Gorilla Capital’s Exit from Axitare: A Testament to Strategy

Goril­la Capi­tal Fund II has comple­ted an exit from Axi­ta­re — a com­pa­ny we’­ve sup­por­ted for 3.5 years. The outco­me? A remar­kable 12x return on our invest­ment (net of tran­sac­tion costs), repre­sen­ting about 9% of the total fund value.

Axi­ta­re was never an obvious invest­ment. The com­pa­ny was led by a single foun­der, ser­ved the public healthca­re sec­tor, and had a matu­re, ope­ra­tio­nal­ly focused pro­fi­le. Not the typical VC pat­tern. We deba­ted hard whet­her to join the round at all.

But this exit is a great remin­der of what Goril­la Capi­tal’s stra­te­gy involves:

• Sys­te­ma­tic stra­te­gy: We prio­ri­tize a data-dri­ven approach over hype and avoid “hero” bets.
• Wide diver­si­fica­tion: We diver­si­fy wide­ly because it’s impos­sible to pre­dict which ven­tu­res will be the big­gest successes.
• Capi­tal efficiency: Axi­ta­re succee­ded wit­hout rai­sing mas­si­ve rounds; they built value sus­tai­nably and exi­ted at the right time.

This is also anot­her example of why we don’t cha­se unicorns. A €15–30M exit can be a fan­tas­tic outco­me for both foun­ders and ear­ly inves­tors if the com­pa­ny is capi­tal efficient and alig­ned with its fun­ding needs, avoi­ding over­fun­ding and pre­ma­tu­re scaling.

The deal att­rac­ted seve­ral inte­res­ted buyers — a tes­ta­ment to the value had built. We’re glad the new majo­ri­ty owner, Vaa­ka Part­ners, is now bac­king their next growth chapter.

Read the announce­ment from Vaa­ka Part­ners (in Fin­nish) about beco­ming the majo­ri­ty sha­re­hol­der in Axi­ta­re here.