The EUVC Firm of the Year award looks beyond returns to how a firm performs across its portfolio, founders, LPs and the wider venture ecosystem.
Creandum received the 2025 award in the €200 million+ category, with Staffan Helgesson, Partner and Founder, accepting on the firm’s behalf before joining a conversation at the EUVC Summit & Awards Show 2026.
More than two decades in European venture
Staffan founded Creandum in 2003 after previously starting a venture firm focused on mobile internet. Creandum began with a €30 million fund backed by two LPs, at a time when Europe’s venture ecosystem was still small and far from established.
Today, he works across the firm and with portfolio companies. His investing has focused largely on SaaS, while he also leads Creandum’s climate practice with a particular focus on electrification.
Through that growth, Creandum has remained focused on early-stage technology investing rather than moving progressively later simply to deploy larger funds.
Venture as a team sport
Staffan describes venture as a team sport, with Creandum’s equal partnership model central to how the firm operates.
He connects that structure to a simple belief: the people a firm hires ultimately determine the organisation it becomes. The aim is to build a team capable of competing for the strongest companies across successive investment cycles.
Staying focused as the market grows
The conversation also turns to fund size and what Staffan calls “VC inflation”.
His point is not that funds should keep getting larger. Rather, firms need to account for changing valuations and markets without losing the strategy that gives them early access and meaningful ownership.
Staffan argues that venture returns are concentrated in a small number of companies each year. For early-stage investors, the challenge is to build a strategy that gives them a realistic chance of backing those companies early.
Companies before investors
On European venture more broadly, Staffan puts the emphasis on the companies being built.
As he says in the discussion, “the investors are not the starting point. The companies is the starting points.” For him, stronger European venture ultimately starts with more strong technology companies emerging across the continent.
The same thinking shapes his view of LP capital: liquidity matters, but long-term institutional confidence ultimately depends on performance.
The price always increases
Staffan returns to a phrase Creandum has adopted: “the price always increases”.
His point is that what worked last year will not be enough next year, whether that means winning deals, recruiting talent or running the firm itself. As AI changes both company building and venture, he sees that pressure to improve only increasing.
