Mari Luukkainen

Short: Principal at Icebreaker.vc with a portfolio of 100+ startups. Ex-growth operator (3x to €10M+ ARR). Founder of a non-profit creating tech jobs for immigrant women Herizon.io. Investor of the Year in Nordic Women in Tech Awards 2022 and Diversity Role Model of the Year in Nordic Startup Awards 2023.

I am a passionate growth technologist, self-educated and people-focused, with my journey beginning at age 12 when I earned my first affiliate marketing commission from a fan page I created for the game, Fallout 2.

Over the course of my dynamic 20-year professional career, I've been instrumental in driving growth for hundreds of diverse clients, as well as my own initiatives. I spent a decade deeply entrenched in the world of affiliate marketing and then another decade building and developing companies both as an external consultant and an internal strategist within startups and a venture capital firm. I thrive particularly in the exciting early stages of a venture, helping businesses successfully navigate from inception to securing seed or series A funding.

I have found my niche in the fast-paced, constantly evolving universe of global tech startups. Notable collaborations include Freska, Paxful, Yousician, and now, an innovative €140M early-stage VC firm, Icebreaker.vc. Here, I have the privilege of interacting with over 100 early-stage companies based in the Nordics and Baltics.

Simultaneously, I devote time to train immigrant women in growth hacking at my non-profit organization, Herizon.

If you are familiar with the contemporary buzzword 'growth hacking', it's been an integral part of my career since the late 90s, and continues to fuel my passion to this day.

My mission is to use my skills to help startups that actually wish to make things better and be good companies for the people. I believe in Nordic values of work-life balance and equality at work.

What I've done

• Scaled 3 early-stage startups from <1M€ ARR to 10M€ ARR with profitable acquisition.
• Raised funds from €50K angel rounds to €30M in ETH in ICO & seed and A rounds between €1M to €15M.
• Built scalable and profitable go-to-market models for almost every continent.
• Had the uncountable amount of 1on1s with 100+ startup CEOs from companies between 1M€ to 100M€ ARR about growth models implementation.
• Created 1000+ meaningful jobs for people (especially for women, immigrants, and minorities).
• Won the Investor of the year 2022 title in the Nordic Women in Tech Awards.
• Won the Diversity Role Model of the Year 2023 in Nordic Startup Awards 2023.
• Based on Spotify's stats I belong in the top 0.5% of the listeners of the Finnish metal band Beast in Black.

Currently

• I'm Principal in a 140M€ early-stage venture capital firm Icebreaker.vc with 100+ portfolio companies.
• I'm an active keynote speaker in growth, startup and diversity topics.
• I founded a non-profit Herizon.io which has helped to train and employ 100+ immigrant women in tech so far.

I'm the most active on LinkedIn. Other ways to contact me you can find here. To get an alert when I write something new, you can simply subscribe.

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