Askel Ventures 🦔
Helsinki
Meeting
Partner session — June 2026
Present: Varia Wahlroos-Kaitila · Niklas Slotte · Mike Solomon · Mikael Ylinen
Agenda: Cases · Platform · Capital Model · Sweden & Venture Partner Role
Session Overview
Today's agenda
Morning · 11:00–13:00
11:15 – 12:15
Act I · Case Learnings
- Melers Oy — rationale, financials, valuation
- Post-acquisition development & lessons learned
- Auran Pesupojat — the add-on thesis
12:15 – 13:00
Act II · Askel as a Platform
- Founding team & roles
- Steve — AI sourcing engine
- DD & IC process · Holdings & cap table
Afternoon · 14:00–16:00
14:00 – 14:50
Act III · Capital Model
- Seven-year plan & acquisition pace
- Financing model · Target returns
- Key assumptions
15:05 – 16:00
Act IV · Sweden & VP Role
- Swedish market opportunity
- Role, time commitment & IC involvement
- Economics, governance & next steps
🌿 Terrace & informal close · 16:00
I
Act I · 45 min
Case learnings &
acquisition pattern
Melers Oy as the core case — financials, acquisition rationale, valuation logic, post-acquisition development, and lessons learned so far. Auran Pesupojat as an add-on case — the Melers plug-in logic, transition plan, integration assumptions, and upside.
Act I · Case Learnings
The Askel acquisition pattern
In this section
Here's the model behind every deal we do.
→
Playbook
Systems · AI · Commercial
→
→
→
Redeploy
Fund next acquisition
- We target boring, cash-generative essential services — laundry, cleaning, waste, B2B trades — facing founder succession
- Entry criteria: revenue €400K–1.5M, EBITDA €100K+, asking price max €1M
- Debt + equity structure per deal — bank leverages the acquisition, portfolio cash flows service the debt
- Value creation has three levers: de-risk the operation, grow the business, let the market reprice both
- Every acquisition sharpens the pattern. Melers is Case 1. Auran is Case 2.
Act I · Melers Oy
Melers Oy — why we bought it
In this section
Why we bought Melers, what we paid, and how we structured the deal.
€500K
Revenue at acquisition
€100K
Corrected EBITDA (20% margin)
€400K
Total consideration
4×
Entry multiple (EBITDA)
- Sector: laundry and cleaning services, Turku, Finland — essential, recurring, low disruption risk
- Owner-led business, founder at exit age — classic succession signal
- 500+ customers — B2B and B2C mix; elderly care and hotels are the largest segments
- Customer base well-distributed: top 10 customers spread such that losing three largest still leaves the business profitable
- Cash-generative, no external debt — but entirely paper-based operations with no succession plan
- Financing: €72K founders equity · €228K Osuuspankki (Finnvera 70% guarantee) · €100K seller financing · €50K credit facility (tililuotto)
Act I · Melers Oy
Melers at acquisition
In this section
What the business looked like when we took it over.
- Operations entirely paper-based — booking, scheduling, invoicing all manual
- Owner-dependent: customer relationships, institutional knowledge, all routines lived in the founder's head
- No CRM, no brand system, no documented processes
- Revenue: [€X/year], margin: [X%] Fill
- Key risks identified at DD: [customer concentration, equipment age, staff retention] Fill
What the bank required
- EBITDA covenants reported annually — failure triggers rate increase
- Default repayment term offered: 5 years — we pushed to 7
- Personal guarantees: [X] Fill
- Debt service coverage ratio: [X×] Fill
Act I · Melers Oy
Melers — post-acquisition & development
In this section
What we've built since day one — and where things stand now.
What we built
- Booking system rebuilt on modern stack (Cloudflare Workers + D1 + Google Calendar + Resend)
- Full brand refresh — Melers.fi, brand kit, vehicle branding, print materials
- New operator recruited — owner-led → professionally-led management
- ConnectTeam installed — staff scheduling, task tracking, hourly work logging, team communication
- Video SOPs created — every founder routine documented on camera before handover
- Marketing: SMS campaigns, virtual assistant for sales meeting booking, Wix CRM
Where we are now
- Revenue -10–20% YoY — recovery is the active workstream
- EBITDA: [€X current] Fill
- Recovery levers in play: outbound SMS, VA booking, commercial development
- Operations no longer owner-dependent — the core transition is complete
Act I · Lessons
What Melers taught us
In this section
What Melers taught us. Things we do differently now.
Month 1–6 playbook
- Don't break it. First six months = continuity, not growth. Revenue same as previous year is success.
- Knowledge transfer takes the full six months. Founders hold everything in their heads — plan for it, not around it.
- Hiring key roles takes 2 months. Account for the gap — don't assume someone is in place before they are.
- Onboarding starts one week before the operator arrives. Video training library and first ConnectTeam tasks must be ready before day 1.
- No Growth Zone. If the business is seasonal, schedule the Wannado & Upwork growth push for the right season — don't force it.
Before & at close
- Document workflows before closing. Founders don't know when they "task switch" — it's all a blur. Video every routine.
- Accounting firm lock-in is real. They pick the software (even bad ones), and switching is painful. Negotiate this upfront.
- Banks default to 5-year repayment — push hard for 7. It's on the table.
- Operators need TES knowledge, management skills, and project management fluency — not just energy. Vet for this.
- CRM doesn't integrate with accounting software cleanly. Choose the stack together before closing.
Act I · Auran Pesupojat
Auran Pesupojat — the add-on thesis
In this section
Our second deal — why it fits alongside Melers.
- Sector: [cleaning/laundry, location] Fill
- Revenue: [€X], acquisition price: [€X] Fill
- Entry multiple: [X×] EBITDA Fill
- Financing: [structure] Fill
The Melers Plug-In Logic
- [Shared operations] — what overlaps Fill
- [Geographic logic] — route efficiency, density Fill
- [Customer crossover] — B2B / B2C mix Fill
- Transition plan: [X months, key milestones] Fill
- Combined EBITDA upside: [€X] Fill
- Integration assumption: [what needs to be true for plug-in to work] Fill
Act I · Pattern
What the two cases tell us
In this section
What we've learned from both deals — and what we look for next.
€250k
Entry EBITDA (typical)
€1.5M
Target EBITDA at exit
- Succession risk = motivated seller = fair price. We are not competing with PE funds for this deal flow.
- Essential services = resilient demand. These businesses don't disappear in a downturn.
- Digitalization upside is structural. Paper operations → modern stack = operational leverage, not just efficiency.
- Geographic density matters. Add-on deals in the same city create shared ops, route efficiency, and brand scale.
II
Act II · 30 min
Askel as
a platform
What sits inside Askel Ventures Oy today — Steve and the sourcing logic, the DD and IC processes, the partner network, the founding team, the acquisition playbook, current cap table and shareholder structure, and how portfolio companies are held.
Act II · Platform
The founding team
In this section
Who we are and what we each bring.
Varia Wahlroos-Kaitila
CEO · Acquisition & Commercial
Founded 5 companies across agency, SaaS, and venture-backed startups. Built a marketing business from 0 to €2M ARR. Sold a company. Led negotiations with banks and institutional partners for the first acquisition.
Niklas Slotte
CRO · Deal Execution & Revenue
Serial entrepreneur. Scaled an international company to €8M ARR. Sharp commercial judgment, team leadership, and hands-on ownership during roll-up execution.
Mikael Ylinen
Board · Operations & Industrial
Entrepreneur and long-term board operator. Broad end-to-end business understanding. Practical experience in production environments, hardware, and operational realities that determine whether acquisitions hold together.
Mike Solomon
CTO · AI Systems & Leverage
PhD Mathematics, Stanford graduate. Full-stack AI systems builder. Develops internal software and AI agents that increase sourcing capacity, accelerate diligence, and create operating leverage across the portfolio.
Act II · Platform
Steve 🦔 — the sourcing engine
In this section
How we find deals — our AI sourcing engine, Steve.
- Steve is Askel's proprietary AI agent — monitors listings, job ads, owner interviews, trade press for succession signals
- Three active sourcing hypotheses:
- H1 — Finnish broker listings (yrityskaupat.net weekly sweep, thesis-scored)
- H2 — Nordic broker listings (bolagsplatsen.se, covers Finland + Sweden)
- H3 — Finder.fi weak signals (owner age 55+, declining revenue, stale web presence)
How a lead becomes a Trello card
- Signal detected → scored against thesis criteria
- Revenue ✓ · EBITDA ✓ · Age ✓ · Geography ✓
- Passes → card created from template, posted to #prospecting
- Partners review → screening lenses applied
- Survives → outreach initiated by Niklas
- This is operational IP — not a spreadsheet or a manual broker relationship. It scales without headcount.
Act II · Platform
DD & IC process
In this section
How we evaluate a company before buying it.
→
Sourcing
Signal + outreach
→
→
→
Screening — 4 lenses
- Financials — revenue quality, margin, debt
- Operations — systems, staff, dependencies
- Owner — motivation, knowledge transfer, psychology
- Market — demand resilience, competition, moat
IC — kill questions
- Can we run this without the founder in 90 days?
- Does the debt service work at current EBITDA?
- Is the customer base defensible?
- Would we do this deal at 1.5× the ask?
Act II · Platform
Structure & holdings
In this section
How Askel Ventures is structured and how we hold companies.
Legal Structure
- Askel Ventures Oy = HoldCo (TopCo)
- Portfolio companies held as wholly-owned subsidiaries
- Management fee / group contribution mechanism for cash upstream
- Registered address: Telekatu 6, 20360 Turku
Balance Sheet Today
- Equity: [€X] Fill
- Liabilities: [€X] Fill
- Portfolio NAV (mark-to-market): [€X] Fill
How future acquisitions slot in
- Each acquired company becomes a new subsidiary of Askel Ventures Oy
- Deal-level debt sits at OpCo — not consolidated at HoldCo for banking purposes
- OpCo free cash flows are upstreamed via group contribution (Finnish tax mechanism) or management fee
- Investors hold equity at HoldCo level — exposure to full portfolio, not individual deals
Act II · Platform
Cap table & current raise
In this section
Who owns what today and what we're raising.
Current Shareholders
- Varia Wahlroos-Kaitila: [X%] Fill
- Niklas Slotte: [X%] Fill
- Mike Solomon: [X%] Fill
- Mikael Ylinen: [X%] Fill
- Other investors: [X%] Fill
The Current Raise
- Raising up to €1M via private placement
- Ordinary shares — same class as founders. No preference stack.
- Minimum ticket: €100,000
- Closing on a rolling basis
- Use of funds: next 5 acquisitions — to reach compounding scale
- Investors win when founders win. No separate economics.
III
Act III · 30 min
Capital model &
compounding logic
The seven-year plan, acquisition pace, financing assumptions, equity/debt structure, target returns, reinvestment logic, and the key assumptions that need to hold for the model to work.
Act III · Capital Model
The seven-year plan
In this section
The plan — how many companies, over how long, and what it builds toward.
[X] Fill
Acquisitions target (7 yr)
€23.6M
Illustrative terminal value
25.1×
Illustrative equity multiple
Yr 3
First portfolio exits
- Years 1–2: establish the engine — [X] acquisitions, playbook refined, team in place
- Years 3–4: compounding begins — first exits generate cash, reinvested into next acquisitions
- Years 5–7: self-funding flywheel — portfolio cash flows + exit proceeds fund growth without further equity raises
- Finland first, then Nordic scale — Sweden entry planned for [year X] Fill
Act III · Capital Model
Financing model — per deal & portfolio
In this section
How we finance each deal and how cash flows through the portfolio.
Per-Deal Structure
- Average acquisition price: €[X] Fill
- Equity contribution: [X%] from HoldCo
- Bank debt: [X%] at OpCo level
- Interest rate: [X%], term: [X] years
- EBITDA margin assumption: [X%]
- EBITDA growth: 10–20%/year
Portfolio Cash Flow Mechanics
- Each OpCo services its own debt from operating cash flow
- Surplus cash upstreamed to HoldCo via group contribution (Finnish tax-efficient mechanism)
- HoldCo pools cash for the next equity tranche or distributes to shareholders
- Transaction costs budgeted at [X%] per deal
- Capital gains tax applied on exit proceeds above acquisition basis
Act III · Capital Model
Target returns
In this section
What the numbers look like — for Askel and for investors.
25.1×
HoldCo equity multiple (illus.)
5.02×
Investor MOIC (€1M · 20%)
26.1%
Investor IRR (illus.)
- Value creation is not a single bet — EBITDA growth + multiple expansion work in parallel across each company
- EBITDA: €250K → €1.5M over 5 years — operational improvement, commercial development, AI layer
- Multiple: 3–4× → 6–8× — de-risked ops + professional management repriced by market
- Portfolio exits generate holdco liquidity from year 3 — secondary transfer available with ROFR
Act III · Capital Model
Key model assumptions
In this section
What needs to be true for this to work — and where the risks are.
- Acquisition pace: [X deals/year] at thesis-criteria companies — requires consistent deal flow and operational capacity to execute Fill
- EBITDA growth: 10–20%/year sustained — requires successful operator placement and commercial development in each portfolio company
- Exit multiples hold: buyers continue to pay 6–8× — depends on continued interest from passive investors and strategic acquirers in Nordic SMEs
- Bank debt availability: lenders remain willing to finance acquisitions at similar terms — relationship-dependent, covenant-sensitive
- Team capacity scales: each new acquisition requires an operator — finding and retaining good operators is the hardest constraint
- Group contribution mechanism remains viable: Finnish tax law assumption — verify with advisors on a per-deal basis
IV
Act IV · 30 min
Sweden entry model
& Venture Partner role
The Swedish opportunity, broker network, deal sourcing and structuring, IC involvement, deal champion responsibilities, expected time commitment, conflict carve-outs, governance rights, and how the role, investment, and ownership structure would fit together.
Act IV · Sweden
Swedish market opportunity
In this section
Why Sweden is next — and what we already see in the market.
- Same structural dynamic as Finland — large wave of founder-owned SMEs approaching succession
- Swedish deal sizes often larger than Finnish equivalents — broader addressable universe
- Broker landscape: bolagsplatsen.se — Askel already scanning weekly (H2 hypothesis)
- Sectors: cleaning, laundry, maintenance, waste, trades — same playbook applies
- Micro-PE in Sweden is nascent — less competition than Finland at our deal size
What Steve already sees in Sweden
- H2 cron scans bolagsplatsen.se weekly — covers Finnish and Swedish listings
- Swedish listings: [~X companies] currently in scope Fill
- Sectors with highest hit rate: [X, Y, Z] Fill
- Most promising live leads: [describe 1–2] Fill
- Gap: local broker relationships and deal champion — that's the unlock a VP provides
Act IV · VP Role
The Venture Partner role — what it looks like
In this section
What the Venture Partner role actually means in practice.
Responsibilities
- Deal sourcing — build and maintain broker and owner relationships in Sweden
- Deal champion — lead from first contact through LOI on Swedish acquisitions
- IC involvement — full participation in investment committee for Swedish deals
- Post-acquisition — [support during transition period or ongoing?] Fill
Time & Support
- Expected time: [X hours/week baseline, more during active deal] Fill
- Askel provides: Steve sourcing, DD support, legal templates, playbook
- VP provides: local presence, Swedish network, deal judgment
- Conflict carve-outs: [specific carve-outs] Fill
- Non-compete scope: [define] Fill
Act IV · VP Role
Economics & governance
In this section
The terms — investment, ownership, and governance.
Investment & Ownership
- Investment: [€X] into Askel Ventures Oy Fill
- Resulting ownership: [X%] of HoldCo Fill
- Share class: ordinary shares — same as founders
- No preference, no ratchet, no separate class
Carry / Bonus
- [Deal-level carry on Swedish acquisitions?] Fill
- [Origination fee per deal?] Fill
- [Other incentive structure?] Fill
Governance
- Board seat: [yes / observer / no] Fill
- Voting rights: [describe] Fill
- Information rights: quarterly financials + board materials
- Liquidity: exits from year 3 — secondary transfer with ROFR
- Strategic acquisition of HoldCo provides full exit for all shareholders
Act IV · Next Steps
Next steps
In this section
What happens after this meeting.
Immediate (this week)
- Share any outstanding financials or cap table documentation Fill · Owner
- Investor confirmed intent / term sheet discussion Fill · Owner
- [Other] Fill
Near-term (next 30 days)
- Shareholder agreement drafted and reviewed
- VP role formalized in writing
- First Swedish sourcing sprint with VP
Open questions to resolve before close
- What decision do you need to make today?
- What information is missing before you can decide?
- Is there a timeline pressure on your side?
- What does success look like for you in year 1 as VP?
Askel Ventures · Helsinki · June 2026
Acquiring boring
businesses.
Building compounding value.
Micro private equity · Nordic small business acquisitions
varia@askelventures.com · niklas@askelventures.com
pitch.askelventures.com · effect.askelventures.com