Caroline Walerud

Partner, Walerud Ventures

Role: Associate

Site: CDL-Paris

Stream: Climate

Caroline is a natural scientist turned deep tech entrepreneur and investor.

She is cofounder, chairman and investor at AirForestry. We’re reinventing forestry with electric drones. By eliminating access roads and the damage heavy machines do in the forest, AirForestry enables better biodiversity, gentler thinning and higher uptake of carbon dioxide. In Sweden alone, the method can reduce direct emissions by more than 150,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year and increase our forests’ carbon dioxide uptake by one million tonnes per year. www.airforestry.com/en

Caroline co-founded Volumental in 2012 to shape a future free from sizes where every body fits, through through 3D scanning and AI. We have already helped over 28 million feet find perfect footwear, with over 90 customers in 46 countries including New Balance, Fleet Feet and Bauer. After building the company from scratch as CEO for the first three years she is now Executive Chairman.

She helps early stage startups as Partner at Walerud Ventures, a family office that joins green and deep tech pre-seed startups. Portfolio companies include Swedish Algae Factory, Graphmatech, Ekkono, Midsummer and fintech unicorn Klarna.

She has advised the Swedish government on startup policy and promotes entrepreneurship through Sting.co incubator’s advisory board and Prince Daniel’s Fellowship. Caroline was awarded Forbes 30 under 30 Europe Leaderboard 2016 and #1 Swedish Supertalent of the Year 2013. She studied natural sciences with a focus on zoology and neuroscience at Cambridge University.