Growth Companies

Growth Companies

When a startup is growing into a scaleup and seeks to enter the international market, the strong growth phase will bring new challenges: how to ensure personnel resources, protect IP rights and ensure proper corporate governance and sufficient financing and cash flow.

We speak your language. We have a long-standing experience in working with founder-led and venture-backed companies and continuously support growth and technology companies in reaching their goals. We offer comprehensive legal advice for growth companies from seed-stage startups to mature scaleups and act as their strategic partner in fundraisings, M&A transactions and exit scenarios.

We walk with you as you grow and scale up our offering to meet your own growth path and the resources of your team. You will find just the right legal experts at our firm to meet your evolving legal needs. We advise on issues related to venture and growth capital, corporate governance, incentive plans, employment law, technology law and IP protection as well as tax and related structuring. Our clients include numerous startups and scaleups across different industries, and we have a particularly strong track record of assisting growth companies in the technology, energy, food, health technology and life science sector.

No matter how big or small, together with our international network we are able to quickly set up a cross-border deal team for any corporate transaction requiring legal support in multiple jurisdictions. Our international experience makes us a perfect partner for companies raising capital from international investors or aspiring to execute a cross-border M&A transaction or IPO. We have established long-term partnerships with Finnish and international investors, and collaborate with international law firms, financial advisors, and investment banks on an ongoing basis.

Our services include

  • Financing rounds
  • Corporate governance
  • Option programmes and share-based incentive schemes
  • IP protection
  • Tax
  • Employment law advice
  • M&A
  • Exit strategies and IPOs

Latest references

We advised Readpeak in an arrangement where Finnish growth fund Voland Partners made an investment in Readpeak. Readpeak is a service platform specialising in native advertising for purchasing, designing, and targeting the distribution of advertising space. Readpeak has quickly risen to a leading position with its platform solution, which enables an easy way to target and schedule communications as part of the news feed on media sites. Readpeak is a company founded in Helsinki in 2014, which has since expanded to nine European market areas and collaborates with over a thousand publishers. Readpeak redefines content-driven advertising using advanced machine learning models, creating added value for both quality media and journalism. Voland Partners is a minority investor specialising in the development of technology companies, with a mission to work together with entrepreneurs to build successful companies responsibly, creating success stories that benefit the entire society. Readpeak is Voland Partners’ sixth investment target, into which the fund company is investing from its first growth fund of 57 million euros.
Case published 10.4.2025
Castren & Snellman Ebrands funding round
We assisted eBrands Holdings Oy in its latest funding round, during which the company raised 7.5 million euros. The new funding brings the company’s total raised capital to 50 million euros. The latest funding round was mainly led by the family investment company Veikko Laine, Varma Pension Fund, and operational shareholders. The funding will be used to develop eBrands’ AI-based Apollo market growth tool, which helps brands expand into sixty different markets and sales channels without local infrastructure or heavy investments. eBrands is an export platform that grows consumer brands globally through e-commerce and major retail channels. Specializing in the US and European markets, eBrands enables brands to internationalize with an export service model that reduces the risk and complexity associated with expansion by leveraging advanced technology. Founded in 2020, the Helsinki-based company’s team includes 75 people, and the company’s revenue exceeds 35 million euros.
Case published 11.3.2025
We advised Bionto Oy, a company offering industrial bio-solutions, in a financing arrangement where Korpi Capital made a EUR 4 million seed equity investment in the company. The execution of the investment requires that certain conditions specified in the investment documentation are met. Bionto is a Finnish early-stage biotechnology company that develops and produces sustainable, profitable and safe biotechnological solutions to support the green transition, business objectives and societal goals of various industrial operators.
Case published 8.7.2024
We advised Speechly, a Helsinki-based spoken language understanding company, on the company’s admission to Y Combinator’s accelerator program and the related corporate and tax matters. We advised Speechly on the rearranging of its existing capital structure into a US holding company by executing a so-called Delaware flip arrangement practically in a tax neutral manner. We also advised on tax and corporate structuring and agreements in relation to the rearrangement and Y Combinator’s investment process. Speechly, founded in 2016, provides accurate real-time Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU) tools and APIs. In 2021, the Finnish news media Talouselämä selected the software company as one of the ten most promising Finnish startups. The company’s previous investors include international venture capital funds such as Cherry Ventures, Seedcamp, Quantum Angels, Joyance Partners, Social Starts and Tiny.vc. Based in Silicon Valley, Y Combinator is a startup fund and one of the world’s leading technology startup accelerator programs. Every six months Y Combinator invests in a group of promising international startups that are admitted to its accelerator program out of over 10,000 applicants. Y Combinator’s investment portfolio includes companies such as Stripe, Airbnb, Dropbox, Doordash and Reddit. 
Case published 13.9.2022