EMNY: On the verge of international success
‘We hope to come away with new tools and a mindset we can draw on for many years to come,’ says first-time founder Ingrid Volden Smehagen.
The 27-year-old co-founded tech start-up Dreamknit with Marte Stenvaag.
Today, they are both in Oslo to attend the launch of EMNY (Executive Marketing New York), one of our scale-up programmes for Norwegian companies.
Over the next five months, six Norwegian companies will embark on an entirely new chapter. With close support and guidance, they will prepare for growth.
In Norway, there are three times as many knitters as football players. Yet despite a large and growing customer base, there has been little innovation in the products available to knitters. Until now. On their own platform, Dreamknit's founders have coded the mathematics behind knitting, allowing you to mix and match designs and yarns – and tailor your creations in a more sustainable and creative way.
The company has paying customers in 51 countries. Its long-term goal is to expand into major markets beyond Norway.
‘We want Dreamknit to be the first thing people think of when they start a knitting project. It will be a one-stop shop for knitters,’ Stenvaag explains.
‘The expertise and advisory support we can access through EMNY are very important as we enter this next phase of growth. It is also important for us to establish a touchpoint in the US,’ Smehagen adds.
Tailored scale-up expertise
One of the people helping Dreamknit do just that is Ola Forsstrom-Olsson. He heads EMNY and is a senior adviser at our New York office, one of our four locations in the US. With a background as both an entrepreneur and an investor, he has extensive experience in identifying and supporting companies that want to grow.
‘For a company to truly compete and succeed internationally, its product and distribution must be competitive. They need to be world-class – everything else is secondary. This is where EMNY comes in. At EMNY, we focus exclusively on helping companies become as strong as they possibly can, as quickly as possible,’ says Forsstrom-Olsson.
While Norway's ecosystem for start-ups and early-stage companies has developed positively, too few still succeed in building new Norwegian growth companies.
'When a company is in the start-up phase, it needs to test several different versions of its product and distribution model at the same time – until it finds something that works and starts gaining traction in the market. Moving into the scale-up phase means quickly making meaningful improvements to both the product and its distribution to build an efficient, growing business,' he explains, before continuing:
– It requires the ability to focus on what really matters – and to take action and deliver at pace. It can be a challenging transition.
While conventional accelerator programmes largely take a 'one size fits all' approach, with every company meeting every mentor in random conversations, EMNY offers a tailored approach.
‘We help the companies that come to us identify the improvements that will have the greatest impact on their business and the changes they should focus on to achieve significant results as quickly as possible. Only once we have defined these priorities do we bring in leading experts in the field for focused discussions,’ says Forsstrom-Olsson.
From Sogn to China
Joining Dreamknit in Oslo on the day are Surfact, Signal Analysis Lab (SAL), Profrakt, Heimdal Power and Highsoft.
The latter, which hails from the picture-postcard village of Vik in Sogn, is already established in Europe and the US. In August this year, the company signed a partnership agreement with tech giant Tencent Cloud, Asia's largest technology company.
Highsoft provides Highcharts, a data visualisation component for websites. What began as a modest search for a simple charting tool to measure snow depth has grown into a major entrepreneurial adventure.
'We have a highly scalable product and solution. There are likely to be significant opportunities in the US and Europe. At the same time, we have signed an agreement with Tencent Cloud in China, which could provide a real boost in itself. In other words, we need to find a way to focus on several things at once. I hope and believe EMNY can help us with that,' says CEO Atle Sivertsen.
‘It is also important for us to have our thinking challenged and exchange ideas with people from other industries, particularly those from other countries,’ he adds.
Geir Kulia, founder and CEO of the analysis and condition monitoring company Signal Analysis Lab, agrees.
‘Contacts are clearly important, as long as they are the right ones. The phase we are in now is like a chamber orchestra trying to become a symphony orchestra – and quickly. We need to be very careful about what and who we spend our time on,’ he says.
– To achieve the market position we want, we need to ensure that both our pricing model and business model are sustainable over time. Being able to draw on the other participants, and especially the EMNY mentors who have extensive experience in this area, is extremely valuable, says Kulia.
Forget the Law of Jante
Experienced founders also take part in the programme. One of them is Per Magne Helseth. This is his fourth entrepreneurial venture and his second time in EMNY. This time, he is participating with Surfact, a company that has developed tracking sensors for freight and goods transport.
'I've never been a ‘normal’ employee,' Helseth says with a laugh.
Normal or not, he undoubtedly has extensive experience – and knows what it takes for businesses to take the next step.
Beyond having a simple, scalable product and a system in place to support scaling, Helseth believes there is one thing in particular that matters:
‘It may sound obvious, but you need to think big enough. We Norwegians tend to be a little too cautious.’
‘I feel there is a bit of a tall poppy syndrome out there. People take pleasure in others’ mistakes, when we should really be cheering on those who dare to take a chance. We need to put an end to that attitude,’ says the entrepreneur.
Helping you succeed
He has a crystal-clear ambition: to transform cargo handling for good.
‘Two tonnes of goods are transported for every person on the planet each year. Many of these goods are sensitive to temperature or impact. Our main goal is to track every shipment of goods that requires special handling – ideally using our sensor – so that we can prevent waste,’ he says.
'We have big ambitions, and EMNY is helping us turn them into a structured plan.'
Whether any of the six companies will follow in Alphaville's footsteps and become 'big in Japan' remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: they will be equipped for growth.
‘Norway needs more companies to succeed in scaling up and growing. And that is exactly what we will help them do,’ concludes Forsstrom-Olsson.