaker, a new €14 million VC fund based in Helsinki, is de-cloaking today with a remit to back early-stage startups and what it calls “pre-founders”. The latter are described as people with successful five-plus year careers who are working on an idea for a startup but, due to a lack of financial support or a suitable co-founder, have yet to quit their day job and make the switch to startup life. “We noticed that there are a lot