Mix: Shotgun Weddings Then Velvet-Rope Fundraising

“Later that spring, Mix heard the rumor that Feder’s counterpart at Harvard would come to Stockholm to meet competitor Nordic Capital. Mix acted lightning fast. He called up and invited Peter Dolan to dinner in one of Operakällaren’s secluded smaller dining rooms upstairs. The dinner went well, and Harvard also chose to invest in Altor’s first fund. In May 2003, in the record time of three months, Mix had gathered the 650 million euros that was the target; in addition to the pension foundations of Harvard and Princeton, he also brought along Yale’s university endowment, a total of about fifty investors. – At IK, we worked a lot with “shotgun wedding” when looking for investors, meaning we marketed ourselves very broadly. When I started Altor, I did the opposite, he says. Altor has stuck to that strategy. It works as long as things go well; you call old investors when setting up a new fund and ask if they want to join, and if they are satisfied, they say yes. Therefore, it is difficult for new investors to get into the best venture capital firms, their funds quickly become “pre-booked”.”

“But if Harald Mix has decided he wants something, he doesn’t give up. Even in private life. That’s why, in August 2010, he won the bidding war for the archipelago property Kallskär outside Norrtälje against what turned out to be a competitor. Conni Jonsson also sought peace in nature, and the asking price of SEK 17.5 million climbed to SEK 25 million before Jonsson let go.”