Today, Norway is famous for being a great place to launch a new business. And its capital Oslo is one of the most prospective startup hubs you should watch. The government of Norway supports the new age of innovations and creates a favorable environment to start a new business. Let’s move on and find out what startups are and how to launch them.
How and where to look for investors
There are several ways to get funding for your startup. It greatly depends on the type of investors you’d like to work with. Moreover, you can take advantage of several fundraising ways during different phases of money raising.
- Angel investor
An angel investor is a person who invests in your startup. It’s not a company, a hub, or a fund. Such investors don’t give lots of money, but they take high-risk investments with fewer profit guarantees.
Where and how to find angel investors? Attend themed conferences or find angel investors online. Angellist, Angel Investment Network, and Gust are the most popular online platforms to look for angel investors.
- Venture capital
Venture capital is a form of funding startups by large funds or companies. Venture capitalists are quite demanding, so they prefer to invest in reliable and promising startups or in dying companies. They don’t invest in a risky business. So it’s relatively hard to get their support.
Where and how to find venture capitalists? It’s better to have a friend that is a venture capitalist to meet other investors. Sure, you can contact them directly but the chances that you’ll be invited to a real meeting are low. Or you can start generating enormous profit and VCs will contact you.
- Business incubator
Business incubators are the organizations that help young companies as well as startups launch and prosper. They can provide initial capital (seed capital) and they can teach you. And of course, they can help you meet VCs.
Where and how to find business incubators? Google them and choose any that suits your needs. Ycombinator is the biggest business incubator that worked with Airbnb, Reddit, and Dropbox.
- Crowdfunding
We bet you’ve heard about crowdfunding dozens of times. It’s a particular form of money raising with the help of various platforms. Crowdfunding works well with the startups somehow connected to the charity.
Where and how to find crowdfunding platforms? There are lots of crowdfunding platforms on the Internet. Surf the web and choose any that you like best.
- ICO
ICO or Initial Coin Offering is quite a new word in fundraising. But you need to create your own ICO before you can use it. ICO is used instead of the usual percentage in the company which you can offer to get money.
Main trends of IT startups in Norway
In contrast to main Norway’s hubs – oil, seafood, maritime, the Norwegian IT industry concentrates mainly in the Oslo area. Oslo has StartupLab, a dedicated space to help Norwegian companies to grow and take over the market.
It’s a startup accelerator similar to those of San Francisco or London’s Silicon Roundabout. But StartupLab offers something more than an average startup accelerator.
StartupLab facilitates the organic growth of startups rather than rapid thanks to investments coming into startups from within the country. So the main trend of the Norwegian IT startups is to grow domestic companies rather than invest in foreign businesses.
How to find the perfect startup hub in Norway
There are dozens of startup hubs in Norway. You need only choose what hub suits your business needs. Let’s focus on three main types of IT hubs in Norway.
Full list of incubator hubs
Find your accelerator hub
Full list of co-working spaces
