Ari Korhonen

Professional history and Board experience

Ari Korhonen, founder at Lagoon Capital is an entrepreneur and angel investor based in Finland. With an average of a 20-year stint that developed Komartek Oyj into a successful international business enterprise. The company exports to ten different countries.

The acquiring of Komartek Oyj in 2004 by WM-Data (the current CGI) was one of Ari’s major milestones. He served as Vice President, Energy & Utilities in WM-Data. This achievement gave Ari the tenacity to invest more in start-ups, primarily as full-time business angel investor.

Ari has invested in 54 companies during the last 18 years. In those, he has participated in a record 165 investment rounds. Among the companies he has invested for example in DealDash, NinaData, Promo Republic, Laserhub and Videobot. Of these investments, he has had 12 successful exits; Small Giant Games, Sympa, Severa, Paytrail, Galton Voysey, Octo3, In4mo, The Switch, MariaDB, Miradore, Kiev and Surveypal.

Ari is also an investor in venture capital funds, which include Evli Growth Partners, Spintop Ventures, Seedcamp, 500 Startups, GP.Bullhound, True Global Ventures, KJK Capital, Startup Wise Guys and Siena Secondary. In Spintop he is also a Senior Advisor. He operates also as a Growth Partner in Evli Growth Partners.

In 2014 Ari received the coveted title of Business Angel of the Year in Finland. The award was presented by the Finnish Business Angels Network (FiBAN). He co-founded FiBAN and was its Board Vice Chairman in 2010-2012.

Ari has equally been an active board member of the European Business Angels Network (EBAN) and Vice-President in 2012-2016. He was awarded EBAN Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015. He is also an active member of EstBAN, NFBAN, Global Super Angels Club and NordicBAN among other major angel networks.

Having graduated with a Master of Science degree in engineering from LUT University and being featured by EU-Startups as one of the top 40 most active and most influential angel investors in Europe in 2017, Ari was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Economics and Business Administration by the same university in 2017. Ari is also a member of LUT University’s Advisory Board.

Korhonen has over 35 years of experience from being a board professional. As an angel investors, he has served in the board of over 30 different growth companies. He currently serves as the Chair of the Board of two companies, and has had several positions of trust in different associations and foundations.

Activities in Boardman

• Member of the Development Forum “Ownership Competence”, 2015

Expertise

• Growth companies
• Internationalization
• Sales and marketing
• Financing
• Exit