As part of our spotlight on angel success stories from the EBAN network, we’re sitting down with Janne Jormalainen—long-time angel investor and President Emeritus of EBAN—to talk about two remarkable exits he was involved in. One is Whiteboard, an edtech startup that skyrocketed from 300K to 8 million users and exited in just 104 days. The other is Loupedeck, a hardware startup journey that spanned seven years and ended with an acquisition by Logitech. Each one tells a very different story about what success can look like—and the role angel investors play in making it happen.

• Let’s begin with Whiteboard—an edtech company that developed a virtual whiteboard tool for schools and grew to millions of users almost overnight. Can you tell us how you got involved, what the situation looked like at the time, and how that investment turned into one of the fastest exits in Finnish startup history?

My fellow angel, Reima Linnanvirta, heard the company pitch in one small pitching event. They were experiencing high growth in user numbers. The project had started a few years earlier as a pro-bono project of a school teacher. He developed this service for his students and other teachers to use. However, during the corona times, the service usage started to take off. The founder could not keep up with the server costs as the service started to take off and was looking for investors. Reima sent the deck to me as I was actively looking for edtech investments. What caught my eye was the growth the service was experiencing. However, the company did not have a monetization plan or many other plans either.

• The company didn’t have a monetisation plan yet when you invested, and the team was struggling to keep up with server costs. What gave you the confidence to jump in at that moment—and how was that handled between investment and exit?

My investment criteria is really simple: team, traction, and realistic plans. Traction was the main reason for investing. The company was experiencing strong growth, meaning that there was strong evidence of demand for the service. The team of two founders was suitable for the business, and the founders were willing to accept strong guidance from us angels. Plans were not really there, but before investing, us investors and the founders created the strategy on how to take the business forward, for example, how to monetize the service. In other words there was close co-operation between the founders and us investors already before the investment, and that obviously built confidence that we can make things work after investment too. After the investment things developed really fast, and we had to do many revisions to the plans. For example, we had to try out three monetization ideas before we got it right. When we got it right, the company revenue jumped from 0€/month to over 100 t€/ month in 30 days, and user growth just accelerated.

• On the other end of the spectrum, there’s Loupedeck —a very high-tech hardware company focused on controllers for video and photo editing. You were involved from the very beginning and became Chairman of the Board. Could you walk us through that journey, from the early days to the eventual exit to Logitech?

I met the founder of Loupedeck, Mikko Kesti, through common friends. The first pitch deck had probably three slides. It was very early days, and I thought that this was way too early for investment. I have a background in the hardware business, so I knew that this was not an easy business to be in, but I did like the idea he was developing. It was solving a real problem. However, there was no traction nor a proper team, or good plans. When I told Mikko that I would need to see those three things to make an investment, he was ready to act. He already had one co-founder in mind as CMO and he started to recruit a CTO. At the same time, he started a product pre-sales campaign at Indiegogo and developed plans for making this a global venture. It was amazing how fast things developed. I was very impressed by how things came together. I was the first investor, and we made the first investment round happen in a quick manner with Mikko. I became chairman of the board, and we raised several finance rounds with VCs from all over the world. Eventually, the company became the global leader in its niche, and sales were pretty equally divided between the US, Europe, and Asia. 

• With Loupedeck, the traction looked very different—no product yet, but a pre-sales campaign that massively exceeded expectations. What did that signal to you as an investor, and how did it shape your early involvement?

I was really impressed by how fast Mikko acted on the things I considered important for making the investment. The Indiegogo pre-sales campaign was a huge success. The target was for 75 t€ of sales, and it ended with more than 300 t€ of sales. There was clear evidence of traction and evidence that this product will solve a real problem in the market. I was also impressed with Mikko’s thinking on finding suitable co-founder team members. He put together a team that was diverse, international, and very knowledgeable in the different aspects of the business. Mikko, as CEO, was willing to learn, ask for help, and surround himself with very talented people. It is an easy decision to invest when you can see the founders acting so fast and professionally.

• You’ve often said you invest in teams first. What stood out about the founders of these two companies—and how did their leadership shape the outcomes?

I put a lot of emphasis on founding teams. Typically, start-up journeys are long and quite full of sharp turns or pivots. If the founding team is quick to act, professional, and has the attitude of never giving up, it will make a company succeed. In Whiteboard and Loupedeck, the founders came from very different backgrounds, and the companies started with totally different ideas; as a pro-bono project and as an idea of creating a global category leader. What was common was the desire to solve a real world problem, which both founders had experienced themselves. Whiteboard founder professionally and Loupedeck founder as a hobbyist. The founders had a desire to act fast, learn, and work closely with angel investors.

• Looking at these exits side-by-side—one lightning-fast and the other long and winding—what do they tell us about the range of successful angel journeys? And how do you personally define a “successful” exit?

In my opinion, a successful angel journey is a story of solving a real world problem as a team of investors and founders. Sometimes it takes a long time to achieve this, and sometimes it is a learning opportunity when things go wrong. Of course financial return is important for everybody as well. From a financial return point of view, it is important that the founders earn good money for their tough work then which usually means angels make good returns as well. Hopefully, it all ends with a nice exit dinner celebrated by investors and founders together. Sometimes, the same people will also continue to work together in a new venture. This is, for example, the case for Loupedeck founder and me. I am now an investor in a software company that he co-founded!

• There’s a lot of focus on returns in angel investing, but you’ve pointed out that we often lose sight of the theory and mechanics behind exits. What would you say is most often misunderstood or overlooked by early-stage investors when it comes to exits?

Angel investing is not a sprint, it is a marathon. The financial returns can be great and will be great if angel investing is done professionally and with a large enough portfolio. However, even if it takes long to exit an angel investment, angels must focus on the end goal, the exit from the beginning. I met the eventual buyer of Loupedeck, one year after the investment and six years before the exit, for the first time. Planning for the exit makes the goal achievable at the end.