The new board members were selected during the FiBAN Angel Day at KPMG on the 19th of November 2019. These seven business angels will bring their extensive know-how to the FiBAN Board 2020:
- Noora Fagerström
- Saga Forss
- Reima Linnanvirta
- Annukka Mickelsson
- Esa Mäkeläinen
- Tuomas Pahlman
- Teemu Varpanen
FiBAN’s new board is more diverse than ever before. With 43% there are a record-number of female board members, as well as a record spread of different ages. The new board consists of both members who have done successful angel investments for decades as well as young, successful entrepreneurs who have quite recently become business angels. In addition, the board members have exceptionally wide backgrounds and experiences from varying industries.
Amel Gaily, FiBAN’s Managing Director, is delighted: “We are incredibly excited and honored to have such a knowledgeable and active board developing FiBAN. With our board members different backgrounds they bring complementary know-how and strengths to the table. Next year our focus will be on increasing the level of professionalism and quality in our services. It will also be a year of celebration, and the year will culminate in a FiBAN 10 year Gala in December 2020.”
Get to know the FiBAN board of 2020
Noora Fagerström
Noora is the co-founder and CEO of Jungle Juice. She has been awarded the Veuve Clicquot New Generation award, which is for successful women leaders. She was also the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2017 finalist. Noora has been a business angel and FiBAN member for quite some time already, and now she took on the role of being in FiBAN member. Her motto is “if you dont take risks, you wont achieve anything”.
Saga Forss
Saga has an extensive background in Corporate Finance (M&A) both domestically and internationally. She has a broad network in Europe, and especially in the Nordics. During the past 10 years she has been both entrepreneur and investor with focus on the food sector. Said that, she has made angel investments in technology, education and med-tech where she considers impact an important investment criteria. Currently she is an investor in 11 companies, such as Soup&More Oy, Jävla Sås Bolag as well as New Nordic School, Future Dialog and Combonostics Oy. She has successfully exited Leipomo Keisari, Jungle Juice Bar (partly) and Talokaivo Oy.
Reima Linnanvirta
Reima is an angel investor and board professional with a passion on helping startups and growth companies to fulfill their true potential. Previous career in consulting, relating to e.g. tranasctions, financing and law; both as a professional in a multinational consultancy and as a founder of a boutique advisory firm.
Annukka Mickelsson
Annukka became a member of FiBAN a few years ago for a keen interest in ecosystem building and combining both brain power and financial investment in early stage companies. Her investments include Saas and data analytics companies. She would also love to see more scaling ideas in other industries. Annukka’s background is in banking and lobbying, and she has worked both Finland and UK. She has long experience in team leading, coaching and board work.
Esa Mäkeläinen
Esa is a former investment banker and current software entrepreneur since 2000. His software company, Valuatum, focuses on financial analysis software (equity research and creding rating/scoring models) for different financial institutions. Esa/Valuatum Oy has done startup investments since 2011 and focuses mainly on software companies operating with same SaaS-model as Valuatum or disrupting businesses in fintech, energy, cleantech or bioeconomy sectors. Currently Esa has investments in about 15 companies (mainly B2B SaaS) including e.g. Enevo, Thirdpresence, OGOShip and Liid. Esa has been in FiBAN board since 2017, and he wants to continue developing Fiban Follow, improving screening and other internal processes, and measuring profitability and effectiveness of FiBAN investments with aggregate numbers
Tuomas Pahlman
Tuomas worked for ten years in two co-founded startups. Both were sold to Public listed industrial buyers and after the second exit, he was teased to experience the fame and pain of corporate life and served a couple of years as a Global Head of Digital Development at Sealed Air Corporation. Now Tuomas is getting back to the scene as an angel investor, focusing on software, analytics, and sensor companies, but even more, he wants to actively mentor founder teams through pain and confusion of the early days
Teemu Varpanen
Teemu Varpanen is a software industry expert with 25 years of experience in both small and corporate sized businesses. His investment focus is mainly on very early stage B2B SaaS companies with an idea, passion and good team chemistry. Currently, Teemu has a dozen startup investments in his portfolio. He is actively building bridges between people, teams and ecosystems.
Congratulations to the new FiBAN Board 2020!