node.vc investment Kreia exits stealth
HELSINKI, APRIL 30 — Finnish startup Kreia is coming out of stealth with an AI-native marketing service for small businesses, handling content, posting and ads end-to-end. The team had previously raised a first round led by node.vc alongside Wave Ventures and a group of angel investors to further develop the platform and accelerate sales.
Kreia is an AI native marketing service for small businesses without the agency price tag. Generic AI and editing tools can help with the marketing needs of today, but the output rarely meets the bar without heavy rework. Most businesses don't have the time, so they turn to costly freelancers or agencies instead. Kreia offers a better option: the feel of a done-for-you service, made affordable by technology.
Kreia was founded by sisters Nea and Ellen Harjanne, who worked hands-on with their first customers before building a product. "Seeing just how manual and fragmented the work was, we knew there had to be a better way," Nea says. "To build a solution, we teamed up with Sayo, an ex-Meta and ex-Smartly.io engineer who shared our vision early on.“
Kreia is tapping into a pattern playing out across industries. Its customers are small businesses and independent professionals: real estate agents, car dealerships, renovation companies and beyond. These companies are great at what they do, but have no dedicated marketing person and no time to show up consistently online. Kreia started in real estate, where a steady flow of new listings demands constant new marketing material. That dynamic has driven adoption across independent agencies in Finland, including agents at the country's best-known chains, and is bringing on the first agents in the UK.
”We backed Kreia early because we believe some of the most exciting AI companies won’t just build better tools, they’ll deliver the outcomes those tools were meant to enable. Kreia is doing exactly that for small business marketing, and we’re excited to see them scale.” - Daniela Sjunesson, Partner at node.vc.
Links