Portfolio Spotlight: Twice Commerce

About the Guest: Tuomo Laine is the co-founder & CEO of Twice Commerce. They started as Rentle ("Shopify for rental commerce") and evolved into a broader circular commerce platform, helping merchants sell, rent, subscribe, buy back, and resell products ("commerce on repeat").

I had one of those "wait... I know this company" moments this winter.

We were renting our winter suites in Lapland, and I noticed something: Twice Commerce was powering the renting experience.

It made me genuinely happy. Not because I'm an investor.

Because it's the best kind of signal: your portfolio company shows up in your real life, quietly doing the job.

I took a photo and sent it directly to Tuomo.

How I first met Tuomo (and why it mattered)

A VC friend of mine, Andrus, made the intro years ago.

We invested through Startupist Ventures about three years ago, and at that time, I actually hadn't met Tuomo in person yet.

We later met for the first time at Web Summit, and then again at a Turkish–Finnish ecosystem event we co-organized with the Finnish Embassy at Maria 01 in Helsinki.

And over the last three years, we didn't just "do an investment." We built a real bridge.

The gap Twice Commerce is trying to close

Most e-commerce platforms are designed for a simple world:

Pick → Pack → Ship.

But circular commerce is a different universe:

Pick → Pack → Ship → Receive → Inspect → Refurbish → Restock → Resell (or rent again).

And once goods come back, every item becomes unique. Same model, different condition, different history, different price.

That's the gap Twice solves.

What Twice does differently

Twice is built specifically for recommerce. Not as a plugin, not as a workaround.

They help merchants go from "sell once" to sell twice (or more). That's literally why they rebranded from Rentle to Twice Commerce.

It's not just rentals anymore. It's the infrastructure layer for "commerce on repeat."

Why I invested (and why I still believe)

I believe in what they're building. But more importantly, I believe in how Tuomo manages the company.

Some founders are great storytellers. Some founders are great operators.

Tuomo is the type most investors want to back: calm, thoughtful, and consistently execution-minded. (And yes, that shows up over years, not in one meeting.)

Why this market is going to matter even more

Circular commerce isn't a niche trend.

It's a structural shift: rising manufacturing costs, sustainability pressure, regulation, and consumers wanting access over ownership.

Twice is right in the center of that shift.

And from what I've seen, they're taking off.

A quick note about how I invest

Through Startupist Ventures, I invest globally in early-stage startups.

I'm sector-agnostic on purpose. I like patterns, not categories. And I love meeting founders early, when it's still messy and uncertain, because that's where you really see who can build.

Twice Commerce was one of those early bets.

Also, over the last few weeks, I met a bunch of startups I found genuinely interesting.

This is not me promoting them, and it's not me trying to make any investment decision "transparent" publicly.

I just like sharing what I'm seeing. Strong teams, sharp ideas, and problems worth paying attention to.

Startups I Met Recently (Interesting Teams)

Advise AI (Turkey) · Fintech / AI Customer Support
Multi-agent AI platform for customer support and sales. Omnichannel CX with personalization and enterprise integrations, including Salesforce.

Aria (UK) · AI / Robotics / Automation
Robot-agnostic "physical AI integrator" for boring manual tasks like machine tending and pick-and-place. Human-in-loop with autonomy levels 1 to 5.

Diointeligencia (Brasil) · Health Tech / Dental AI
AI-powered dental diagnostics platform that analyzes x-rays in seconds with 99% accuracy. Already serving 1,000 Brazilian clinics.

Text2test AI (Turkey) · Developer Tools / AI Testing
Automates software testing by using AI to generate unit tests from code snippets or functions. Built to accelerate development and improve code coverage.