Do you know that…?
This year Edgica approached Norway’s IT market, so we decided to keep you up with the most exciting and vital aspects. The main aim of this text is to help you to wrap your head around the movers and shavers in a well-coordinated system of Norway startups. Interesting fact, that quantity of investments in Norwegian startups increase by 300 percent in 2016, and now we should explain how and why.
Due to the fall in oil prices and generally to its limited quantity, the Norwegians are beginning to invest more and more in IT. Very often, oil “billionaires” invest in food or green-tech companies. Due to the crisis in the oil field, reductions continue, and many engineers are left without work. They look in the direction of the IT with hope.
Most Norwegians prefer to open their startups, as almost all outsourcing, because there is no one to work, all the programmers cooperate with huge companies. An available business plan is the first step to success and an excellent opportunity to get $5-50 thousand to embody «Proof of concept.»
Curious to turn attention on the results, about half go on payback – mainly due to very good support from the state. Norway’s government is pro-active, this means, that progressive and state government, help entrepreneurs turn their ideas to life. Examples are Innovation Norway or Investinor. But it’s only one of several keys to success.
There is another one variant to get your project alive – private incubators and accelerators: you have Angel Challenge, the factory, Startup Norway, and many more. What else? This country has high standards of living; a citizen of Norway has a free healthcare system, excellent education capability, and open doors to fostering an ideal life balance. The next aspect is population; Norwegians are a technically advanced nation; they are ready to adopt all the spheres of their life to the digital side.
And of course, we should remember that Norway is still one of the most developed and wealthiest countries. As you can see, the country has all the needed conditions for the creation of the ideal startup and business eco-system.
Norwegian startups statistics
Our team created a visual card of the situation on the market to display it in the clearest way.
Popular fields are Social, SaaS, E-Commerce, Greentech. People are people, and the appearance of social and e-commerce projects on top isn’t surprising, but the more remarkable fact that Norwegians develop the Greentech sphere to the high level of demand business ideas. A prime example is Otovo, founded in 2016; this startup is intended energy distributing; they offer solar panels and installation services. It also ensures a unique system intended for buying and selling energy. The founders have established the mechanism, depending on planning software and e-commerce expertise, to adopt the solar panel system for maximizing solar resources. For today the company organized export to Sweden and has made its delivery to Sweden and Norway at a rate of over 1000 facilities.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software payment and delivery model that is so superior to the traditional way of selling software licenses that it rebuilds the company according to its needs. Thanks to this, SaaS companies have gained an extraordinary practical experience. Unfortunately, for many, this path is difficult: not all new organizations manage to reach success and find a unique experience.
But guys from CatalystOne found the right way to top. CatalystOne is a SaaS company that focused on software services. How does it work? The mechanism based on the digitizing of the HR process; this way helps to create a positive relationship between HRs and employees in a convenient way. For today it asserts or aspires to positions of world leadership within Human Capital Management software and provides a user-friendly system of solutions for HR data management.
The most popular area for startup growth in Norway is the social sphere. We found several examples to show the creative approach of the developers.
No Isolation is a project that was created to help lonely people to fight with their problem unusually. This startup gives the special opportunity to find friends or like-minded people to get a social life. Its telepresence robot, for instance, helps people to overcome diseases or hard periods in their lives. Seemingly, a social niche is crowded, but developers of this app don’t think so. Since 2016, Spacemaker AI decided to start designing urban site plans to respond to the requirements of Norway society. With the rapidly increasing urbanization, low-quality, and untimely site development сan become a trigger to recent urban growth.
The main outcomes
We have given an example of the success of only several projects, that had turned our attention, we hope that some ideas can motivate the readers to improve their ambitious project. Norway is a great country for making business, and now it can provide opportunities for creating innovations in any sphere of your interest. The experience of described startups can show the results of focused work and a desire to convey the values. Also, we ready to answer your questions, so let us know.
