Sartar Therapeutics, a SPARK Finland alumni, closed yesterday a funding campaign organized by Springvest. They reached in few days the maximum targeted amount 2.3 million euro.

Over the past three years Dr Harri Sihto, Founder and Chairman of the Board at Sartar Therapeutics, has been one of the most active participants in SPARK program. After closing the funding round he wanted to express his gratitude for peers.

At first I want to thank SPARK program and fellow SPARKees for the support during our journey. Few challenging years in raising first remarkable funding – around the world – has come to its end with a success. Earlier pre-seed investments by founders and friends enabled us to take first steps towards our pre-clinical results. But we needed more money for next steps, says Sihto.

According to him the road has not been too rosy, but they were never left alone. Past three years has been for them traveling around the world building their market understanding, testing their hypothesis with industry and investors, building connections, and looking for funding for next steps.

For a startup team that owned the IP already in late research phase road is rocky. But we were lucky to have other SPARKees and mentors supporting us and sharing their experiences, Sihto says.

Tenacity in building their market understanding and some sort of sustainable banging heads to the wall created cracks to it and finally Sartar team got rewarded.

Yesterday we reached targeted maximum amount of 2.3 million euro in our funding round. Now it is our time to roll up our sleeves and continue our work with full speed, he says.

For our the fellow SPARKees and SPARK alumni he wants to remind important lesson: “I wish you all the best and we all must remember rely on our projects and never give up“.