Summary • Maiuran Loganathan is working on developing an idea to solve problems for university students.• There is a decrease in the number of young people who want to start their own business, and fewer apply for patents and trademark and design registrations.• Henrik Müller-Hansen is successful founder of Gelato, and has established a platform to reduce climate emissions and costs of printing and distribution.• Jens Aarre Seip, another founder, has developed Curipod, an interactive teaching platform. The summary is made by an AI service from OpenAi. The content is quality assured by news’s journalists before publication. – I couldn’t have been any better, I think, says a satisfied Maiuran Loganathan. The 25-year-old from Groruddalen in Oslo is working on developing an idea. Together with his friends, he tries to find out what kind of problems they can solve for students. The idea is not quite finished, and he is keeping it somewhat secret. But reveals that it is about the social part of being a student. – I will let you know when the pitch is ready! STARTUP HELP: At Oslo Startuplab, 100 start-up ideas receive help at any time. Every week some grow out, while others enter. Photo: Amanda Iversen Orlich / news But he gets help along the way, and people have faith in him. – He can become Norway’s best, a future unicorn, says entrepreneurial expert Rolf Assev, who has followed Loganathan since he was 16 years old. Assev has worked with several people who are about to succeed. Curipod founder Jens Aarre SeipHe was really fed up with school and dropped out of upper secondary school. At folkhøyskole he found the joy of learning again, but thinks traditional classroom teaching can be demotivating. He is one of the founders behind Curipod, which is an interactive teaching tool for teachers. Now he has become an enthusiast for good Norwegian pedagogy , mixed with high technology. 150,000 teachers, including in the USA, Australia, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic, have registered. – We have a goal of reaching every classroom in the whole world. But we’re not there yet. – Welcome to the future! At Oslo Startuplab in Forskningsparken, Rolf Assev is wearing a red hoodie. He shows off the premises where budding entrepreneurs appear one by one as the clock passes 9. SUCCESS: The help robot No Isolation, the digital notebook Remarkable and Kahoot! are among the products the lab is proud of. Photo: Amanda Iversen Orlich / news Why does Assev think that Maiuran Loganathan is a name we should take note of? The startup leader is concerned that the inner drive is most important for success. – The most important thing is to have “passion in the eyes”. Burning to solve a problem, says Assev. He says that Maiuran Loganathan is like that. The 25-year-old was bitten by the start-up bug when he was working with a youth company. Then he completed high school in one year, but wanted slightly better grades – so he took another year. ON THE WAY: Maiuran Loganathan says he gets a lot of inspiration from working and drooling at the Oslo startup lab. Photo: Amanda Iversen Orlich / news After high school, he took a degree in economics at Minerva University, on a course where only 1.9 percent of applicants get in. When he returned to Norway, he realized that he needed to learn coding. So he spent a whole summer learning it on his own. He then got a coding job. The last out of initiative was that he wanted to learn more about sales, so he became a door-to-door salesman for one month. Always with the goal of being able to solve a problem. – I think it’s very much like that startup mentality, says Loganathan himself. He has several sources of inspiration. Gelato founder Henrik Müller-HansenHe looked for problems in three industries: Antiques, optics and printing. The problem he found was that there were large climate emissions and it was expensive to send printed material from one place in the world to another. The solution was a digital platform which means that the actual production can take place closer to the customer. Started Gelato in 2007Gelato became a unicorn in 2021. Inspired in particular by the mother who educated herself as an adult. – Working with people I love to work with, with a focus on something that I believe makes sense, that is my driving force. Fewer people want to bet But not everything is good in Gründer-Norway. There are not as many young people who want to start their own business as before. This is shown by research carried out by Innovation Norway. The Patent Office also receives fewer applications, according to their annual report. 3xK: Customers, capital and competence are essential to succeed as an entrepreneur, says managing director Håkon Haugli. Photo: Hilde Nilsson Ridola / news The managing director of Innovation Norway points to several reasons: – Uncertainty in the world can make taking risks more difficult than before. But high interest rates and exchange rates also come into play, says Håkon Haugli. Another reason could be that things are generally going well in Norwegian business. This means that good people and money are drawn there. But Haugli says we need those who dare to bet big and become great successes like the unicorns. What are unicorn companies? A company that is referred to as a unicorn is a young company that has grown rapidly. The most common definition is that the company grows to a value of 1 billion US dollars during the first five years. In Norway we have 11 unicorns as of August 2023 This is the second most in the Nordics The companies are: Autostore, Cognite, FREYR, Kahoot!, Oda, Gelato, Dune Analytics, Remarkeable, Nykode Therapeutics, Linke Mobility Group, Opera Source: Innovation Norway and Nordic Innovation Scary or successful For many, starting out for yourself can sound scary. But Curipod founder Jens Aarre Seip believes that the risk entrepreneurs in Norway take is divided into two: – It is the actual, economic, rational risk. It is actually quite low in Norway. If an entrepreneur in the US fails, they have no safety net, then they starve. In Norway, at worst, it’s a trip to Nav, he says. – The risk, which is quite large, is the risk of making a mistake and looking a bit stupid. It is quite real. LEARNING FROM THE ROAD: Maiuran Loganathan (25) hopes to find the problem he can solve, and to see the finished product one day. Photo: Amanda Iversen Orlich / news Maiuran Loganathan has also experienced not being successful. The previous idea he was working on wasn’t good enough. – It was actually a bit tough, you can feel the confidence a bit. For me it was then important to do something else for a short period of time. But then it’s only a matter of time before you come back. – Where will you be in ten years? – In ten years’ time, I hope that what we are building now will be really good. So much so that we look back on this interview and think: “Ah, we were on to something there,” says the 25-year-old. THE HEART: The coffee machine is the heart of Oslo Startuplab. Conversations and ideas often develop there. Photo: Amanda Iversen Orlich / news
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Norwegian entrepreneurs share their experiences – news Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country
