Norrsken VC has invested €5 million in Barcelona-based healthtech startup Biorce, revolutionising clinical trials with AI to bring treatments to patients sooner. The funding comes just seven months after Biorce’s €3.5 million first round in November 2024, led by healthtech specialist YZR Capital and Mustard Seed Maze.
A fund of €700,000 has been secured to trial next-generation methane-reducing technologies on 10 additional dairy farms in West Cork, expanding the reach of Carbery’s Farm Zero C project – a research and demonstration initiative aiming to create a blueprint for an economically viable, sustainable dairy farming model.
In the fast-paced, ever-changing world of startups, time is the one resource founders can’t raise, borrow, or buy more of. Every founder is familiar with the relentless pressure of trying to balance it all: leading the company’s vision, pitching to investors, securing funding, managing growing teams, building products, and scaling operations.
If you are a manager or startup founder reading this – and you probably are, based on the title of the magazine – then you are probably already overloaded with ambiguous, random advice on how to build culture. Or you’re inundated by LinkedIn posts telling you how you’re a terrible person if you don’t let your staff work from Bali year-round on a four-day work week. Or you’ve read a couple of Walter Isaacson biographies and now you’re thinking the trick is to act like a dictator.
When it’s time to scale, many businesses grind to a halt – not because of market conditions, but because their internal systems aren’t built for growth. These businesses often have the demand, the talent, and the ambition, but their outdated financial systems hold them back. This is the scale-up trap: when growing businesses stall not for lack of opportunity, but because they’re not operationally ready.
Small and medium sized companies are the backbone of the global economy. In the UK alone, these businesses account for three-fifths of employment and almost half of turnover in the UK private sector. But their influence is not limited to UK borders. They are internationally ambitious, often purchasing from global suppliers, and sending goods and services to buyers overseas. Their growth, and that of the economy, relies upon favourable and fair market conditions – something which has been found lacking in recent months.
At Zubr Capital, a growth-stage investment fund focused on supporting ambitious tech companies, we typically back three to five companies each year during the Series A or Series B stages. That doesn’t mean there aren’t hundreds of impressive founders with compelling ideas out there – only that few truly align with the investment approach and long-term partnership model we’ve developed.












