Dear friends, dear A&D family,
We are very grateful for 2015. It was a year of soul searching and action. Spurred by our co-investors, we started the year by defining who we are as individuals, what we want to do together as a team and why we do it. After intense thinking and many walk and talk discussions, the result was not surprising:
— We want to be an integral part of helping young companies succeed with exponential growth.
— We do it to have fun, to bring meaning to our lives and to make a decent return.
In the end it was and is no more complicated than that.
These simple objectives guide us in every decision we make. And we’ve had to make a lot of them this year. With the market (and world) around us in roller coaster mode, we’ve had to turn down many opportunities, both to make investments and divestments. Time will tell if those decisions were the right ones. We also decided to do our first investment in more than a year, joining the Acast team. In a world changing faster than ever before, we believe Acast will be instrumental in designing the ecosystem on the internet for something truly timeless — carrying the spoken word.
An easy decision this year was to bring on board Ken onto the A&D team. Ken is now our trusted CFO and, with his Finnish style, has brought new dimensions to our team. Ken, we are so glad to have you.
When we started investing in early 2010, we felt pretty lonely on the market. Not a lot of people wanted to invest in startups. Now that has changed. As we turn to 2016, we are determined to continue the work that we started. Our aim is to find entrepreneurs who like what we do and who feel that we can add value to their businesses.
But before we turn to 2016 let us take this opportunity to thank the people that matter so much to us: We want to thank all of you who work in our investee companies. We hope that you find your work as fun and rewarding as we do at A&D. We are a startup just like you and we hope that we can continue learning, together. We want to thank all partners and customers of our investee companies. Together, we can make a difference. Finally we want to thank our co-investors. We are forever grateful for your trust and support.
This year we would be thrilled if you would join us in contributing to Lilla barnets fond, a charity supporting research on newborn infants, the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR and the Swedish foundation for Nature Conservation.
With seasons greetings and hope for a 2016 filled with action, Your A&D Team
