"I have learned more in the last week, than in the past year" - TINC Fall 2019 is here!
By Abhirohan Parashar, Intern at Innovation Norway San Francisco & Silicon Valley
The participants and TINC team enjoying their first day. Photo by Abhirohan Parashar
TINC is our Accelerator Program at Nordic Innovation House-Silicon Valley, run by Innovation Norway. Eight startups were invited to Silicon Valley this fall to learn more about how to accelerate and scale their companies.
During the four weeks in Silicon Valley the companies will be working on, and learning about, almost every aspect of their business. While in the technology epicenter of the world they will not only be inspired and challenged to improve, but also have the opportunity to validate their product, business model and global scale potential in the world's most competitive tech ecosystem.
Carl Fritjofsson speaking to the group in a founder talk. Photo by Abhirohan Parashar
Despite it being only their first week in the program, it is safe to say it has been an extremely eventful one as well. The companies kicked off the week with a welcome and introduction to the extended team at Nordic Innovation House-Silicon Valley, story telling with pitch coach Nathan Gold, continuing on their work from the kickoff in Oslo in September, followed by a presentation on how to identify their value proposition with Victor Belfor, VP of Business Development at 8x8, who is one of the program's mentors. They also had an opportunity to meet and greet the rest of the program's amazing mentors and hear more about who they are and how they work.
Having one-on-one meetings with the mentors and the TINC team, the startups got the chance to start diving deep into what key areas they will need to focus on. They also had the pleasure of hearing from Carl Fritjofsson, Partner at Creandum, in a founder talk about his experience as a serial entrepreneur and his life as a VC at Creandum, in addition to what they look for in startups when investing.
The group spends some days also in San Francisco, where in the first week they began the day working interactively to understand the art of prioritizing in order to scale up with Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach at Kromatic. After a quick lunch they were treated to a talk from Ash Rust, Managing Partner at Sterling Road, on how to use effective goal setting to create a more meaningful understanding of their company's health and progression. Finally, they heard from Lasse Andresen, founder of ForgeRock, who shed light on his own experiences as a successful Nordic entrepreneur and how he navigated the journey taking ForgeRock to become the successful company it is today.
Thursday morning began with a talk from Chander Chawla, VP of Product at Open Garden Inc., on decision-making for startups and principles to live by in order to ensure success. He also has a podcast with one of our other advisors, investor Arne Tonning, with valuable insights into Silicon Valley and the Nordic, called “Valley Nordic”.
Two participants pondering their prioritization needs in Nick Noreña’s workshop. Photo by Abhirohan Parashar
We ended the week with a workshop with Scott Sambucci, CEO of SalesQualia, on how to scale sales while in complex environments. Finally, the week was rounded off with the weekly pitch session with Nathan Gold, where the firms concentrated on delivering their message using the 5Q Framework.
Clearly, they have had a busy week, with workshops, talks and meetings in abundance, but as one of our participants said:
"I've learned more in the last week than I have in the last year." - Vilhjálmur Andri Kjartansson, COO of Igloo
Read more about the companies below and sign up to our mailing list to stay posted for the next blog post and opportunities to join the program.
The companies at TINC this fall:
BuiltOn is a SaaS backend for web and app developers building smart digital products and experiences - BuiltOn is the AI foundation for digital businesses.
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.
Connectitude make it easy for industrial OEMs and machine owners to gain insights with historical and real-time data to optimize performance by monitoring them in-factory as well as remotely.
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.
Monetor automates currency strategy through rule-based decision making.
DynamicDocuments is in the enterprise software market. on a new approach to sales-channel management. More specifically, giving soft- and hardware vendors full transparency of contract-renewals.
Pickr.AI offers high efficiency automation system for warehouses and micro fulfillment centers. Pickr.AI looks at the larger picture by automating the process in a way that makes sense for fully automated order fulfillment, leveraging robotics and computer vision to handle the complexity of piece packing.
Zelo is a B2B SaaS that helps management reach and engage employees without the burden of silo communication tools. Zelo discovers which channel works best for each individual employee. The SaaS empowers management by communicating when each employee has highest probability to engage with content.