Venture likes talking about “conviction.”

But conviction isn’t just a feeling or a firm handshake, it’s a strategy. It’s the willingness to stop following the herd and start making concentrated bets in a market that has moved past the era of "collaborative" mediocrity.

In the latest episode of Venture Capital in Scandinavia, we sat down with Linus Dahg, Managing Partner at Inventure, to pull back the curtain on how one of the region’s most successful firms had to “kill its darlings” to stay relevant. Linus isn’t interested in the comfortable middle ground. He’s looking for the outliers. The obsessive founders who don't just see brick walls, but run right through them without noticing they were there.

The takeaway was clear. The Nordic VC playbook is being rewritten. The winners in 2026 won't be the ones splitting rounds to play it safe; they’ll be the ones with the aggression to lead, the data to back it up, and the self-awareness to build better humans behind the terminal.

Killing your darlings to stay competitive

About three years ago, when Linus stepped into the Managing Partner role, he realized that what got Inventure to where it was wouldn't take them where they needed to go. The market had matured, and the "nimble seed fund" model was facing a Darwinian moment.

In Linus' view, the era of generalist funds splitting rounds, where two or three major firms take small slices of the same pie, is fundamentally broken. It might feel strategic, but financially, it doesn't add up for large funds. To win in 2026, you have to be aggressive. You have to lead. You have to fight for the ownership that makes an outlier return meaningful for a $150M+ fund.

This is a shift from "playing nice" to playing for outcomes. If a deal is hot, the later-stage funds will come in hard and try to steamroll your pro-rata rights anyway. If you haven't built a high-conviction position from day one, you’ve already lost the game.

The search for the "business olympian"

If you want outlier returns, you need outlier founders. Linus has developed a specific filter for this. He looks for world-class competitive streaks that manifest long before a pitch deck is ever created.

Whether it’s e-sports, chess, or professional athletics, Linus looks for founders who have already proven they can compete at the highest level. These are the "business olympians". They possess a mental flexibility that allows them to hold a massive strategic vision while executing at a granular, tactical level.

But there’s a catch. In 2026, "ambition" is easy to find when capital is flowing. True obsession is rarer. Linus looks for the founders who don't cave when a speaker at a random conference says their market is "too hard." He wants the person whose life’s work is the problem they are solving, not the person who thinks being a founder is a "cool" career path.

Investing in the "internal plumbing"

Venture capital has historically been an industry of "gut feel" and outward-facing activity. Inventure is flipping that script by looking inward.

One of the most striking parts of the conversation was Linus’s commitment to personal development. Inventure pays for its entire investment team to see holistic coaches, therapists, or psychologists. Why? Because you can’t be a high-performance partner to an obsessive founder if you haven't done the work on yourself.

In a world where AI is leveling the playing field for data analysis, the human element, trust, listening, and relationship management, becomes the last true defensible moat for a VC firm. By sharpening their own "internal plumbing," the Inventure team becomes better at navigating the high-stress, high-stakes relationship between founder and investor.

The 2026 outlier won’t be the hottest deals

If everyone is talking about a deal at the seed stage, Linus is probably looking elsewhere.

His data-driven prediction for 2026 is provocative. The companies that become multi-billion dollar outliers almost never start as the "hottest" deals in their seed rounds. The "hot" deals often fit the current market moodboard too perfectly. They are easy to understand and easy to fund. But the true outliers are usually misunderstood, ignored, or considered "stupid" by the generalist crowd at the beginning. As Linus puts it: “Dare to look stupid”. If you aren't willing to be wrong, you'll never be spectacularly right.

The path forward

The Nordic ecosystem is becoming sharper, more aggressive, and more professional. We are moving away from the "testing and learning" phase and into a cycle where the winners are those who can institutionalize conviction.

At Amby, we see this reflected in the talent market every day. Founders are no longer hiring for volume; they are hiring for leverage. They want teams that are as intentional and system-driven as the VCs who back them.

The market is no longer rewarding activity. It is rewarding outcomes. The question isn't whether you can build a company in the Nordics.

The question is whether you have the obsession required to make it an outlier.