Attention strengthens Smile's company

SMiLE Venture Hub is available at Medicon Village and supports early life science companies. Since its inception, over 100 companies have passed through the programs.

- We have the ambition to be a leading Venture Hub within Life Science in Europe, says Ebba Fåhraeus.

For Smile, Lund is a good place to work from. Lund is located in Medicon Valley, which refers to the area around Copenhagen. This is one of Europe's largest Life science clusters with several top universities, a number of major pharmaceutical companies but above all a large startup scene contributing to many new innovations. Proximity to the rest of the world via access to an international airport is also important. For Lund, of course, its own university but also the large research facilities are magnets that attract talented researchers to come here.

- I believe that Lund's combination of a fantastic academic environment with a strong innovation environment and a positive attitude towards start-ups and entrepreneurship is very attractive, continues Ebba Fåhraeus. Lund is a very international place but still so small that many people with different knowledge and experiences meet.

At SMiLE there are business coaches, project managers and staff with a total of 250 years of industry-relevant experience.

- We are the senior management team that the contractors cannot afford to hire but who through us is available to them. Through the team, they can get help with many aspects of building businesses.

SMiLE is currently in the midst of a name change, from the SMiLE incubator to the SMiLE Venture Hub, indicating a major change.

- We still have an incubator program, but we have also developed into a much larger platform, says Ebba Fåhraeus. We work with researchers and entrepreneurs, from an early stage to scale up and to this we have built a platform of investors and industry around us.

The basic aim is to support entrepreneurs in their commercialization journey. It has long been home to the entrepreneurs in Medtech, e-Health, Diagnostics and Biotech and in recent years also Food science. For this reason, over the past year, SMiLE has hired more people and invested in instruments suitable for the area. And it's already starting to show results.

- A well-known example of a food company with us is Saveggy which develops an edible coating consisting of food ingredients that are sprayed onto vegetables. This coating, which is supposed to replace the plastic used today to extend the shelf life of cucumbers, among other things, is not visible, is tasteless and fully edible but can be washed off with water.

Another of SMILES's companies that has recently attracted attention is Asgard Therapeutics which works on immunotherapy against cancer and recently brought in 335 million in venture capital.

- Of course, it's great that Asgard brings in so much money. I also think it shows that we are successful at supporting researchers into entrepreneurship and at successfully attracting money.

For SMiLE, it was also an important confirmation that the business is successful when AbbVie Scandinavia decided that their fifth Golden Ticket'shill go to SMiLE. This means that the pharmaceutical company funds an incubator place and coaching for a selected company for one year.

- The fact that AbbVie chose us is not only a stamp of quality on our incubator program, but a gold star for the entire region, says Ebba Fåhraeus. AbbVie took a close look at the entire innovation environment and ecosystem in choosing the incubator. One company wins a seat, but there are more winners because AbbVie continues to have a dialogue with several of the other entrepreneurs.

Another important success was when The Financial Times placed Smile in 52nd place in Europe when ranking Europe's leading startup hubs (among approximately 2000). Here, it not only looked at Life science incubators but compared widely across industries.

For Ebba also awaits an assignment as a member of the government's advisory group where she hopes to put an increased focus on the opportunities of innovation and early start-ups

- All this together brings international attention to SMiLE. We can attract more capital and more industrial partners at the same time that more entrepreneurs apply here,” concludes Ebba Fåhraeus.

‍

SMiLE in numbers

The companies in the incubator and the Alumni companies have raised more than EUR 841 million in venture capital since 2014.

In the different companies there are about 40 different nationalities represented.

Since its inception, Smile has helped more than 110 companies commercialize their business ideas. 21 of them have been listed on the stock market.

In March 2024, SMILE company Asgard Therapeutics raised SEK 335 million in a rights issue. Among the investors are Novo Holding via the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Johnson & Johnson innovation company.

40% of CEOs are women. These have attracted 50% of the venture capital.

SMiLE is a non-business organisation with basic funding from Region Skåne, Lund Municipality, Lund University and Medicon Village.

‍

Image: Ebba Fåhraeus, CEO of SMiLE Venture Hub. Photo from Smile Venture Hub.