We back dedication.

We make long-term investments with a hands-off approach in companies run by dedicated founders and entrepreneurs. Investments made possible through our unique and global network.

Our promises to founders.

  • We back you as a founder.

  • We stay hands-off and encourage you to run your business.

  • We are genuinely long-term money; we have no commitments to return the money at any specific time.

  • We are happy to help out if you believe we can; and of course at your initiative.

  • We don’t care if you make mistakes; but we will worry if you don’t care to learn from them.

Our investment strategy.

  • Our global dealflow is primarily based on the outstanding entrepreneurs and investors who are part of our network.

  • We have a broad investment mandate but primarily focus on unlisted growth-stage companies.

  • Our ticket sizes will vary but we aim to be a passive owner in our portfolio companies. 

  • We aspire to have a straightforward and efficient investment process.

To our shareholders.

  • We don’t charge any fees and our running costs will always be held as low as possible.

  • We offer liquidity by being traded on First North (Flat B).

  • We have a high risk-profile. As we want to feel comfortable doing this on behalf of all our shareholders, please be mindful of the risk and size of your investment.

Our Team.

Hanna Andreen

CEO

Hanna Andreen

This is the world's first Flatist - no one has been with us longer than Hanna. After graduating with a degree in Finance & Economics from Cass Business School and a course in international relations at University of St. Andrews, Hanna joined SEB in London. There she worked on Nordic Equity Sales towards British institutions. In 2017 she moved home to Stockholm and joined SEB's Equity Capital Markets department. Since the summer of 2021, she is Flat's anchor in everyday life and our face outward. In addition to the CEO job, Hanna is a board member of Svenska Nyttobostäder.

Board and management
CEOBorn 1989

Antonio Melani

CFO

Antonio Melani

Driven curiosity, professional prowess and a fine-tuned social skill set are the hallmarks of Antonio. His already solid work experience includes investment analyst roles at Nordic private equity firm Areim and fund manager NREP. His academic achievements in fields such as finance and civil engineering include MScs from Stockholm School of Economics and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, as well as BScs from Chalmers Institute of Technology and the University of Gothenburg. He also deserves a Master’s degree in the art of spreadsheets, if you ask us. This hybrid background, combined with an enthusiasm for entrepreneurship and courage to think outside the box truly make Antonio an ideal fit for an agile, lean organization like Flat.

CFOBorn 1995

Our Board.

Charlotte Runius

Board member

Charlotte Runius

With a Master's degree in Industrial Engineering and Management from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Charlotte is an investor who became a striking entrepreneur. After 7 years in the buyout team at the international investment firm 3i Group, Charlotte embarked on a new journey and founded Fenix. When Charlotte's grandmother passed away, she identified a market opportunity in one of the world's oldest industries. Fenix is a fast growing platform for funeral planning, probates and estate administration. In addition to the board assignment in Fenix Begravning, Charlotte is a board member of STILRIDE and a deputy board member of Milkywire AB.

Board and management
Board memberBorn 1982

Amaury de Poret

Executive Board member

Amaury de Poret

With over 15 years of experience in private equity and M&A, Amaury is a Swiss-qualified lawyer with a law degree from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.  Amaury is a co-founder and investment advisor of NAXS AB, listed on Nasdaq Stockholm, and of Enexis AB, an investment company focusing on plant-based medical and wellness investments. Previously, Amaury was part of the management team of Terra Capital Investors Ltd - a private equity fund operating from Washington, D.C. and São Paulo. Outside the financial industry, Amaury co-founded the communications agency Good Enough Media and was for 5 years a board member of the Rainforest Alliance, one of the world's leading environmental organizations (he is now part of the organization's Ambassadors Circle).

Board and management
Executive Board memberBorn 1971

Dr. Marcelo Carvalho de Andrade

Board member

Dr. Marcelo Carvalho de Andrade

We have an Olympic rower on our board! With a medical degree from the Universidade Gama Filho in Rio de Janeiro, Marcelo has focused his career on bridging the gap between economic development and social sustainability. Marcello founded the charity Pro-Natura International, then Terra Capital Investors Ltd, and Earth Capital—the world's largest private equity fund that only focuses on climate and sustainability. He has been responsible for large-scale projects in sustainable development for both global companies and governments and has participated in BHP Billiton's forum for corporate social responsibility, DuPont's World Wide Biotech Panel, and Procter & Gamble's Sustainability Council.

Board and management
Board memberBorn 1958

Sebastian Siemiatkowski

Chairman of the Board

Sebastian Siemiatkowski

Few people have made as many mistakes as this man. Few have also worked as hard to correct them and learn from them. From Burger King, telemarketing, teaching, elder care and not the least Kempinski, to serve the customer is his passion. He finally ended up in the banking world, an industry more obsessed with serving itself than its customers. Through as many mistakes there, he is now 100% focused on trying to course-correct the bank industry, primarily through making as big of a mess in it as they can. Over the years his company, Klarna, has attracted the best and the worst investors, the mistakes and learnings from that, through long conversations with Nina and Amaury led to Flat. 

Board and management

A bedtime story.

Let us tell you a story. 

Some years ago, a young man started a company with two friends. The young man was mainly driven by the excitement of starting a new venture by making online shopping easier. He had no real exit in mind, really he was mostly focused on all the great problems that could be solved for sellers and buyers online. It was his idea but he still believed to share equally with his co-founders, the only thing he did was take the CEO job.

Times were different back then: The internet bubble had burst a few years earlier; the internet stock had gone from hot to cold; the concept of starting a company was geeky and untrendy as most other students dreamt about employment at any of the fancy international banks or consultancy firms. But hope is a waking dream. 

The boys found an angel investor and raised enough money to get started. They also found some tech people that would build the first version of the companies tech. Here however the founder has his first lesson in "long term". As they gave 37% away to the tech people, the 3 co-founders believed the tech guys would stay on and build the business with them. That was not however how the tech guys had perceived it, so after just a few months they completed their job and left. But the co-founders worked on and managed to get the company profitable within the first six months.

But the three young men, quickly felt they wanted other shareholders, shareholders that were backers and believers in the company, and shareholders that could add more value, especially legitimacy as the business was young but handling lots of money. They did not really want to raise money as they already felt diluted enough, but they realised they could help do some secondary, namely getting the tech people to sell to some new investors.

Luckily, they found two very prominent businessmen who had tons of experience and led a notable investment firm. The two businessmen helped buy out former investors and were ready to follow this new company's growth, not asking for the quick buck. But just a few years later, the two prominent businessmen's firms collapsed due to irregularities in another part of their business (we will not bore you with the details), and boom, they were gone. 

Fortunately, the company found another investor. Perhaps the only one that could honestly call itself long-term investors, the guiding star and perhaps the best investor in tech ever. Getting this star investor onboard shielded the company from the two prominent businessmen mentioned earlier, but it didn't shield the company from the two businessmen wanting to sell their stocks. The company's CEO started looking for new investors: Not to raise money for the profitable company but to help sell the shares of these two businessmen, again a secondary trade. And so came onboard some new investors, who also guaranteed a long-term relationship—who later also saw challenges and also wanted to pull out.

The CEO had to put more time into finding new investors, just to facilitate secondaries, and less on actually running the company. Scaling, establishing a great culture, and launching new products and markets were more complicated than expected. The CEO saw lost opportunities and poor customer experiences. He got frustrated with himself: What was he doing wrong? And it didn’t get better.

He had to find new buyers and this time one of the best-known private equity funds wanted to invest. They promised to support him and jointly invest in all the opportunities once the CEO had figured out how to turn investments into growth. They also said they were really long term... Unfortunately, their views on 'risk' were different: While the CEO was eager to take the bold bets and go big on new products and markets, the private equity wanted to reduce spending, improve profitability, and prepare for an IPO.

Thanks to the real long-term quality investor, the CEO was backed in his ambitions. His team and colleagues delivered on the expectations and they became the highest most valuable private tech company in Europe.

The end. Or not yet. We haven’t reached the lesson learned in this story.

What could've been a smooth journey became a long bumpy process. For the first 16 years of the young man's company's existence, he had to spend a disproportionate amount of time raising new financing rounds to help "long-term" shareholders liquidate their positions, creating a massive distraction for himself and his colleagues. Billions of SEK were raised, but only a tiny fraction of that had been allocated to invest in the company's development. 

But sure did all this taught the CEO a lot: 

  • "Long-term" capital is rarely long-term. In the financial world, long-term often means 5-7 years.
  • Investors are rarely anything more than money for the founders. And unfortunately, they often are a distraction and get founders, CEOs and management teams to make the wrong decisions.  
  • Board members' primary and most crucial function is to assess whether the CEO is suitable for the job and doing it properly. Thinking about it, most people feel they have to get involved to justify their "raison d’être", while truly astute investors have learned that being vigilant but not interfering unnecessarily may be the best strategy.

This whole thing puzzled him, and he wanted to learn more. He started to ask, where did the professional investors' money come from? Was it their own money? Well, it turned out their money came from so-called limited partners. Limited partners were just another name for more funds and investors who themselves managed money from other investors and so forth. Until most of the money turned out to initially come from pensions, endowments from universities, and charities. It made him happy when he realized that all the value creation that he and his colleagues had created, would eventually benefit retirees, researchers, and students. Though, he was still disappointed that a lot of money would disappear between the layers and layers of professional investors and their various fees.

On the other hand, there were people out there who were not professional investors. Many of whom were dreaming of the returns on investment that these professional investors were often rewarded with. But they had no way to access it. 

The young man’s story gave us an idea for launching something little different: Not a disruption, just a contrarian thought for the few out there that we thought wanted something a little bit different.

We are Flat.