Yes, We Have Changed Our Name to Standout

We have changed our name to Standout Capital, and just wanted to write a short blog post to explain why, in case anyone is wondering.

When we took the first steps over a year ago to start a new Nordic technology fund, we thought that Standard Ventures was a pretty catchy name. It reflected a few key ideas: We wanted to streamline processes and make them more standardised; for example getting in touch with us online, submitting information through simple forms and making the transaction process itself more efficient not to waste anybody’s time. We wanted to set a new standard for investing, making it more data-driven and technology-based. In short, to be a technology investor you have to be a tech company yourself, we reasoned. All this is still true for our company.

Now we have changed the name to Standout Capital. Why?

First, we have a Growth Capital strategy. We strongly believe there is a need in the Nordic market for local growth capital and know-how to scale exciting and growing tech companies further. The ecosystem is well functioning at venture and buyout levels, while growth capital is under-represented.

Second, we are a data-driven company, which means that we use technology and data to run our business and make investments. At about the same time we started the company, we started to develop our own platform, called “Standout”. The idea is that the system will help us to keep track of the companies, people, products and potential investments we’re looking at to find what “stands out”. We thought that Standout is also a great name for the whole business. We want to invest in standout companies and teams.

Finally, although we like the old-fashioned, somewhat dry word Standard (but with a fresh meaning as in “new standard” and innovative processes), we sometimes heard comments that standard also evokes feelings of the average, plain vanilla, no-frills, boring alternative (as in “we got a standard room at the hotel”). Although we don’t worry too much about what others might think, we agree thatstandard does not really capture the spirit of our company. Furthermore, we don’t want to confuse anybody that we are affiliated with financial institutions such as Standard Chartered and Standard & Poors.

We are now scanning the Nordic market for companies, teams and growth that stand out (in terms of team, growth, technology, traction and other metrics) and we think that our name reflects our focus. We are not looking for standard companies with standard teams and standard growth. We think Standout is the positive opposite of Standard.

So here we go. Welcome to Standout.

Originally published on Standout Capital.