Norway

Nordic Startup Gifts is a website that was founded by and for Nordic startups from Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. Here is a look through some of what the Nordics have to offer this holiday season. The page is divided into four categories: technology, housing, fashion and lifestyle, so it’s definitely possible to find something for everyone. For the tech-freak …

The launch of Ebove B\01 bikes  at the startup hub MESH in Oslo was a one-of-a-kind event.  Take a peek behind the scenes at Activetainment‘s new smartbike, which goes way beyond spinning class. The Activetainment Ebove B\01 smart bike is an evolution of your basic indoor stationary bike.  Like many of these next-gen bikes, the smart bike has augmented biking …

Someone.io, a Norway-based social task management app for businesses, recently ran a successful equity crowdfunding campaign, closing at 107% of their goal.  Dan Hesketh, a brand strategist for the company, writes about the experience from the companies HQ at Startup Lab. Read the original blog post here. Thanks to investors from around the world, we closed our funding drive successfully on …

The pitching competition at the massive startup conference Slush is high stakes and high pressure.  After some stressful preparations, I was called onto stage to pitch my start, EdTech Foundry, in front of an audience in hopes of winning an investment. Last night ended on a high note, and I felt ready to pitch. But in the morning, will all …

The Slush pitching competition: one of the highest stakes startup competitions in the world. Three minutes to explain who you are, what you do, how you will make money and how you will grow your business. In addition you must stick out from the crowd and seduce a panel of spoiled venture capitalists.  No matter how experienced you are, the …

While sailing on the west coast of Sweden, Meshcrafts founder Åsmund Møll Frengstad of Norway  found himself bothered by the inequalities in energy consumption between himself and a fellow boater. First, while the other boater had a giant boat compared to his, both had to pay the same daily fee to charge their boats.  In actuality, Åsmund may have consumed …

The Norwegian startup Routes uses user-generated routes to solve the problem of complex travel planning. We met Routes at Oslo Innovation Week, where the founders pitched to investors and tried to grow their audience at the Afterwork Startup event at the newly relaunched co-working space MESH. “We started out with testing the concept on an event in Oslo, a popular …

Take your event to the next level. That is what EventEye offers their customers. Working as a freelance app developer Fredrik Hoel, CEO and co-founder of EventEye discovered that he kept doing the same thing over and over again. He started to question why he had to ‘reinvent the wheel’ every time he made an app for an event. He came up with …

Wouldn’t it be great to have skilled developers volunteering to hack on your startup? Sounds like a dream? It might. but that’s exactly what’s going on at Ultrahack this weekend. Almost 400 developers are gathered in Helsinki for Ultrahack, part of Slush Hacks, to hack this weekend. Most of them have their on their startups, but some extraordinary people are …

As a  ski lover, I like traveling around, trying new ski resorts, visiting new slopes, and enjoying the winter sports community. But… as there is always a “but”… there is something I actually hate when I think about skiing: waiting in line at the cashier`s desk to get my lift pass, while I am dying to hit the slopes. Enter …

Business angel Thomas Berglund has set his eyes on a mission. As lead investor in the premier edition of Angel Challenge, an initiative hosted by Startup Norway, he hopes to unleash a new wave of capital to young Norwegian startups. Last year Norwegian tech startups only raised 3.2% of the total investments in the Nordic region, according to the Nordic …

Although there has been much discussion in Norway about cooperation between large corporations and small startups, or “small-big” cooperation, there has been little action taken, and few success stories. This week, BI Norwegian Business School and EdTech Foundry are kicking off their cooperation, and hoping to encourage others to do the same. The collaboration between BI Norwegian Business School and …

Netflix has become one of the biggest online movie and TV show platforms – but what about a platform for readers? Norwegian startup Vio Media is creating a “Netflix” for Magazines. Articles from your favorite magazines gathered in one place. That is the basic idea behind VIO – a digital magazine platform. Vio Media wants to offer readers unlimited digital …

Calling MESH just a co-working space is way too simplistic. It is a start up itself. It is a networking space. And it has its own hip café and bar.  Not to mention the working lounge. Following the MESH website we can define it as hub for the “Nordic Creators’ community”, and brainstorming with founder Anders Mjåset ,we came to …

It started with only 74 attendees in 2012, but this year, the Norwegian Game Developers’ Guild’s Konsoll conference in Bergen, Norway, aims to reach nearly 400 attendees. The Norwegian games industry is growing at a fast pace. In 2015, the industry had over 50 game releases, but the country still only has one large games studio, FunCom, which means that …

During Ada Lovelace‘s 200th anniversary Norway led the way with a groundbreaking coding session for hundreds of school girls. Over 200 girls descended upon the Deichmanske, Oslo’s public library, for a packed day of coding.GirlsTechFest took place on the 200th anniversary of Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer and was part of Oslo Innovation Week, a festival of innovative ideas …

It isn’t only entrepreneurs who sabotage great business ideas by making stupid mistakes. Investors are just as guilty. Last week at Oslo Innovation Week, we talked with Jeanne Sullivan of Starvest Partners, about the 5 stupid mistakes entrepreneurs make over and over again. Of course, as an entrepreneur, “You have to know what to do and how to do it, …

More than 60 events have been gathered at the annual Oslo Innovation Week, the largest innovation fair in all of Europe. Ranging from investors meetings to insightful talks and pitch competitions, Oslo became a global arena for connecting, networking, and learning more about innovation in the startup world. The convention catered to circa 9000 participants under the three main themes …

It is inevitable that you have to use lawyers at some stage if you run a company. At Oslo Innovation Week, Martin B. Rove and Remi Christoffer Dramstad, two lawyers with experience in corporate law and finance, imparted some lessons learned from law for entrepreneurs Avoid the mess Don’t let a giant backlog of paperwork build up – you’ll live …

Entrepreneurs do the same stupid things over and over again. So says Jeanne Sullivan, venture capitalist, New Yorker, and cheerleader of women in business at Oslo Innovation Week. Jeanne knows what she’s talking about when it comes to startups.  With over 25 years of experience as a VC, she has seen “1000 times 1000 companies”. As a cofounder of Starvest …