Don't TINC! Just do it!
By Abhirohan Parashar, Intern at Innovation Norway San Francisco & Silicon Valley
It has been an intense 4 weeks for the group doing everything from attending mentor meetings, external meetings and workshops, all while operating their companies back home. Despite having a more stressful week than normal for the TINCers, a hard feat to accomplish, the participants can now officially say they have completed the TINC program with flying colors.
To build for next steps, they also got a great networking opportunity at the Silicon Vikings' Annual State of Nordic Tech in the Bay event. There they heard from Jørn Lyseggen, a serial entrepreneur and philanthropist, and Founder & CEO of Meltwater. They also heard from Charlotte Danielsson, CEO of Silicon Vikings, the 45,000+ network of Nordic professionals in Silicon Valley.
The Pitch Graduation always represents the culmination of the large amounts of the work the participants had done during the program. The group had prepared their 3-minute pitches about their companies, designed to both inform and generate more interest, and presented them in front of a small audience and an investor panel for feedback. The TINCers delivered their pitches excellently and received great feedback from the panel! The improvement in communicating their message relative to the TINC kickoff two months ago was impressive.
After the Pitch Night the TINCers met in San Francisco with the TINC team for a collective feedback session on the program and their experiences. Later the same day the participants and the TINC team met at the Royal Norwegian Consul General’s Residence for a closing reception to both relax after their pitch graduation and celebrate completing the TINC program. Finally, on Friday, to plan for the future, the group met with the TINC team to discuss objectives and metrics that they both could track to measure the companies' success over the next months.
It is clear from the participants' own feedback, and evident from the portrait interviews, that the mindset and tools the program has helped giving them will be invaluable moving forward. Not only learning more about scaling their companies and delivering their message, the participants have greater knowledge about the values their companies should strive for, the power of different business models, how to design their products using behavioral psychology, how to capitalize on the data they generate, how to market and create a sales funnel that makes sense, what venture capitalists look for when investing in startups and much more.
The TINCers have had a greater exposure to what the most competitive technology market in the world is working on. Despite not being experts in the aforementioned skills now, they have a wider and deeper understanding of their field, what to focus on, and how to scale their companies. There is no doubt this growth in both business perspective and as people will assist them in the future. We wish them the best of luck moving forward!
Read below the final TINC interviews of the year. The pictures were taken at the Royal Norwegian Consul General’s Residence.
Igloo
Vignir Lydsson, CEO and Founder of Igloo
Igloo is a platform for the long-term housing market. Igloo makes renting easier for landlords and tenants by establishing trust built on information. Less time and money spent on screening, payments and legal matters makes Igloo the most attractive solution available to everyone involved in renting.
Describe the program in three words:
Eye-opening. Game-changing. Valuable.
The most valuable input you have received in the program:
Very pleased to be guided to the right direction in what product to actually scale and what to focus on in the States. We also received validation on that which was excellent. Now we have the correct aim, it was perhaps skewed before.
The highlights of the program:
There is no one single moment. One main takeaway was to realize how large the potential market for our company was. It was much larger than we thought.
Advice to companies applying to TINC:
Do your homework before you come. Read the literature about Silicon Valley, because when you come here and have the basic knowledge, it is much easier to absorb the information and get the full value of the program. What you will read gets validated in real life here.
I have read a lot about these things and I was constantly getting a confirmation of the concepts and experiences I had read over the past years and could connect the dots.
LeadX
Tom Aas, CEO and Founder of LeadX
LeadX is a software platform and app that lets anyone in a firm generate leads, get recognition, and grow revenue. They wish to make it as easy as possible for employees to generate leads.
Describe the program in three words:
Engaging. Inspiring. VIP.
The most valuable input you have received in the program:
One very radical change, that was confirmed by many, was to take away the focus of making everyone sellers, which for some has negative connotations. That has now changed to focusing on empowering everyone to post leads. That is something very different. That has changed our website, pitch deck and sales presentation. This is now a part of our official slogan.
During this program I have finally reached exactly where I want to be when I envisioned this company in terms of our elevator pitch. It's taken 2 years to get to what we're all about down to a 1-minute talk.
The highlights of the program:
The second I started pitching the pitch I have worked on for a month, and my slides weren't working. At first it was a negative experience, but then I could see the audience engaging with what I was saying, and this turned into a really positive experience that opened to great dialogues later.
Advice to companies applying to TINC:
Don't TINC! Just do it! It was an amazing experience though, hopefully for LeadX this was the last accelerator we need to go to. If you are considering selling your product in the US, this is where you want to start. It's much better to go through TINC before any other accelerator in the US. TINC will help you.